The Hidden Engineering Gender Gap 807
ifindkarma writes "Joyce Park, CTO of invitation site Renkoo.com, has written a two-part essay exploring why there is no pipeline of self-taught female engineers entering the tech industry via Open Source or other individual efforts. In The Hidden Engineering Gap, she asks why there are so many self-taught male software engineers in startups, but no similar pool of women. In A Modest Proposal, she discusses a potential short-term fix to the problem: a one-year, co-op, certificate-granting program for women set up and sponsored by Silicon Valley companies."
Simply put, women aren't quite as geeky... (Score:3, Interesting)
Although efforts like this are well-intentioned, I have to question whether the result will pan out. Proposals like this may turn up individuals with the talent to program, but they probably lack the interest level. Most self-taught software engs have a genuine interest in the art and science of the craft. These folks have an interest in continued training.
So, the question isn't whether programs like this would be useful. The question is how do you find the type of woman who could use an opportunity like this as a launching pad into a life-long learning exercise?
Re:Cultural or Biological? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to take 200 newborns, and divide them into two groups of 100, 50 of each gender in each group.
One group is only allowed to play with dolls and easybake ovens, the other group is only allowed to play with legos.
As a society, we TEND to encourage our female children to play at SOCIAL situations ("Let's have Tea!") and we TEND to encourage our male children to play at building things. This happens when we are really young, when our brains apparently have a much easier time at learning to do things (like languages).
Maybe the problem is that if you don't give a one-to-three year old a chance to play with things like legos and teach their brains to think in three dimensions when the brain is young that they never will be very good at it. And maybe we just happen to provide that education to boys more often than we do to girls.
Re:let's condescend to women (Score:2, Interesting)
There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. One can't say that all women are not interested in tech. But, in general, you're right.
However, I would ask, why incite them to join? So what? There are many more women than men in law school and medical school. For years, it was the other way around. Incentive programs and scholarships helped tilt the balance. No reason to fire up programs now to incite men back into the fields.
Its not a zero sum game, there are plenty of high paying jobs (medicine and law) that women are clearly interested in. No reason to pull them away just to make the IT world seem "gender equal".
Re:let's condescend to women (Score:2, Interesting)
Now let's look at probabilities and some history. Lots of other professional bodies that discouraged women have discovered that letting women do traditionally male work has worked out just fine. I can't think of any where allowing women was later decided to be a mistake. Most of our best universities started off explicitly not allowing women; now all of the major universities are integrated. The older generation had a big problem with letting women in; the current set of students thinks it's normal. In the sciences in general, women are a steadily advancing percent of the workers -- except for computer science, where the percentage is declining.
Which is it? Are we (as a profession) are being jerks? Or is it that women "just can't do it". Personally, I know which side I'm on: somehow, we're being jerks. And I wish the rest of you would stop it!
Re:It's just one industry (Score:2, Interesting)
I think this raises a good point. Why are there so many more women in medicine than men? What is being done to decrease this gender gap? What programs are being created to get more men into medicine?
I propose a one-year, co-op, certificate-granting program for men, set up and sponsored by hospitals.
Why is it that only women get these special programs? Where are the programs trying to get men into nursing or childcare (both having major shortages in my nation)?
She answers the big question. (Score:5, Interesting)
Women often seem to gain self-confidence by pursuing institutional affiliations, credentials, and clear career goals -- rather than simply pushing forward as "lone wolves" driven by individual curiosity.
Firstly, I think this statement discredits the true innovators of this world(past & present) who are driven by a passion to solve problems(sometimes at significant personal and social cost). These people are not just fulfilling some curiosty.
Secondly, and this is the crux of the whole article, females, by "pursuing institutional affiliations, credentials, and clear career goals" are giving themselves the access to a future raising a family.
By exposing themselve to this environment enhances the chances of finding a more desirable mate.
Re:Cultural or Biological? (Score:5, Interesting)
Usual disclaimers on generalizations apply.
Luckily, my three year old also likes to help me work on the car.
Why does this matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, if we really want to think about gender gaps in professions, why are there not more male nurses? I had to spend a decent amount of time in ICU when my father was hospitalized because of his heartattack. He is very overweight and it was no small challenge for the staff there to help move him when it was required. I think there was one male nurse there who helped but he wasn't always on duty. Would it not make sense to make this position more appealing to men since it would be a boon to both patients and staff alike? Just something to think about.
