Women Only Professorships

ILoveYourVibes

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

You are a rubbish teacher.

You have no idea of what I'm like as a teacher. But then that is a general trend with many of your opinions.

Case closed. You can't even hear an opinion different to your own without a childish meltdown.

LOL. Childish meltdown.. funny. Why should I tolerate stupidity and sexism directed at my gender?

Kidchameleon

Deleted User wrote: »

LOL. Childish meltdown.. funny.

LOL

Deleted User wrote: »

Why should I tolerate stupidity and sexism directed at my gender?

Case in point!

Kidchameleon

Deleted User wrote: »

Absolute BS. I've been a teacher/lecturer for just over a decade. You seriously think women make a better teacher simply because of their gender?

Women empathize better with people, they understand people better than men. They are more nurturing than men. This is because women evolved to take care of children whilst men evolved to gather resources. So yes, women are better suited to being teachers. That does not mean a man cannot become a top class teacher, of course he can. Its just that women are better suited to it naturally.


Take sorts people as another example. Men tend to be better at sports because they evolved to have more physical strength. Men are naturally better at sports because of their evolutionary makeup. Can women be top class sports people? Of course they can! Its just that men are physically better suited to it.


Your arguing against nature, a typical feminist trait. You will not win. None of us can beat mother nature.

mvl

Fritzbox wrote: »

I'm curious as to the "perceived imbalances" (are none of them real?) you witnessed "here" and I am just wondering how they differ from your home country? Any examples?

Well, I'll start saying that the more I look into it, think the communist legacy is not all bad ( I was a teenager when the communism fell, so couldn't have known/lived all its horrors anyway)
- First person with university degree in my family is a woman, she was a chemistry university professor from late 60s: no one told her in secondary school that she shouldn't pursue a career in STEM. While being a professor, she raised her children without stay at home parenting, nor any help from her parents (note, no one had too much money back then), but the state, which provided perfectly valid childcare free of charge.
Guess commies wanted to maximize their work force: everyone was growing up with working mothers outside the home. Also, it is a fact that communists WERE always promoting women in math, science and engineering.
- Now moving back to post communism era, my first job as software engineer, 20 years ago, teams had between 30 and 40 % of staff women: majority of these are executive managers today. By comparison, I can say that my career progression in Ireland has been slower; even though I am seeing maybe in last 5 years (while working in a multinational) that there is a push to get women to apply for all senior mgt roles when these positions are open.
Actually this article in Financial Times is documenting exactly that, Eastern Europe has better percentages of women in tech (you can see where Ireland is on the same chart) -

https://www.ft.com/content/e2fdfe6e-0513-11e8-9e12-af73e8db3c71

Then, if we were to move onto health staff, for doctors, based on an OECD report looking at Health at a Glance for 2015, found out that 6 out of top 10 countries with the highest percentage of female doctors are also from Eastern Europe (with Aus, NZ, Israel, America included in the analysis, picture below)


Without getting all the male posters giving out to me here, I would be interested in reading an anthropological analysis about why Ireland is doing least satisfactory by comparison with Eastern Europe on these points, how much of it is related to woman's place in the home?

Kidchameleon

mvl wrote: »

I would be interested in reading an anthropological analysis about why Ireland is doing least satisfactory by comparison with Eastern Europe on these points?

Men and women tend to have different preferences.

mvl

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Men and women tend to have different preferences.

you mean irish men and women tend to have different preferences ? cause it seems to me eastern europe workforce seems to be more balanced for the two types of roles I mentioned above.

Gynoid

mvl wrote: »

you mean irish men and women tend to have different preferences ? cause it seems to me eastern europe workforce seems to be more balanced for the two types of roles I mentioned above.

To be perhaps too frank about it, maybe we do still have more traditional ideas about rearing children. And to go even further, perhaps that is not bad?
The previously communist countries had centralised child care, but the motive was to make a universal workforce for ideological reasons. It had some benefits of course, and before anyone gets mad at me Im not saying all communal childcare arrangements are bad, they are not. But why have children only to hand them over to strangers for most of their waking hours? It may happen in a brighter future and more civilised times that EVERYONE works much much less and parents can spend much more time with their beloved children, which may ultimately prove to be a net benefit for overall societal health and well being. Personally I do not approve of societies moving more and more towards communal child rearing arrangements in service of some crude materialistic economic goal. Which fundamentally is what the bottom line is. Money over love, money over humans, money first.

