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Clearly a draft should be imposed to force under-represented demographics into careers they chose not to have.

Or for true equality we should all just be assigned our roles!



Or, barring that, groups of people should try to help under-represented demographics into careers from which they have been excluded.

Sounds radical, I know.


Men stopped telling women what they can and can't be when they grow up decades ago.

Do you know whose role was to stay at home, keep her man happy, dinner cooked, and the house spotless? Grandmothers. Is there anyone in tech who expects that from a woman?


> Men stopped telling women what they can and can't be when they grow up decades ago.

It's not that simple. As a society, we exert a lot of pressure on individuals in order to force them into stereotypes, categories that are socially approved. The pressure to conform is still especially intense on women and there are many social mechanisms through which this pressure is exerted. I also get the feeling that pressure has increased in recent decades as we're moving back to a more conservative society.

"Men" may thankfully have stopped telling women what they can be, but women are still heavily influenced by our society's collective expectations. For example, female nerds are even more strongly seen as negative than their male counter parts. Both sexes have developed a defensive subtype to combat this with some success: the sporty and extroverted brogrammer in the men camp, and the 9-5 no-nonsense "programming is not my hobby" female software developer.

So I think it's fair to say that statistically we're telling both men and women exactly what they can and can't be when they grow up - and I believe men still have an easier time opting out of that.


Really? Just this week I heard a story of boys in a programming class telling the one girl to "make me a sandwich".

Programs like this one are just saying "put down the damn sandwich fixings and go kick ass". Being opposed to them, at this point, seems incomprehensible to me.


You focus on the girl being bullied as if her gender was why she got picked on - maybe you're right and the guy's a sexist asshole. Or maybe he's just an asshole and the girl was interchangeable with anyone else he might pick on because he's an asshole.


You're assuming the underrepresentation is due to benign preferences rather than an active hostility.


That's correct - we don't want the typical tech career or job either.




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