Indeed. I should have just said this

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In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent.

As of July 2016, White Americans are the racial majority with the White population being 76.9% of the country.

Statistically, an applicant with a computer science degree is likely to be a white male so logically a company that employees mostly CS types would be heavy on white males and white on women and other races.

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*light on women and other races.

The 'analogy' can be taken either way allowing people who benefit from the issue to continue avoiding confronting the problem head on, directly, clearly, logically, in a straight forward manner - where both sides of the argument can be cleanly inspected and analyzed.

If a company is hiring at or above the rate of women coming out of college and applying to jobs, what exactly are they avoiding to confront?

If a comment on the internet uses physical strength and stature as an analogy for why there are less women applying to programming jobs, what exactly are they trying to say?

Please don't treat me like an idiot because ambiguity is convenient.

I agree it was a poor analogy, but I am giving the commenter the benefit of the doubt and assuming that some idea of inferiority (that you seem to be implying) is not the intent of their comment. Women and men have traditionally had very different roles and expectations in society, and significant physical differences as well, and to think that these differences don't have an effect on preferences and motivations, and that the situation is easily changeable, is naive.

We are here conversing on hacker news. We are not in some fashion show or construction working environment. There are women on hacker news, and there are women all over the tech sphere. And often times, comments like this make the difference between choosing to pretend to be male to blend in so we can simply continue conversing like the technical people we are. Likewise, comments like this piss some women off, because we work very hard to be factual, logical, precise, and technically adept - and to have all of that dumbed down a point that basically amounts to 'men have more muscle, brains must work the same' is quite frankly at the very least, an extremely weak, limited argument. At worst, it's patronizing, offensive, it enforces a particular perspective, it silences other perspectives, it enforces a particular set of expectations, and it's simply, unscientific, rude, and exceptionally passive in it's implications.

There's the expectation that people will just fill in the gaps because that's how we think when we code large projects. But here, I must say no. I will not fill in these gaps for you. I work hard to be good at what I do and if it continues to be insisted that sex differences serve as a concrete foundation for technical, mathematical skill, that simply isn't true. My life is proof enough to me. It may not be proof to you, but that's what I get to live with, because of lazy thought patterns like this. The near constant need to prove myself to people who are privileged enough to not have to go to such extremes.

Expectations and roles, yes, I've heard all these arguments before. How does stuff like that change? Surely, you must be aware that repeating the same points will only serve to reinforce such a perspective?

You are reading things that I never said. I just said that I agreed that the analogy of "men have more muscle, brains must work the same" is bad.

Let me fill in the gaps for you. I never once said or implied that women are inferior in any way and unable to do what men do in software. Read my comment again. I'm saying that women THEMSELVES do not prefer to do the work, regardless of ability, due to societal conditioning. I'm not talking about all women either, just on average. And I'm talking about gender here, not sex. You seem to have some old ideas about gender. I would suspect that a trans individual might have some of the same biases and cis-women, as many trans-women pick up a lot of the social and cultural behaviors and preferences of cis-women, so hopefully that makes it clear to you that I'm not talking about fundamental physical differences.

Also, let me make clear that I agree with the goal of a blended, equal workplace. I'm only discussing the effectiveness about how and where we go about doing it, not whether we should do it at all. Don't misplace your anger toward me.

I'm not angry. It's really easy to make a comment and run alongside one perspective of many thought paths. I'm entertaining my own here, just as you are doing. It's varied and diverse. Just because you don't understand my perspective doesn't mean it lacks value.