We like to tell ourselves how awesome our jobs are: generally good salaries, decent office conditions, flexible work hours, no dress code, etc.

There's a big "but": SW dev requires a certain mentality to be able to stick at it for a long time, without becoming bored out of your mind or going crazy about all the inefficiencies, dysfunction and utter meaninglessness of it all.

Assuming you’re right about programming being so horrible, how is programming any worse than other clerical jobs?

In 4 words: maintenance programming and debugging.

Most clerical jobs don't have a lot of surprises hidden in the middle of some undocumented feature. And things are not improving with the multiplication of dependence on SaaS and build and deploy mechanism.

While I can agree with maintenance, I usually find debugging the most exciting part of software development. Problem solving is the essence of this job and I don't really understand what keeps people that hate it in this field.

More responsibility, i.e. it's easier to monumentally screw up and get rightfully blamed for it.

One difference is that most other clerical jobs don't depend as much on long-term focus and flow, and so allow much more work socialization and frequent casual chatter. That difference matters heavily to those for whom such socialization is important. It neutralizes the pain of confined spaces and boredom for such socially inclined people.

> Garbage disposal is not what people usually call a cognitively demanding field. The gender imbalance is still worse than CS.

Well, it's more physically demanding, isn't it?

But your point is that there are areas where society screws men over, and that nobody cares, right?

So... Why do you raise that point when the topic is how society screws women over?

Wouldn't it be better to improve society? In both places?

I suspect arkh's point is something like the following (as made in an article I can't locate at the moment, from about 20 years ago):

1) There are multiple fields available for new entrants to the labor force to pick from.

2) Some of these have better working conditions than others.

3) Women tend to be a bit more mature than men at the age at which one picks a career and are more likely to consider working conditions when doing so.

This has nothing to do with whether people are caring that someone is screwing someone else or not per se. What it does mean is that improving working conditions in some fields would likely draw more women in, if the above theory is correct. I have no opinion on the theory itself.

> Well, it's more physically demanding, isn't it?

Not anymore, a lot of it is automated now so if you can drive and operate some buttons (and a broom if need be) you should be able to get a job in that area.