Brendan
Re:Better question: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does it matter? What is the business reason for developing more female engineers?
Because the more diverse the workforce (gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic background, etc), the more potential for innovative ideas. I constantly see posts on ./ and other tech sites bemoaning the lack of innovation in GUI's and other CS areas in recent years. Could that be because everyone thinks alike?
Not to mention that the potential market for software products in the U.S. (in the aggregate) is 50% female. Do you think that men really know what women want? If so, you should write a book, I'll buy it ;)
Maybe there are not so many self-taught female engineers because women mature socially earlier and thus don't spend as much time talking to their monitors. Maybe women tend to be emotional thinkers and engineering doesn't jive well with emotional thinking. Maybe there's just a shortage of women who are nerds.
True. And maybe there is nothing wrong with it. On the other hand, maybe it's because women see tech as a "good ole' boys club" and they're indoctrinated from youth to pursue other areas. And there is something wrong with that. What's the harm in encouraging women to get into tech? It's not a zero-sum game.
Re:Its Software Programmer! (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do women need preferential treatment? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was an CS undergrad in college I remember hearing constantly about how 'women have it tougher in cs' and so forth. In my view exactly the opposite is true. I never once saw a female getting a worse grade because of her gender. I did however see one of the schools deans go ask professors for explanations when a female was doing poorly in a class. The result of that was that professors were under pressure to make sure that female students got through which resulted in unfair grading.
If women want to become engineers they should be allowed to and have the same opportunities as men, but preferential treatment just makes the ones that are legit look bad.
Re:Its Software Programmer! (Score:3, Interesting)
Many engineers today have to use C, Fortran, Python, or some language of MATLAB to come up with mathematical models for what they use. The requirement of knowledge in a specific area is so high very few people posess the talent and insight needed to write a really good engineering application.
It is possible, though, to be a software engineer in this respect- if you are in Engineering and you have a genuine interest and ability to program, then you can be a "Software Engineer" if you choose to learn more about programming.
Re:let's condescend to women (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not just because they don't want to. It's because there is often an unpleasant atmosphere. How would you feel if all your fellow engineers suddenly got all quiet and reserved when you joined them at the bar after work? No one wants to be the buzzkill.
Re:let's condescend to women (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a third option: They don't want to do it.
Maybe IT doesn't fill a part of them that needs to be satisfied. I am sure there are just as many women as men capable of doing IT, but they choose not to.
If places weren't allowing women into the field based on their gender( or race or whatever) that is wrong and should be stopped, but I really don't think that's the issue.
Re:let's condescend to women (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference in my experience is that women tend to be more "credential" oriented than men. That's why more women are going to college and getting advanced degrees than men these days. It's also why in heavily administrative, bureaucratic areas, women hold their own with men and are even taking over...
But real IT - administration, design, and programming - frequently means working without directly relevant credentials or road map, and without any peer support when it comes to learning. For whatever reason, men are more willing to do this.
Frankly, if it weren't for biology - men can't bear children - women would be earning more than men by now, except at the very highest levels.
Software culture is unattractive to many women (Score:3, Interesting)
Women in general tend to be unimpressed by those whose ego exeeds their abilities -- a personality that is all-too-often rewarded in this information economy.
Lots of people (men) want to attract women to computing but have no idea how. Bill Gates came (here) to Waterloo to try to attract non-hard-core-nerds to study CS. My daughter was very keen to see him but after he demo-ed his XBOX 360 and a fingerprint-reading PDA and a Napoleon Dynamite video she came away saying "what a dweeb!" She may end up studying CS, but if she does, it'll be in spite of efforts like that. And two year of high school CS in which she was top of her class, but learned nothing. More likely she'll study math or physics or something that she feels is more challenging and useful, and less associated with dweebs.
Re:let's condescend to women (Score:3, Interesting)
a tricky problem (Score:4, Interesting)
There are lots of little reasons (time demands, male oriented, no role models...), but the big root reason is that these are just not good jobs. All those little reasons were there in law and medicine, and were overcome. Rather than ask why no women want these jobs, ask why any person WOULD want these jobs. Most reasons women have for staying away from these areas should probably keep men away as well.
