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Comment by spacemanaki | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think it's industry's fault that women choose easier majors and not Computer Science on average.

Easier majors like mathematics, physics, biology, the other "real sciences", medicine, etc? Those fields apparently don't have quite the same gender imbalance that computer science does.

I don't think it's that useful it is to be looking for someone to place blame on, but I doubt the reason there are fewer women than men in tech is because they are choosing easier majors than computer science.

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"Easier" is probably a bit of a troll. But it certainly seems the case that women are attracted to certain majors.

Sciences is a funny one, when I was at university I met plenty of female students studying Biology, Psychology and Medicine but very few in Chemistry , Physics or CS.

I wonder if there is some intrinsic reason that women are attracted to certain types of science more than others?

But then there's also relatively more women in Mathematics and Astronomy. There's definitely not a simple relationship between how "hard" the science is and how many women are in the field.

True, I wouldn't necessarily think there is a difference in difficulty. But sciences that have a hard time attracted women seem to be those that might be considered "lower level". I'm wondering if there is some reason for this which might be either cultural or just a product of biological differences?

To clarify, I meant "hard" in the sense of more fundamental or "lower level". In that ranking, mathematics is more "hard" than any of physics or chemistry or biology. Astronomy is a little less clear but I think it's fair to say that it's a "harder" science than biology, and more-or-less on par with physics and chemistry.

I would really consider mathematics to be extremely high level because it deals very much with the abstract, but I suppose that could depend on your point of view. Difficult to comment on astronomy because I not sufficiently familiar with the topic.

Maybe my point is more that when people think of biology/medicine/psych they will often put it in a context of people,animals,plants which is more stereotypical "women stuff". Whereas physics/chemistry/CS is more often thought of in the context of "things" like buildings,bombs,cars,computers etc which is stereotypical "guy stuff".

Mathematics is difficult to generalise because it has such a wide range of applications.

> Easier majors like mathematics, physics, biology, the other "real sciences", medicine, etc?

You do realize it takes about a decade to become a doctor, do you? Also, remember that Math and Physics continue well beyond the parts comp-sci majors have to endure. One day, try to read a real paper on Math or Physics (or Biology) taken from a reputable journal. Get back if you can figure it out.

I was being sarcastic. My point was that there are higher proportions of women in those fields than in CS [0], and the reason why might be interesting, but it's definitely not because those fields are easier; I'm not going to engage in a pissing match about which are harder but I think it's safe to say they those fields are just as hard as CS. (medicine is harder, for the reason you pointed out, however that just makes my point stronger, if there's actually more women in pre-med than CS. not sure if that's true and didn't have time to do the research)

Anyway, there's no need to be rude, we're in agreement.

[0] "... women earn only 17 to 18 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in engineering and computer science, and just over 40 percent in the physical sciences and math." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/where-the...

> there's no need to be rude

Sorry if I came across like that

I stand corrected, "easy" was not the right word.

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