No it's not. It's a valid question that must be asked and answered and can't be ignored just because people get tired of hearing it.

The far bigger plague is the way honest, legitimate questions get met with shaming and ridicule instead of knowledge-enhancing answers.

Also: ignorant is almost never a valid accusation to make against someone asking a question. Asking a question by definition means that one is admitting some amount of ignorance. Calling it out is exceptionally rude and counter to the spirit of honest debate.

It is a valid question. It has been asked, and answered, many many times, with research, with opinion and philosophy, with politics.

Concern trolling is "just asking questions" - there comes a point where we need to say that these questions have been answered thoroughly, and that there's little left to be said about them, and that people who want the answer should really do the minimal amount of work needed to get very many answers.

This is not a question plagued by the LMGTFY problem, where people are told to use a search engine, but they only find other people asking the question and being told to use a search engine.

What it is, is a question burdened with too many assumptions to be answered easily. The next time you see it, try identifying some of those assumptions and challenging them, rather than getting all pissed off. You might be pleased with the results.

For example:

"Is interest in the field important, anyway? Would lack of interest actually explain the lack of participation? It doesn't have to, it's possible to pursue a career despite not having much interest, especially initially."

"Intimidation-by-men vs. lack-of-interest is a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be one or the other, it could be both or neither."

Relevant documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ2xrnyH2wQ

Take these honest, legitimate, and perhaps well-intentioned questions. Take every man who is skeptical of this whenever a woman brings up her experiences. Take arbitrary levels of skepticism as well as standards of proof, since we're talking about varying individuals.

Multiply all that, and try to imagine answering that nearly every time the topic comes up.

It's a rhetorical DDoS, effectively. And people get sick as shit of it, given (among other things) the difficulty in determining who's even operating in good faith.

In general people get frustrated that the questioners expect the questioned to take sole or primary responsibility for educating every single skeptic. You might feel like you, personally, are being shamed, but to be honest, this rounds down to a subset of male behavior, in aggregate.

For me, the solution is to give women in particular the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things like this. It makes these discussions a hell of a lot more fruitful, and I've learned a hell of a lot since.

Frustration may be true but is merely an excuse for individual's behavior. It doesn't make the position valid or the rhetoric any less destructive to discussion. Your dog might chew a hole in your couch. You might say it's because he has separation anxiety. Which is true but there's still a hole in the couch.

For me, the solution is to give women in particular the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things like this. It makes these discussions a hell of a lot more fruitful, and I've learned a hell of a lot since.

The solution to what? The benefit of the doubt when? Which discussions? Where has there been denial of experience?

How about giving the benefit of doubt to any party who presents their view reasonably? return0 was not attempting to shut down discussion. He was not attempting to invalidate or shout down any particular lines of reasoning. He was not attacking anyone. He considered shantanubala's point but remained unconvinced and sought further argument.

How do you quantify interest?

Decisions are easier to quantify, but still can be difficult to measure.

What influences the decisions?

If it is not related to ability[0], then it certainly must be related to interest?

[0] You could probably argue that IQ standard deviation is higher in men than in woman, which could result in a slight difference in ability in the most taxing fields, but that shouldn’t be a problem in school.

I'd argue that the biggest driver which keeps women out of tech is other, non-tech, women. I see my female employees bullied by client female employees simply because they're "geeks" (and I come down on the clients like a tonne of bricks in said circumstance, regardless of gender). I've seen girls and women who've had an astounding technical competence and interest be talked out of it by their mothers, peers, and others, as "you'll never find a nice man if you're working in a basement with a bunch of disgusting nerds".

Girls drop out of maths and tech classes not because they lose interest, but because their peers ostracise them if they do not do so. I remember the two girls who started A-level Physics at the same time as me at my school both dropped out in the first term, as they ended up shunned by their peers who were all studying drama, art, and english lit.

The issue is cultural and generational. It's not going to change, with any amount of inward hiring bias or positive discrimination within the industry, until womens' own opinion of themselves, and their place, and their abilities, tallies with the reality - which is to say, gender be damned.

Right now I just mostly lie about my subject at social gatherings, because I'm so fed up with this.

I'm sure those people at the parties you go to will be regretting their dislike of Physics when you have a brilliant career as whatever the hell you want to do and they are working at Starbucks.

It's not your fault they just asked you a boring question.

That said, I think this is far more of a factor for women as they tend to be far more sensitive to social pressure than men. Why this is is another topic entirely, but in short: culture.

I am proud to be an engineer. But sometimes we fail to cultivate an image that other intelligent people would like to be part of.

The trick here is to channel your interests into interesting hobbies. They should be foremost for you and your own development, but hobbies and related passion makes for much more interesting conversation.