Kidchameleon

mvl wrote: »

you mean irish men and women tend to have different preferences ? cause it seems to me eastern europe workforce seems to be more balanced for the two types of roles I mentioned above.

You asked for an anthropological explanation. Forced quotas do not change our natural preferences that are 1000's of years old. There will always small variances when you control for nationality, but that dos not change the fundamental fact that woman prefer to work with people and men prefer to work with things. I have already cited studies on Ape's and natal children that prove this.


When men and women are give free choice, you will still see this pattern...


From: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190831-the-paradox-of-working-in-the-worlds-most-equal-countries


"Last year, researchers in the US and UK found that countries with an existing culture of gender equality have an even smaller proportion of women taking degrees in science, technology and mathematics (STEM)."

Kidchameleon

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Women empathize better with people, they understand people better than men. They are more nurturing than men. This is because women evolved to take care of children whilst men evolved to gather resources.

Massive generalisations, and reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Although I would agree with the more nurturing part. The rest, no.

You do realise that social conditioning rather than anything biological encouraged such a difference in the genders, due to their roles within society. However, society and the roles that the genders have.... have changed within the last few decades. Just as the use of social media, and telecommunications, is affecting the way in which people communicate. As you say, we evolve... especially in areas which are based on our minds. Such as teaching.

So yes, women are better suited to being teachers. That does not mean a man cannot become a top class teacher, of course he can. Its just that women are better suited to it naturally.

Naturally? Again, I think that's rubbish.... because teaching is a matter to be learned. It's an intellectual skill, which can be learned by either gender. Just as communicating effectively can be learned. As can the ability to appreciate and understand other peoples body language.

Historically/culturally, females had an advantage over males in the development of those skills because of the differences in their upbringing. Males generally didn't need those skills because of the differences of their roles. Time and humanity has moved on though.

Oh! what ILoveYourVibes said, and what you said... are subtly different. Do you notice the difference?

Take sorts people as another example. Men tend to be better at sports because they evolved to have more physical strength. Men are naturally better at sports because of their evolutionary makeup. Can women be top class sports people? Of course they can! Its just that men are physically better suited to it.

Rubbish. You're comparing physical and intellectual pursuits. Your example is different from the aspect of teaching.

Your arguing against nature, a typical feminist trait. You will not win. None of us can beat mother nature.

I'm not arguing against nature because the ability to teach is not based on gender differences. People are not born teachers. They learn to be teachers. It's based on human behavior, and human behavior changes/evolves over time.

nkl12xtw5goz70

mvl wrote: »

Without getting all the male posters giving out to me here, I would be interested in reading an anthropological analysis about why Ireland is doing least satisfactory by comparison with Eastern Europe on these points, how much of it is related to woman's place in the home?

Stoet and Geary's 2018 paper on the "gender-equality paradox" found that the more gender-equal a country is, the larger its gender gap in STEM education and careers. They propose that "life-quality pressures" in less gender-equal countries can promote female engagement with STEM subjects. In other words, if a STEM career provides a significantly better quality of life than the alternatives, women will prefer STEM careers. But if women have many alternative options for fulfilling and well-paid careers, they're less likely to chose a STEM career as their top option.

There's very possibly a hardwired aspect to this. From a young age, boys are more drawn to tinkering and dismantling and figuring out how stuff works. In one experiment reported in the book Design and Technology for Children by Marilyn Fleer & Jane Beverley, a teacher created a "tinkering table" for preschool children, where they could use tools like screwdrivers and pliers to dismantle objects like a telephone, radio, and keyboard. This tinkering table was popular with boys, but the girls showed little interest, preferring either to watch what they boys were doing or to go off and play at the painting table.

Kidchameleon

Deleted User wrote: »

You do realise that social conditioning rather than anything biological encouraged such a difference in the genders, due to their roles within society.

