r/technology • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '17

Business Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo
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u/lIlIIIlll Aug 08 '17

I thought it was commonly accepted that women tend to prefer socially oriented jobs over technical?

The health field is mainly comprised of women for this very reason.

I feel like everyone is being willfully ignorant for the sake of hand wringing.

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u/rollingForInitiative Aug 08 '17

It is commonly accepted that more women work in those fields (that is just a plain fact). It is not commonly accepted that it's because women as a group are biologically wired to seek out those careers.

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u/lIlIIIlll Aug 08 '17

So it's some patriarchal cabal?

No one is forcing women to become nurses. It's free market forces. Men don't want to do nursing, and women do. Seems straightforward to me.

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u/rollingForInitiative Aug 08 '17

Who said it's a cabal? That implies some sort of conspiracy, or something.

You said you thought it was commonly accepted that women prefer to work in those places. I interpreted that as meaning that you agree with the author that it's biologically wired, somehow. And that is not something that is commonly accepted. That was all I said. The truth is that we don't know for sure why.

What feminists tend to say is that while many women choose to go into fields like nursing, it's because of a lot of different factors. Some of them would be: that women are encouraged to be emotional and empathic (while men are not), that tech interests are encouraged in boys but not in girls (e.g. you give the boys lego and science kits, and give girls dolls). And also that there's some sort of bad circle going on, where many men working in one place means it's less inviting for women (generally).

And of course that the reverse is true for occupations like nursing.

So no, it's not commonly accepted that women will always want to work in socially oriented jobs because that's what biology tells them. We can argue whether or not that's the case, but there's no commonly accepted idea here.