Even if you don't buy that women should be more or less equally represented in most jobs, it can be very educational learning exactly why they're staying away.
Re:Don't paint engineering pink! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:facial hair (Score:5, Interesting)
First, have you read his speech? Here it is. [harvard.edu] Your characterization of it is at best overy simplistic and possibly just wrong.
Is it not even worth considering the possiblity that there is a difference? I have heard a lot of people talk, and a lot of theory, conjecture. and speculation as to why there is such a gender gap in science and engineering, but no answers. Over the past 50 years, the gender gap has dramatically decreased in many fields requiring intelligent, technical people, but much of science and engineering has resisted diversification. It seems that speculating on the range of validity of the initial assumption should not get you fired by a community that prides itself on allowing people to hold radical or controversial viewpoints.
I personally think it is unlikely there is a siginificant difference in inherent aptitude, largely based on anecdotal observation that the gap is smaller in many european countries. Furthermore, I think that at least in the case of science researche (only because this is what I am familiar with) even if there is a gender disparity in the number of exceptionally qualified people, it is worth putting some serious effort into getting more women into those jobs. First, this provides a role model for other women who aspire to those jobs, but perhaps more importantly, if there is a real difference that means it is likely women will be able to provide new ideas and directions that men might be less likely to come up with. Said another popular way, monocultures are dangerous, if not necessarily bad.
It varies based on culture (Score:2, Interesting)
So why is Portugal's percentage high and Japan and the US's percentages low? My opinion is that it is partially culture based. Just turn on the TV in the US and you'll see all of these commercials toward women advertising clothing, jewelry, and beauty products. In TV shows the scientists are almost always men. The engineers are almost always men. The geeks are almost always men.
If you want a neutral preference on gender in workforces, you're going to have to disassociate the cultural links between gender and professions. But that will never happen because the marketing departments will always choose the best role model for gender when they want to sell a product to a group of people.
Programs that may attempt to include bonuses for women to enter into male dominated fields don't work in my opinion. It's like saying you're entering a one sex dominated field and you probably won't feel as welcome just because you're surrounded by guys, but hey, to make up for it we'll offer you a scholarship of some sort. Every girl I talked to when I was in school I asked "why did you choose cs?" and the answer was never "because it's dominated by guys and I can get this cool scholarship." It was either the girl was actually interested in it, she had friends that were going into CS, or her parents influenced her decision. STRANGELY, those answers aren't all that much different from guy answers...
Want your kid to be more interested in sciences and engineering? Take away the doll and give her Legos. And don't turn on the TV to let her see all those commercials of "girl" toys either. It starts when they're kids, not when they're 18 and have already been influenced by so many outside inputs.
Re:For those of you who would like to believe wome (Score:2, Interesting)
What I saw is that some large multi-national firm that have a surprisingly large portion of female staff in their IT departments (relative to other IT firms in the same area), and rumor has it that they intentionally hire more female to avoid discrimination charges. Unfortunately, the only way to hire more percentage of any sub-population than the market can supply is to lower the bar for that sub-population, so the result is many female IT staff that got hire is, frankly speaking, sub-par. So, the end result of that is eventually people inside the firm "knows" that female IT staffs are sub-par.
More women in college than men (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course, it is only a problem if you want a healthy society where men and women are equal. If you believe in the right kind of discrimination, more women at the expense of men are good.
The NYT just had an article on the fact that more women are unmarried than married. This isn't by choice for many women. If you take more and more men out of the college educated pool, there will be less suiters for the college educated women. And, women tend to marry up not down. They may date a bad boy, but they ain't marrying him. Old and childless or single parent, these women aren't going to be happy.
For some reason men choose computers, women don't.
May I suggest because in the science fields you usually get a right or a wrong answer for a predetermined reason. In the humanities the "right answer" usually involves merely parroting back your professor's bias. Men look at the cost of university ($100k for 4 years in a private US university) and ask what vocational training they can get. They ask "what is my return on investment?" For some reason, women don't really ask that. The educational system has treated women well, as result they demand less from it.
Also, the "right answer" effect allows men to get away from the BS and bias they have been subjected to in the educational system form the K-12 period. When computing the voltage across a resister you don't get constantly told that you are a rapist and abuser because you have a deficient chromosome.
