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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011·

"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?

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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.

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