Can you link a citation for that please.

mvl

Leroy Huge Technologist wrote: »

Stoet and Geary's 2018 paper on the "gender-equality paradox" found that the more gender-equal a country is, the larger its gender gap in STEM education and careers. They propose that "life-quality pressures" in less gender-equal countries can promote female engagement with STEM subjects. In other words, if a STEM career provides a significantly better quality of life than the alternatives, women will prefer STEM careers. But if women have many alternative options for fulfilling and well-paid careers, they're less likely to chose a STEM career as their top option.

I may have seen somewhere a graph for that study: pointing out such difference between countries like Iran/Algeria and western Europe probably fits one of UK's narrative.

But does same make sense when looking across EU, where Ireland, Sweden are higher on gender equality ranks than UK, and yet have higher percentages of female scientists/engineers ? from source at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/9451024/Women_in_science_MSs/87daf6ba-33b5-4455-9a2b-dbb979e38dcc?t=1548852611502

Kidchameleon

mvl wrote: »

And really, about boys or girls tinkering from young age, I would also think it's linked to what type of toys and what type of activities they were exposed from a young age.

It has nothing to do with what they are exposed to, it is what their gender is naturally and evolutionarily inclined to prefer...


https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/15178/


This study had the subjects in proximity to toys sterio typical to each gender....



"age groups: 9 to 17 months, when infants can first demonstrate toy preferences in independent play (N=40); 18 to 23 months, when critical advances in gender knowledge occur (N=29); and 24 to 32 months, when knowledge becomes further established (N=32). Stereotypical toy preferences were found for boys and girls in each of the age groups, demonstrating that sex differences in toy preference appear early in development. Both boys and girls showed a trend for an increasing preference with age for toys stereotyped for boys."

Kidchameleon

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Can you link a citation for that please.

"Brain imaging techniques have simultaneously offered an increasingly detailed profiling of brain activity, giving researchers access to enormous data-sets. There has also been a discovery that our brains can actually be moulded by different experiences, including those associated with being male or female. This clearly illustrates the problem of the biological determinist approach. It also shows the need to account for variables such as education, and economic and social status when comparing brain characteristics."

"Even men’s “superior” skills in spatial cognition – a well-established stalwart – has been shown to be diminishing over time, even disappearing. In certain cultures, the situation is actually reversed."

"In fact, there are no major neurological differences between the sexes, says Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender, which will be published by Icon next month. There may be slight variations in the brains of women and men, added Fine, a researcher at Melbourne University, but the wiring is soft, not hard. "It is flexible, malleable and changeable," she said."

It's not difficult to find research on the whole area regarding neurosexism, or gender differences based on experience. Social roles constrain people into narrow bands of experience, and exaggerate differences. In a more equal society, those differences will decline over time, because many skills are learned through our experiences in life, and the direction that society/parenting/etc encourages us towards.

"Furthermore, there is no evidence that the brains of men and women are wired differently. Magnetic scans of over 1,400 human brains could not establish reliable differences in the nature and volume of the tissue (gray matter, cortex) or connectivity between areas in male and female brains (Joel et al. 2015; see also Fine 2013). Similarly, a review of hundreds of studies on cognitive performance (e.g., math ability), personality and social behaviors (e.g., leadership), and psychological well-being (e.g., academic self-esteem) reveals more similarities than differences between men and women (Hyde 2014). In fact, the studies cited above generally observe larger differences among individual women and individual men than between men and women as groups, providing evidence against the impact of biology as the main factor in creating behavioral gender differences."

astrofool

Deleted User wrote: »

"Brain imaging techniques have simultaneously...

I don't think nature vs. nurture has a definitive answer yet, for every study one way, there's another reaching a different conclusion.

astrofool

astrofool wrote: »

I don't think nature vs. nurture has a definitive answer yet, for every study one way, there's another reaching a different conclusion.

True enough... although it's telling that there's been so much research challenging the nature perspective within the last few decades, and a lot of it is not driven to prove feminist beliefs.