You want to fix the problem of non-equal male/female representation in universities? The answer is simple.
"Title IX For the Classroom". Because equality shouldn't end at the sports field.
Federally mandate that there be a 50/50 male/female split in all majors except those where we are giving out H1B Visas (IIRC my visa codes). If we are loosening up the immigration requirements to boost a career we can loosen up the equality standards.
See how education improves when the universities have to get 50% of male English majors. Kiss those "Womens Studies" programs good bye, just like we did for men's swimming. You won't expect to get 50% Jews in a Hitler Youth program, and you won't get 50% male enrollment in today's Women's Studies programs.
Re:Don't paint engineering pink! (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many reasons why most women don't have any interest in computers - one, of course, is role models. Some people only act as their parents and friends do - and if they don't use or *value* computing neither does the next generation. A second problem is that I know many many women (yeah and men too) who have no interest in how things work - they often learn new things by rote rather than by thinking WHAT/WHY they are doing something rather than HOW. Thirdly (and kind of related to my first point) is that often people who choose a different field of interest get so much support and see such a complete package to their chosen area that they have no room in their life for computing or scientific thought because their world does not allow these things in, and therefore does not need them.
Re:Don't paint engineering pink! (Score:3, Interesting)
I grew up in a household where my father was a self-employed electrician. There were always things around the house in pieces. As I got older, I would take things apart to see how they would work too.
While I no longer do that for a living, I spent most of a decade dismantling and reassembling computers, printers and monitors on a daily basis.
Culture/environment probably played some part in my career choices.
Survival of the species (Score:1, Interesting)
Encouraging women to sacrifice families/personal times, put off marriage and family for their career, etc., puts the species survival in jeopardy.
And the worst part is? Our most intelligent women are encouraged to get an education, and put off family, and have 0-2 children. Our least intelligent women tend to start families younger, and have more children. Well, if the low end of the intelligence sector has 5 children, from age 20-30, and most intelligent sector as 2 children, from age 35-40, well, over the next 100 years... we're deselecting intelligence as a genetic trait... THAT'S NOT GOOD. People complain that kids today are less intelligent, as test scores indicate... well they are, because we have socially deselected it over 2 generations (on the intelligent side, 3 on the less so).
The even more insane thing? Women are encouraged to start their careers first, because if they don't they can't enter the workforce later. The silly thing, all the young mothers that I know (age 22-25, intelligent, but religious) are back at work in 2 months because their families need the income. The ones that are older and "started their career first" (ages 32-36), are all taking years off, leaving altogether, etc., because it's freaking exhausting to deal with small children when you are mid to late 30s, the young twenty somethings don't know any better...
Perhaps using those years when you are full of energy to start your life instead of drinking yourself to oblivion would eliminate a lot of the gender issues...
Venus Flytrap (Score:3, Interesting)
Why some give sci/tech a magic status on one hand and flood it with H1B's and offshoring on another, I have no fricken idea. Contradiction city.
Geek culture from a female perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
So what if baby girls like to play with dolls and baby boys play with trucks. That says nada about future aptitude for CS or EE. I am the mother of a girl, and she loves playing trains and trucks and thinks dolls are a lot of fun to throw down the stairs while yelling "uhoh, my baby!". Basically, even if the brains are wired differently, I don't think it's enough of a difference to make technical work a non-starter for all females. There are some advantaged being socialized female brings to technical work; such as the ability to enjoy taking showers on a daily basis. As a sysadmin, I have noticed that users are often relieved when I work on their issues, instead of the BOFH type who is smug and condescending in his treatment of users.
I am a self taught sysadmin, I worked for 6 years before going back to school to get my CS degree. I think the main reason why we lack distaff autodidacts is that they simply do not have the confidence with machines in our culture that males do. I remember learning pascal (yes, i'm ancient) and my dad telling me "Pascal?! What is that crap, if you were a boy you'd be writing compilers in assembly" when I was 14. If that's not one of those hidden sexist cultural things which undercut one's self confidence, I'm not sure what is. I have been a linux user since 1997, and have attended several LUGs only to be hit on, disregarded, or publicly sexually harassed when giving presentations (on vi of all subjects!). It doesn't really make me want to have a lot do with LUGs.
