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Comment by zarkov99 | Hacker News Reader

Really? Below is a list of the top 8 most dangerous jobs in the US. Which ones do you think would have equal gender representation if there was no sexism?

1 - Logging workers

2 - Fishers and fishing workers

3 - Aircraft pilots and flight engineers

4 - Roofers

5 - Refuse and recyclable material collectors

6 - Structural iron and steel workers

7 - Truck drivers

8 - Farmers, ranchers and agricultural managers

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That list is obviously a bit whack (how can being a pilot possibly be the third most dangerous job in the US?)

But yeah, many of those jobs have a skewed gender distribution in significant part due to sexist stereotypes.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/04/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-f...

I ignored the "for men" qualifier as it seems obvious that these are the most dangerous jobs period.

Fair enough. I believe those stats are skewed by a small number of pilots doing relatively dangerous kinds of flying. In any case, yes, more women would be doing these jobs if sexism were eliminated.

OK, but would you expect a 50/50 split if it was? And if you do not expect it, then how would you explain any remaining disparity?

You are talking about a hypothetical scenario where all sexist stereotypes are eliminated. It’s obviously silly to guess at what the numbers would be. I see no reason to expect a precise 50/50 gender balance in every one of the listed fields. Conversely, I would also not expect to see the massive disparities that we see currently.

The problem in STEM isn’t that the gender balance isn’t exactly 50/50. It’s that substantial numbers of women are discouraged from STEM careers by sexism.

If you cannot guess what the numbers should be then how would you know the problem is fixed? Or even if there is any problem at all?

First of all, note that this argument works both ways. You also can’t put exact numbers on how many women we’d expect there to be in the industry in the absence of any sexism whatever. So how do you know that there’s no problem?

But actually, the question is quite easy to answer for me. I am more interested in sexism per se than in the gender distribution. When women in the industry infrequently report that they are experiencing sexism, then I’ll consider that we’re well on the way to solving the problem. The current gender imbalance is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

> When women in the industry infrequently report that they are experiencing sexism, then I’ll consider that we’re well on the way to solving the problem.

This is the fox guarding the henhouse. There is no incentive for women to ever stop crying "sexism!" if this is the criterion in use.

I think you're being overly literal, not to mention suspicious. I'm not suggesting that we turn off our critical faculties and reflexively believe everything that we hear. At the moment, we'd have to reflexively disbelieve everything women tell us to conclude that there's no sexism problem in tech.

Is that really that obvious? Given that nursing and nursing assitant jobs are amoung the most dangerous and the fact that the vast majority of those jobs are filled with women, your willingness to erase an important aspect of a headline is a good example of the bias that this entire discussion is centered around.

Yes, it is obvious. I did not try to erase anything, I posted the source without being asked for, and pointed out the discrepancy and my interpretation of it, which was correct, as you can see in this other article: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-dangero...

I said "erase" meaning "erase from your attention as an important aspect of the headline", but ok, poor word. You still chose to ignore that important point because you've chosen it was unimportant. Why? It helps you reach a conclusion because you want that conclusion. I provided you with two professions that run contrary to your view and you're ignoring that as well.

You provided no such thing, the professions you mention are not part of the top 25 let alone 8, so there is nothing to respond to in your comments

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