"'programming' as a profession used to be regarded as an offshoot of secretarial work, which was dominated by women". Which begs the question of why women dominated secretarial work (and still do), while as programming became a more respected and better paying profession, it became male-dominated.
It really doesn't. Unless you seriously think punch card programming is the same as modern programming, or that the fact that only women were secretaries that did programming somehow provides data on the relative strengths and inclinations of women and men for programming work at that time.
Look, it's clear that you have no idea of the breadth and depth of data available on this subject, and a trite "sexism/oppression" narrative explains hardly any of it. For instance, the fact that as a nation becomes more egalitarian, the gender disparities in STEM increase, ie. Nordic countries have worse gender disparities than here, despite having less sexism, and oppressive countries like Iran actually have gender parity in STEM fields.
If you want to actually learn about this subject, I suggest reading: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018...
The fact is, there's good evidence that women are naturally less interested in STEM-like fields due to a well known psychological attitude on things vs. people. That attitude explains facts like why medicine and law have achieved approximate gender parity overall, but surgery is still dominated by men, pediatrics and family law is dominated by women.
I do find it interesting and noteworthy that gender disparities have grown in STEM while shrinking in other fields. But I believe my explanation accounts for that - that STEM has become more prestigious, which draws men, which forces out women.
The "well known psychological attitude" is begging the question, which seems par for the course on responses here. Is this psychological attitude biological, or social? And if it's biological, how do we explain significant changes in professional proportions that have happened over a mere one or two generations? It seems like a very poor explanation for what you're asserting, contradicting your own stated facts.
If it's social, however, we're back to my explanation - as the prestige of formerly female-dominated careers rises, they become more attractive to men, to the point where men dominate them. It's a much simpler explanation, with no contradictions.
Because you're throwing out wild, unsupported speculation to salvage your narrative, and the original post of yours to which I replied had at least 4 elementary factual errors.
> But I believe my explanation accounts for that - that STEM has become more prestigious, which draws men, which forces out women.
That's not an explanation at all. Why would prestige drive away women? Just because there are men there? Or you think men drawn to prestige don't want women around? Or you think men just flood into any field that has some form of prestige thus drowning out women? So then why aren't the careers they left suddenly dominated by women because all the men left for more prestige? And where are all these men coming from since we have rough equal numbers of men and women? Why are janitors and dangerous jobs dominated by men since those aren't prestigious?
The fact that you think this explains anything or is free of contradictions is frankly bizarre, and just reinforces my point that if you're really interested in this field, you need to more read more and speculate less.
> The "well known psychological attitude" is begging the question, which seems par for the course on responses here. Is this psychological attitude biological, or social?
Likely both, since there's plenty of evidence of things vs. people in toddlers, and this innate preference no doubt gets reinforced and magnified.
In the end, your scoffing at the original poster and "subtly" implying that he's sexist for a remark that is actually well grounded in facts is exactly the problem with debating people on this subject.
Yes, there is sexism in STEM, just like there is in most other fields, but sexism didn't keep women out of medicine or law, they just pushed through and staked their claim. The fact that women haven't done this for STEM which is far less of an old boys' club already suggests something else is at play, and the fact that the same trends are seen across disparate cultures already suggests strongly there's a universal component.
I do think there's a universal component, though, as sexism is seen across virtually all cultures.
You're equivocating. You know very well that the type of sexism that kept women from working in virtually all professions, including law and medicine, is not the type of sexism we're discussing now.
Have you noticed how this is inconsistent with your prestige argument?
Is it competition that is forcing women out, or men ?
> as the prestige of formerly female-dominated careers rises, they become more attractive to men, to the point where men dominate them
What do you mean by dominated, is it the number of people, or is it something else ?
Are you trying to say that once a career path becomes female dominated, men should stay out ?
That's not true. Firstly, it's more like 40-50 years ago.
Secondly, there are far more women doing software development, but the gender ratio is dramatically different.
Thirdly, that's because male interest exploded with the advent of personal computing the 80s.
Lastly, "programming" as a profession used to be regarded as an offshot of secretarial work, which was dominated by women.
The facts around women in STEM are polluted with a lot of bizarre narratives.