Another issue I have observed is that males are protective of their in-groups in a professional and scholastic setting. These in-groups tend to make up the talent pool which upon which future start-ups are formed. In school we had several group projects, and none of the males in the top 2/3s of the class wanted me on their team, despite the fact that I usually placed in the top 5 on coding assignments(in class sizes of 60). It was like the third grade all over again. So there is a lot of self-segregation taking place. In fact, I'm not even sure why I'm writing this as these threads usually turn into a misogynistic circle jerk among the dominant male in-group of slashdot (and yes, I've seen many of these types of threads over the years around here).
FWIW, I totally disagree with changing classes to be more "girl" friendly as TFA suggests, that's bogus. Algorithms and computational models were my favorite classes, despite being "dry" or "boring". Math departments didn't paint math pink to get up to 30% female (3x higher than CS/EE by most counts). It's a cultural issue which must be addressed. And you can start by taking down the pr0n in the computer labs(yes, there was pr0n printed out and posted in my undergraduate computer labs, boys will be boys, right?!)
OTOH, I've found my career in IT to be satisfying and worth the trouble. It has the flexibility and high pay that a new mom needs, ironically enough. Try finding that in "women's work".
Re:Don't paint engineering pink! (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think I ever had a geeky role model, but I didn't really have any strong typically-female influences like 'you will love being a housewife' or 'you should be a mum' or 'kids are great go babysit some' role model either, so I was free to get into what I was interested in. Some friends of mine have very strong gender roles assigned in their families, and I feel that that has influenced them a lot in not having an interest in science or questioning why things work or how to change them.
Re:let's condescend to women (Score:3, Interesting)
This one line right here expresses it all. Women have fallen victim to the family. You are wrong. For most normal women (getting back to all that genetic stuff), family is the number one priority. We aren't victims to it. We want to have a family, and we want to take care of our family. I kind of feel like this might be why I am trying to drag out my education. Maybe I know that after I'm done getting all of my lovely CS degrees, it will be time to make some real decisions. Maybe I just don't want to face the music that I cannot do everything I want to do.
Could it be that engineering has yet to really take a day, stop, and think about what kind of job will work for women? There actually happens to be one civil engineering firm in my area that has thought about this. Women with infants automatically get their own, large office. Part of the office is then set up to look like a nursery. Your hours, once your kid is in school, let you drop them off at the bus stop and pick them up from it afterwards. The company doesn't try to change women's attitudes. It recognizes that family comes first and they come second, and they work with it!
Re:Who is really superficial? (Score:2, Interesting)
> Some people are too intelligent for their own good.
Birds of a feather stick together [slashdot.org]. Women who lack intelligence naturally prefer men who lack it also.
> "Deep thinking?" In tech?
Yes. Doing any kind of technical or scientific work requires a desire to know how things work and how to make them work better. That requires thinking, but more importantly, being interested in thinking about the world. Most women just aren't interested; they only care about the day-to-day stuff that is already there, how they dress, who they know, whey they eat, etc.
> Then you dismiss astrology, religion and a bunch of other interesting parts of life.
Dismiss them categorically as the most mind-damaging things EVER invented. Religion is so drastically anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-thought, that anyone who has a brain would recoil from it with disguist and loathing once he understands what it teaches.
> Dismissing what you never have studied or experienced, just amounts to dogma.
Absolutely correct! This is exactly what religious fanatics do with science and all the other things they don't understand. Scientists do indeed study religion, and discard it when they understand that it teaches people to stop thinking and take things on faith instead. "How do you know something is right? You can never really know anything! Only God knows everything. How can I do X? Blaspheming infidel! Only God actually does things, you just do as you are told and keep your mouth shut unless it is to praise God! Conform! Obey! Believe!" If it were up to me, I'd ground the whole thing out of its miserable existence.
> Did you know Einstein and Newton and most of the deep thinkers in history,
> studied and praised such institutions that you so handily dismiss?
Did you know you are spouting bullshit?
Einstein said the following about religion (Albert Einstein, 1954, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side"):
As for Newton, while he did indeed write much about religion, his views were very much in conflict with the teachings of the church, though perhaps that is not immediately obvious. He definitely believed that the universe was rational and knowable, in direct contrast to the common religious teaching of a sacred and mystical universe that we can neither understand nor are worthy to try to. The only reason he still believed in God after such departure is that he did not follow his premises to their natural conclusions, being concerned with physics more than epistemology. If he had thought to consider it, it would have became obvious to him that a rational universe can not contain a God, whose very definition excludes him from existence.
