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Comment by Dewie | Hacker News Reader

> That's not really a theory, you're just deferring the question.

No, it's still a theory. It might naturally lead to the next question, "why don't they wanna?", but so does a lot of theories/explanations (just ask Socrates).

> Why wouldn't women be interested in this kind of profession? Do women not like comfortable, creative, high-paying jobs with lots of perks?

I don't know, but there could be a lots of reasons, since there are a lot of things other than comfort and money that people consider when they choose a career. Indeed, money is probably relatively unimportant in a more egalitarian, developed society than a society which is less developed and more (gender) unequal: nations with a higher degree of gender equality tend to have a more gender-segregated labour market. Why don't you explain that 'paradox' (it's not really a paradox), with your initial, limited dichotomy?

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I don't really understand what you're trying to say. Unless you have a compelling idea about why having been born a woman makes you not want the best available job in the current economy, what are we even talking about?

One theory is that people are continually told to follow their dreams/passion/desire. If you have no passion for computers, programming, math, etc... Why would they choose programming if they've been raised to think 1. they can do anything and that the recipe for success is to follow your passion and dreams?

Besides, there are several other fields of study and careers that are pretty good at this time. Most of them engineering fields though. And from a pure money-making perspective there are other choices, granted many of which are lotteries; but probably attract a large number of adherents.

Same question: what makes you think just being a woman would make you less likely to be passionate or dream about building things with computers? If your theory is true, I'd assume its because young women are socialized to think that such dreams are not for them, and because, for example, they lack female role models to identify with, not because there is some inherent contradiction between femininity and computers.

> I don't really understand what you're trying to say. Unless you have a compelling idea about why having been born a woman makes you not want the best available job in the current economy, what are we even talking about?

I don't owe it to you to give elaborate theories. You had an assertion about how many possible reasons there might be for a given phenomena, and I argued that it was baseless of you to only assume that those two reasons might be the only possible ones. It is baseless since you've hardly argued why there might only be two. Sure, you're arguing that this kind of job gives money and comfort, but again, I've argued that people are after other things than that. And, I've given an example of a widespread phenomena of women choosing careers and jobs that are more associated with having women working in them, when they have the chance. What examples have you given? Oh that's right: none.

I don't know where you live, so I don't know which economy is "this economy", but where I reside people are still able to have some leniency when it comes to choosing a career. It has been my experience that people (men and women) are far from only concerned with money when it comes to employment.

You're getting bogged down I think. No one is talking about what's "possible." Theories don't become competitive by virtue of being hypothetically capable of being offered— you have to actually advance them and argue them. My supposition about two theories is based on common knowledge rather than some abstract analysis about the nature of possible arguments.

To put it another way, I can see two plausible forces pushing women away from tech jobs: 1) some deficiency on their part, 2) some motive on the part of the system to keep women out.

My argument is that, since many people disagree with 2), many must subconsciously believe 1), which is absurd on its face.

Examples aren't helpful in this case because your theory doesn't answer the question we're asking. Even if it were true that the mechanism keeping women out of tech was the amending of their preferences rather than forcibly excluding them (by refusing to hire them for example), this would still be the result of either something innate about women themselves or something societal imposing these preferences on them.

So, again, we still are faced with the same question. If women "don't want" to be programmers, why would that be? Because something about their female brains is disinterested in computers? Or because they've been socialized to feel as if tech jobs are not for them?

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