And honestly, I doubt there ever will be a definitive answer to it. It's probably a combination of the two... but social conditioning and what/how we are raised to believe through our experience has serious consequences to how we develop as individuals, which in turn will define our own beliefs as to what is possible or suitable for us.

mvl

Kidchameleon wrote: »

It has nothing to do with what they are exposed to, it is what their gender is naturally and evolutionarily inclined to prefer...


https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/15178/


This study had the subjects in proximity to toys sterio typical to each gender....



"age groups: 9 to 17 months, when infants can first demonstrate toy preferences in independent play (N=40); 18 to 23 months, when critical advances in gender knowledge occur (N=29); and 24 to 32 months, when knowledge becomes further established (N=32). Stereotypical toy preferences were found for boys and girls in each of the age groups, demonstrating that sex differences in toy preference appear early in development. Both boys and girls showed a trend for an increasing preference with age for toys stereotyped for boys."

Did you read the conclusion of the study then ?

"However, it is possible that preferences relate to previous positive experiences of play with similar gender-typed toys selected by caregivers (Alexander et al., 2009). The possibility that boys and girls follow different developmental trajectories with respect to selection of gender-typed toys is indicated.Thus, the results suggest both a biological and a developmental-environmental component to sex differences in object preferences."

I think there is nothing from what I said that contradicts above
- Even though I am not sure how much this study would apply to Ireland, based on local childcare preferences ...

Kidchameleon

mvl wrote: »

Did you read the conclusion of the study then ?

Yes and it backs up my statement?


Here's another study that completely removes any chance of social influence...


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4726418/


tl;dr - studies on newborn babies shows clear differences in preferences between the sexes. Girls tended to look more at faces and eyes whilst boys tended to look at the objects in the room.


IMHO, studies like these explain why we see more men in "thing" roles such as tech and engineering whilst we see more women in "people" centered roles such as primary teaching and nursing.


Of course society has some influence but at the end of the day it mainly comes down to biology.

Kidchameleon

Deleted User wrote: »

..

https://theconversation.com/how-neurosexism-is-holding-back-gender-equality-and-science-itself-67597

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/15/girls-boys-think-same-way

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011719


Thanks, I'll look into these.

Kidchameleon

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Yes and it backs up my statement?


Here's another study that completely removes any chance of social influence...

Hardly, since it focuses entirely on infants and the extreme young, who would have extremely little exposure to social influence, beyond that of their parents. (if we're accepting the similarities with chimps, rather than the strong effects of human culture, technology, formal education, etc)

Of course society has some influence but at the end of the day it mainly comes down to biology.

Your studies focus on newborns and children, rather than dealing with the years, or decades of experience that people receive from social interactions, personal thoughts, education, etc. You make a major leap with studies about newborns, to using it as evidence about men/women.

It's easy to exclude or minimize the influence of society when you're only looking at those with extremely limited experience, and those who are enclosed within a very controlled environment.

nkl12xtw5goz70

mvl wrote: »

I may have seen somewhere a graph for that study: pointing out such difference between countries like Iran/Algeria and western Europe probably fits one of UK's narrative.

But does same make sense when looking across EU, where Ireland, Sweden are higher on gender equality ranks than UK, and yet have higher percentages of female scientists/engineers ?

Here's the graph in question:



You'll see that countries such as Algeria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates do well for female STEM graduates, but not so great for gender equality. Sweden and Ireland have lower percentages of STEM graduates than the UK, according to this.

Female scientists are generally clustered in the life sciences. In the US, 58 percent of degrees in biology are awarded to women, but only 18 percent of degrees in computer science. In general, the more maths-intensive a discipline, the more women tend to avoid it.

ancapailldorcha

Leroy Huge Technologist wrote: »

Female scientists are generally clustered in the life sciences. In the US, 58 percent of degrees in biology are awarded to women, but only 18 percent of degrees in computer science. In general, the more maths-intensive a discipline, the more women tend to avoid it.

Based on my own experience, this seems to be true. I work as a service provider to academic researchers and virtually all of this is for women. Many of the senior researchers at work would be men but at the PhD and Postdoc levels, it's overwhelmingly female.

mvl

Leroy Huge Technologist wrote: »

Here's the graph in question:

You'll see that countries such as Algeria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates do well for female STEM graduates, but not so great for gender equality. Sweden and Ireland have lower percentages of STEM graduates than the UK, according to this.