> An overly sceptical mind will never be the inventor or discoverer.
On the contrary, a sceptical mind is precisely what is required to invent, for scepticism is necessary to discard all those illogical superstitions you religious people hoist upon everyone since childhood.
> It requires faith to do what most cant do.
Faith in yourself and your own abilities, not in God. Faith in God is the exact opposite of the faith in yourself and results in letting God do the things most can't do instad of attempting to do them yourself.
Re:Don't paint engineering pink! (Score:3, Interesting)
True, but not necessarily universal.
That said, I know - personally - two women who wanted to get pregnant specifically so that tthey could leave the workforce and have someone else deal with the drugery of commuting and the 8-5 grind. One was my wife. Turns out she just really hated he job. Once we found her a better job, and she started to excel at it, she no longer wanted to leave the workforce, and continued working even after our daughter was born (there was an 8 year gap between wanting a baby to get "out", and actually having a baby, btw). The other woman found a prospect, got her MRS degree, had the kid, then ended up getting split up (something about her "best friend" having his baby just 6 months after hers was born bothered her). She found her real wallet man later, which allowed her to quit her job, stay at home (with the child in school), and watch soaps all day. Of course, she kept his cleaning service, which also did his laundry, mended his clothes, changed the linens, etc.
You see, the smart woman who wants "out" will get the baby, then convince the hubby that the kids need daycare for learning and socialization. Then it's just an hour or two in the morning and evening that she has to "work". Oh, she'll be busy. Errands here and there. Pet projects (crafting and baking and scrapbooking, oh, my!) will fill the rest of the time so she's tired enough to need help from DH most nights to put the kids to bed.
Now, this is not the norm. But it does exist. I've seen it almost happen with my wife, and I see it in her friend - in spades - and these are two otherwise normal women from college educated households with professional parents (well, fathers, at least).
Staying home with multiple young children and doing all the housework is a lot of work, and is mind-numbing to boot. Just remember that it actually slacks off quite a bit if the kids are all in school (or daycare), and with enough money it can be quite the easy life. Don't underesimate the drive for a less-stessful life through staying at home - most people (not just women) don't expect raising a family single handed to be quite the task it is.
Re:facial hair (Score:3, Interesting)
First Post confirms that a big part of the problem is that women are judged by their appearance rather than engineering skills.
As a species we don't tend to get all secretive and weird about the eating thing. (excluding rarities such as anorexia, bolimia,
Men and Women aren't the same. (relax, I am speaking in accurate generalities here) Woman tend to be predisposed to spending a large quantity of time trying to improve their appearance at least partly because as animals they want or expect to be judged on their appearance. Lipstick, make up and other 'primping' details ARE NOT DONE 'FOR' THE WOMAN WHO IS DOING IT. She doesn't spend the day with a mirror in front of her living out a narcissisticly thrilling life. It is done for those who are looking. (She doesn't want to fail at mating either! Plus it improves all of her dealings with other people...)
Women don't think the same. Why in gods name would you expect them to be interested in the same things? (a generality!!!) The logic that creates an engineer doesn't directly create happiness or success. (even success in #2!) The tendency of women to have a greater ability to deal with social situations and to create harmony does more to create this happiness/success. The tendency to build consensus is an incredible talent and would be very valuable in business if it was tied to the testosterone laden drive to control. (but I suspect the drive to control would kill a gift for consensus...)
Why doesn't anyone bemoan the disparity in the number of men who enjoy shopping for clothing, want make up, or spend hours 'gossiping'? How come no one is trying to artificially guide men to these pursuits? It is because there isn't income to be had from these things.
As a toddler my parents couldn't stop me from taking my toys apart and putting them back together again. I came from the factory with these tendencies that are 'male'. No woman should be stopped from exploring a choices in life and career because of her gender. But expecting women to be churned out with 3d spacial awareness and an interest in engineering at the same rate as men is insane.
Let woman make their choices without restriction including the artificial idea that their choices should be similar to men's choices and don't bemoan those choices when they tend to be different from men's. The differences create a world that we would want to live in. (and a world where we have a chance of satisfying #2)