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Comment by abalone | Hacker News Reader

You ignored my explicit spelling out of the absurdity: that it assumes women pursuing certain advanced STEM degrees do so expecting to be financially supported by a man.

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They're not going to need support for themselves with either STEM degree - but they're not going to be able to support a husband and children on a low paying STEM. And nobody would expect them to support a husband. Meanwhile a man would be expected to support a wife and children off his salary. This is the expectations difference you are calling absurd.

It is not the "expectations difference" that is absurd. It is the notion that highly educated women freely choose to opt out of high paying engineering/CS fields and pursue lower-paying PhDs because they plan on men supporting them. Is there a single shred of evidence to support this? Interviews with female grad students where they spell out this plan of theirs, etc.? Of course not. Meanwhile, tons of evidence around sexist cultures in engineering and CS. [1]

[1] see for example Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (MIT Press) http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Women-Computing-Pr...

> because they plan on men supporting them

You added the idea of conscious planning. Replace "plan on supporting them" with "higher probability of getting support".

> tons of evidence around sexist cultures in engineering and CS

This has no bearing on the above claim though, does it? That men have a higher risk of being able to find a partner capable and willing on supporting them financially.

That's not necessarily true. It could just be that a woman's expectations are a potential husband earns above a certain amount of money, while men don't place the same value on a woman's earnings.

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