Yeah, that's the one, thanks.
Iran has 70% STEM graduates, Ireland and Sweden may have close to 50 based on the eurostat link I posted... but never cared enough to know why, tbh.
But I got asked to give examples of differences between my home country in Eastern Europe and Ireland: seems to me ICT diversity ratio is higher in Eastern Europe than in Ireland - it's been like that for decades.

- possibly due to the communism approach to equality in STEM - e.g. teachers equal view has persisted through all my school years



Why Ireland lacks similar interest, or why so many of you seem to be bogged down about brain wiring as cause - this is bs imo.

- think gynoid mentioned (in a bit of a different context) the traditional approach to child rearing, the woman's place in the home ... maybe this is what needs to change here, rather than making roles specifically for women: give fathers incentives to stay at home minding kids too. If they don't know how to raise kids, then teach them - definitely would be for the benefit of the children.



And another point I wanted to make on this thread: Ada Lovelace's story proves to us that women were into computer programming starting with 1800s', same as men did. It only takes the right career guidance/education...

nkl12xtw5goz70

mvl wrote: »

Why Ireland lacks similar interest, or why so many of you seem to be bogged down about brain wiring as cause (and this is bs imo).

Except that it isn't BS. This 2017 article from Stanford Medical School summarizes the neuroscientific research that has taken place in recent years:

The neuroscience community had largely considered any observed sex-associated differences in cognition and behavior in humans to be due to the effects of cultural influences. Animal researchers, for their part, seldom even bothered to use female rodents in their experiments, figuring that the cyclical variations in their reproductive hormones would introduce confounding variability into the search for fundamental neurological insights.

But over the past 15 years or so, there’s been a sea change as new technologies have generated a growing pile of evidence that there are inherent differences in how men’s and women’s brains are wired and how they work.

Professor Diane Halpern, former president of the American Psychological Association, has written an acclaimed book, Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities.

There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable. It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks. A much more recent study established that boys and girls 9 to 17 months old — an age when children show few if any signs of recognizing either their own or other children’s sex — nonetheless show marked differences in their preference for stereotypically male versus stereotypically female toys.

The notion that differences in cognition and behavior between men and women are entirely down to cultural influences, or that Smyths toy shop is somehow responsible for encouraging girls to play with Barbies and boys to play with toy trucks, is an ideological one, not a scientific one. When we look at the science, especially the recent science, a different picture emerges — and it's one that tells us that men are more likely than women to have a hardwired orientation towards professions like engineering and technology.

Communist regimes tried to reshape society along ideological lines, and part of that was forcing women to abandon traditional gender expectations and take on traditionally male jobs. But when men and women are free to make their own choices, fewer women choose STEM careers. It's time we stopped trying to attribute this to discrimination or cultural programming and accept that innate differences exist between the male and female brains that give rise to different proclivities and orientations.

mvl

Leroy Huge Technologist wrote: »

Communist regimes tried to reshape society along ideological lines, and part of that was forcing women to abandon traditional gender expectations and take on traditionally male jobs. But when men and women are free to make their own choices, fewer women choose STEM careers.

actually communists in my home country empowered women to pursue whatever career they wanted, independently of the wealth accumulated by their parents - isn't this what free choice is really all about ?

Sleepy

lainey_d_123 wrote: »

I did argue for the woman to be hired, and I was outnumbered. I did talk to HR, and I'm also running some sessions on bias in hiring procedures, which everyone is happy to participate in. As I've said all along, this isn't conscious discrimination. I wouldn't work with people like that. It's unconscious bias, and we're working on addressing it.

This might be why the other companies saw you as a poor fit. You seem more interested in fighting the gender wars that on contributing to the core product / mission / profitability of the organisation.

I work in a Software Development and Consultancy SME. Our staff are about 1/4 female and our intake of interns (which usually develop to permanent positions) tends to be about 50/50 due to a concerted effort to hire women. That said, anyone showing more of an interest in feminism than tech or data would be pretty much an outright "no thanks, you're not a good cultural fit".

mvl

Found out about a gendered initiative from Bremen few years ago, meant to encourage men teachers joining elementary schools. it is called "rent a male teacher".

https://www.dw.com/en/german-elementary-schools-rent-male-teachers/a-41584892


As one concern I would have about these professorships from OP is if they are permanently attributed to women - one can only wonder could renting female professors have been a better alternative ?

