> Thus gender imbalances [in lower-level technical jobs] don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural imbalances as those in high-level fields .

Others have commented in this thread how gender-biased attitudes towards engineering fields are present even in young children. There's an obvious connection between this and the fact that when you're a child most of the adults you met in your everyday life practicing technical jobs (plumbers, cable technicians, car mechanics) are male. On the other hand, children see how their pre- and middle- school teachers are mostly female. Thus, children learn by observation that technical job => male.

Yes, neither car mechanics nor pre-school teachers have prestigious, 6-figure salary, PhD level positions, and yet they have a big impact in the perception of gender bias in adult labor when children are growing up and unconsciously cementing their views of the world.

I believe that a big step to close the gender gap in engineering would be young girls watching the super cool woman in the car shop expertly fixing daddy's car.

Or cool dude teaching them at school. More men at education -> more positions in tech for women. As well as more women looking for these positions.

Can't wait for the next campaign to make men 50:50 in kindergardens and schools!

It's when you talk about young men in kinder gardens that you realize how ridiculous this whole discussion truly is. There will never be 50:50 young men to young women in kinder gardens. Not even 20:80. That much is obvious.

Most young men do not like to be with children. Most young women do not like working in car repair. While none of these claims are sufficiently substantiated in research, if the first can be true, then surely the second one can be, as well?

IMO the only reason is that IT looks relatively clean and easy job for nice money.

Although after working in the field for over a decade, I don't really think that's true. While it's clean physically, mentally it's totally different story. Personally I'm on the line if I want to keep doing what I love or if I switch to something more sane.

"Yes, neither car mechanics nor pre-school teachers have prestigious, 6-figure salary, PhD level positions, and yet they have a big impact in the perception of gender bias in adult labor when children are growing up and unconsciously cementing their views of the world."

Seen from that perspective, I agree. Still, in the eyes of those being referred to in the argument I criticized, fighting over high level positions likely promises higher returns - or at least appears to do that. Whether this then actually turns out to be true is a different story. Right now it doesn't even look like it, as pointed out in the article. Maybe indeed, starting at the bottom, with low level tech jobs, would be a better way to go. However, it would also take much longer. Some are impatient. Considering the accelerating progress in tech, I can understand that impatience.

> This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender inbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural inbalances. Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things.

I'm not trying to misrepresent you but are you making the claim that if we had more female PHDs in STEM, that would lead to more female plumbers and car mechanics?

Or is it more, the changes needed to get women into stem would necessarily get women into other "less prestigious" fields?

I think imartin2k is reading this:

  surprisingly there is no concern about the under-
  representation of women in lower-level technical
  jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing

And then reading this, two paragraphs below in the same article:

  These differences are socially important because these
  tend to be prestigious occupations, and practically
  important because the different numbers of men and women
  in these fields contribute, in part, to the sex
  difference in earnings.

When I read the article, this incongruity made me feel the surprise was feigned for rhetorical effect. And I was shocked - shocked! - to find crass rhetorical tricks in an article about gender bias in STEM :)

Neither. I only was critizing what I think is a flawed argument, nothing else. I didn’t make any mental connection to what you bring up. I understand why your impression is that I must have meant something more, as this usually is the case with comments about polarizing topics like this.

That aside (and not meant as criticism against you), it’s super frustrating how when it comes to this specific topic, it’s unbelievably hard to express a thought in a way which is not being misunderstood by others. We all seem to have a mental concept of the debate in mind and then just match everything we read to this existing concept, which leads to all kinds of misrepresentations.

I initially read the comment as you positing your chain of thought (instead of theirs) and i was trying to work out the underlying fact being such a chain of logic.

I guess what ill say is that having a mental concept of debate, i personally find useful in getting to the root of ideas.

Of course circling the wagons in your echo chamber by always taking on the debate in your favour isn't good, asking people to further explain thoughts and arguments you don't understand/don't agree with i think is good and people should do more of it.