You essentially have to practice some kind of biological denialism in order to believe this "problem" is entirely managerial in nature. Discussing biological differences between sexes should not be considered sexism.
There's also more male electricians than female ones.
I feel that if females who would have made good engineers are turned away by discrimination or harassment, there's a good opportunity for a company to find hidden gems of an employee for lower cost than the equivalent male by making sure she is treated well. Then natural competition should balance out the cost difference over time.
Here you've identified the actual problem, which is people hearing "don't do this" as "can't do this". I.e. people failing to apply their brains to a basic comprehension task. If we're to levy accusations of "-ism", then I'd call promoting this behavior as anti-intellectualism, or being pro-stupidity.
I don’t know how many times I have seen the “don’t do this” argument being propped up by a due to “can’t do this” argument.
If you let these things run it’s course then it always ends up at the genetics/skull. And it’s always by people who clearly have no idea about what they are talking about and can’t actually point to any biological differences that would cause it, other than child birth... So it ends with “must be biological” because reasons, so “don’t do anything”.
Seeing the same argument play out over and over, always ending at the same spot with no evidence is infuriating.
That would make them not only anti-intellectual/pro-stupidity, but also assuming and acting in bad faith to shut down the discussion. A honest person would point out that the conversation makes them uncomfortable, and that they don't want to continue it.
> If you let these things run it’s course then it always ends up at the genetics/skull.
Except all the times it doesn't. Quite often, the conversation ends up being about voluntary preferences (people will e.g. point out that the weaker the economic pressures and the higher the freedom of choosing your own career, the more gender-segregated the job market becomes). Also, even if the discussion ends up at genetics, it's only ever a problem if one or both parties make the error of reasoning and passing judgements about individuals from population-level statistics.
> So it ends with “must be biological” because reasons, so “don’t do anything”.
It can be a valid and correct conclusion. If you starts by assuming something must be done, then there's no point in even having any discussion, because you've already made up your mind and seek justifications. It would be then best if you left the discussion to those who want to discover the truth about the issue.
> Seeing the same argument play out over and over, always ending at the same spot with no evidence is infuriating.
How can people tell, if they always shut the argument down beforehand with some underhanded maneuver like reading "don't do" and accusing the person of saying "can't do"?
People can tell if they have seen it lots of times before they start to shut it down.
I would also argue that it makes them smart, not pro stupidity or anti intellectual. Let me try and use a tech analogy to explain it. Say you repeatedly see junior admins putting unsecured databases on the internet which subsequently get compromised. How many times do you need to see the beginnings of that event chain before you start intervening?
Also there is nothing intellectual about entertaining the same argument over and over. Or do you also think we should seriously consider the flat earth argument every time someone brings it up.
Yeah, I can buy that. So now please scroll to the top of the thread and see the topic - the question why some people don't want to discuss politics at work. Exactly because of that - because it very predictably leads to nothing good.
But unlike the anti-intellectual position we're discussing in this corner of the thread, opposing political topics at work because of their inflammatory nature is a rational, consistent, and smart position. Nobody is telling a particular political position is wrong - just that work is not a right place for off-topic, highly emotional discussions. "Don't discuss politics at work" is the equivalent of "don't let junior admins manage public-facing databases with sensitive data without supervision".
And as for the anti-intellectuals, the reason they like to do the "don't do/don't want to" -> "can't do" substitution is because without it, if viewed calmly and rationally, they would reveal themselves to be similar to anti-vaxxers, in terms of pushing positions unsubstantiated by evidence but emotionally appealing.
And in that case challenging the popular opinion better come with actual scientific research, not lunch time napkin math pulled out of thin air.
Poor Yorick will never live it down, will he?
This has been studied now, and the data points strongly towards nature. Country's with a higher level of gender equality have more gender disparity in fields such as STEM, not less. The country's that have done the most to alleviate the issues you've mentioned have the lowest percentage of women engineers.
It was the exact opposite of what everyone thought would happen. These results were so unexpected that we called it the Gender-equality paradox.
Have you considered that this assumed malice is creating a false sense of sexism in the industry and in turn driving women away from the industry?
I would add raise and socialize as kids to the list, but to me that's clearly part of it.
The entire evolution of a person from baby to adult is moulded by society, which makes it pretty ridiculous when the enlightened techies want to solve the lack of women in tech by only "fixing" hiring and promoting. And management, if we're feeling generous.
I say the below not as an attempt to criticize you for this viewpoint, but as a way to try to explain why this viewpoint is often interpreted as sexist.
The question is why do you believe this? The possible explanations for why women are underrepresented in tech basically comes down to either nature or nurture. Either there is something in the way we as a society and industry educate, hire, manage, and promote women or there is something fundamentally different about women that prevents them from participating in this industry at the same rate as men. The former is fixable and you say this isn't fixable so we can assume this isn't your viewpoint. That would seem to mean your explanation relies on the idea that there is something fundamentally different about women that leads to them not going into tech. Do you see how that could easily be interpreted as sexist? It doesn't take much of a leap for people to hear the non-sexist "woman don't do this" as the sexist "women can't do this". You need to be able to articulate why you belong in that first camp or else everyone will just write you off as being in the second.