Leroy Huge Technologist

Leroy Huge Technologist wrote: »

Except that it isn't BS. This 2017 article from Stanford Medical School summarizes the neuroscientific research that has taken place in recent years:

It's BS when it's taken as an absolute which is something many people want to project. There are slight differences shown between the physical makeup of the brains (although you're likely to see similar differences in individuals of the same gender too), and there are differences in the energy patterns within the brain which is associated with Gender. At the same time though, there is a lot of recent research showing that the differences are often tiny, and that the effects of society are likely to have a greater degree of influence over the way people think/behave than purely biological factors.

Communist regimes tried to reshape society along ideological lines, and part of that was forcing women to abandon traditional gender expectations and take on traditionally male jobs. But when men and women are free to make their own choices, fewer women choose STEM careers. It's time we stopped trying to attribute this to discrimination or cultural programming and accept that innate differences exist between the male and female brains that give rise to different proclivities and orientations.

In China, the two genders are pushed at particular fields of study and employment. Don't know about Russia, although the role of the Mother was encouraged in both Russia and China throughout their development.

I'd agree and disagree. I feel that more unbiased (less agenda driven) research needs to be done on the area. It makes logical sense that it's a combination of the two, and that there are natural inclinations towards particular types of lifestyles and so, the pursuit of study/work options. However, to suggest that culture, society, religion, education, parenting have little or no effect on the choices that people make is ridiculous.

I don't really understand why it has to be a competition between the two with only one winner as the primary influence... but it's something I often see from those promoting the nature argument. That we are born a certain way, based on our gender, and that any other influences are extremely minor in comparison. I can't believe that anyone who has lived to their thirties or forties would dismiss the effects of experience on the way that they have developed.

If I had access to the knowledge I have now, I probably wouldn't have performed as I did in secondary school, or chosen the major I did in University. Knowledge, and the awareness of options, can alter the pattern of decisions a person makes.

lainey_d_123

Sleepy wrote: »

This might be why the other companies saw you as a poor fit. You seem more interested in fighting the gender wars that on contributing to the core product / mission / profitability of the organisation.

I work in a Software Development and Consultancy SME. Our staff are about 1/4 female and our intake of interns (which usually develop to permanent positions) tends to be about 50/50 due to a concerted effort to hire women. That said, anyone showing such more of an interest in feminism than tech would be pretty much an outright "no thanks, you're not a good cultural fit".

And I'd never want to work for anyone with a bigoted mindset like yours which is also totally devoid of logic.

Unconscious bias training is pretty standard in lots of workplaces and is not about 'gender wars'. It also applies to race, class, pretty much anything. It literally is just about people being conscious of the fact that people often hire people like themselves without realising...the clue is in the name.

My company have run these before - both men and women have run them. I'm doing this one, and obviously never mentioned anything like this when I was doing interviews (why would I have? What weird and twisted logic).

But thanks for unmasking yourself as a bigot. Feel free to PM me the name of this company so I make sure to avoid you and let others know what sort of person you are. I'm sure you'll have no problem standing by your views.

nkl12xtw5goz70

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't really understand why it has to be a competition between the two with only one winner as the primary influence... but it's something I often see from those promoting the nature argument. That we are born a certain way, based on our gender, and that any other influences are extremely minor in comparison. I can't believe that anyone who has lived to their thirties or forties would dismiss the effects of experience on the way that they have developed.

Oh, I'd agree with that entirely. And I'm not saying that girls can't do computer science, or anything like that. But I think it's increasingly obvious that natural proclivities toward math, engineering, and technology are not evenly distributed between the genders. Because of this, all things being equal, fewer women than men will choose tech careers.

The current (ideological) position is that if women comprise less than 50 percent of the workforce in a sector, it's because of discrimination and/or cultural reasons. We need to look at women's actual choices and the reasons why they prefer some careers over others — which may be for multiple reasons, but natural proclivity is one of them.