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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

It's like asking why do women dominate nursing and teaching jobs? Is it sexism? Is it because men are incapable of doing the jobs?

How come there's no big outcry to equalize nursing so that men are 50% of the field? How about teaching, women also dominate that field.

Women outnumber men 2 to 1 in high school teaching. They account for 85% of all primary school teachers.

No outcries to equalize those numbers?

Must be sexism in high school teacher hiring.

Must be sexism in nursing hiring.

Must be sexism in primary school hiring.

Oh wait, there could be other explanations.

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As an industry it is a really important issue that men are not going into teaching.

Disqualifying half the population will reduce the quality of the selection you can make.

The quality of teachers is of critical importance to the effectiveness of education. The effectiveness of education is critical to equality, social cohesion and economic growth.

Actual evidence of sexism in hiring is more persuasive of the presence of sexism, than the ratio of people employed. A standard way to study this is to send out a bunch or resumes in which only the gender changes.

I think there are sexist social pressures on men which reduce their desire to become nurses.

Teaching and nursing are both fields where you need a degree to start participating. And if you look at the discussions in those fields, there's certainly strong concern about lack of males in teaching and mild concern about lack of males in nursing.

Tech doesn't require a degree - it's a field anyone with a free evening can pick up. It also bears a significantly broader scope than nursing or teaching.

> Tech doesn't require a degree - it's a field anyone with a free evening can pick up.

And yet here we are, wondering why so many programmers don't seem to have the skills they need in the profession.

> Teaching and nursing are both fields where you need a degree to start participating.

How is that relevant?

The pool of participants is much narrower in scope - people that have specifically spent years training to be that profession. Not people who started out doing it as a hobby or a quiet thing on the side.

I think the OP was asking how requiring a degree is relevant to the number of men in those professions. When compared to women, men generally have equal or better access to higher education, so it would seem that the dearth of men in nursing and teaching wouldn't be related to those professions requiring a degree.

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