Do you believe that there’s a perfect mapping between ‘jobs that people want’ and ‘representation in those jobs’?

And if so, how do you account for the fact that a) people working in the industries themselves cite that there is work to do on gender diversity and b) that the disparity remains even when you control for manual/heavy physical work (i.e you account only for people working in desk / design based AEC roles)?

I'd imagine barely anyone has the job they'd choose; maybe I'm an outlier.

Suppose I'm a doctor/refuse collector, but really wanted to be a ship's captain, am I 'behind'. I guess it's that there's an implicit hierarchy of roles implied .. if I'm ship's engineer, but really want to be engineer, am I 'behind' the captain?

I just don't know what's really meant by this: is it about competitive roles, is it about access, is it about status. I'm not trying to be argumentative, I don't know that the parent means by 'behind'.

It seems all the responses have assumed I did know what they meant and had taken a particular view on it.

FWIW I'm not in the slightest denying that in some countries women/men are excluded from (or find it more difficult to get) some roles for sexist reasons.

I'm aware there are disparities in all areas (in UK), one of the biggest is teaching - very few men are able to get roles in primary (5-11yo) teaching. In other areas it seems you're more likely to get a job if qualified. Where I work women are being offered jobs at about equal rates to men (higher rates of women, actually), but the pool of qualified people is heavily male as women don't choose to take the degrees that feed into that pool. None of this proves anything, except that I know senior management were lauding the offering of more jobs to women, as opposed to just to qualified people regardless of sex [I can't cite this, internal stats, sorry].

I'm interested in your (b) do you have stats to cite on that?

that's not how being behind is meant. it's the industry that's behind if you were not able to become a captain because of prejudices against you.

you are assuming that there are not many women in this field because they don't want to be. but the reality is that there are not many women because they are not welcome. 50% parity is not the goal here. (though in some fields like teaching children, it actually should be) but the removal of all barriers so that all women (or men, if that's the case) that want to work in this field and are qualified, can.

Usually I'd agree with you, but this arguments works as a heuristic with a 70/30 split. Maybe even 90/10, if you have some data. But when we're talking about a single woman on thousands of men in the job, personal preference is very probably not the reason.

I’m assuming you didn’t read the article. At the time she applied, women were not legally allowed to enter the merchant marines in Egypt. No less than Hosni Mubarak had to review and approve her application to join.