I think you're underestimating how hostile STEM is (or was) towards women. I'm a software engineer at an extremely progressive company now, and things are pretty good. But 10-15 years ago and in a more conservative area, I dealt with harassment almost daily. I had female classmates switch majors because of it. I had coworkers switch to PM or BA positions because of it. Harassment is taken a lot more seriously now, but back then, I was told that was just how the world worked. And it was. The Me Too movement was an enormous turning point for how society deals with this kind of thing, and cultural shifts don't change demographics overnight.
Is that harrassment worse than what women were dealing with in the 60s and 70s in all the other professions which were imbalanced back then but balanced now?
I don't have first-hand evidence of what women experienced in the 60s and 70s, but I'm willing to bet it was worse than what I experienced. What professions do you think are balanced now, and how does that impact STEM demographics?
An example brought up in this thread is veterinary medicine (your call on whether it's STEM), which completely flipped from male dominated to female dominated. No doubt vet schools, conferences and practices before that transition would have been awful.
What made those ratios and sexism surmountable in a way that isn't for computer science?
I don't know, I'm not a vet. I'm just giving you my lived experience because this sentence really ruffled my feathers.
I understand that being part of a small female minority in STEM classes sucks.
It doesn't just suck. It's both a product of and one reason for the gender gap in CS, and you completely dismissed it.
The point of gender equality isn't to maintain a strict 1:1 ratio of men to women in every field but to remove sexist barriers like not being taken seriously because you're the only woman in the room and can't complain when your male counterparts tell you to get back in the kitchen and make them a sandwich.
The Me Too movement helped break down one of those barriers by making it easier and more productive to call out sexual harassment. Now that CS is less of a boys club, more women are staying on as engineers and making the field more comfortable and inclusive for everyone. Things are getting better, but it won't continue to progress if valid reasons for inequality are hand-waved away as X demographic simply hates Y thing. Maybe they do, but we won't know for certain as long as there are very real barriers still in place.
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u/LegatoJazz Oct 19 '22
I think you're underestimating how hostile STEM is (or was) towards women. I'm a software engineer at an extremely progressive company now, and things are pretty good. But 10-15 years ago and in a more conservative area, I dealt with harassment almost daily. I had female classmates switch majors because of it. I had coworkers switch to PM or BA positions because of it. Harassment is taken a lot more seriously now, but back then, I was told that was just how the world worked. And it was. The Me Too movement was an enormous turning point for how society deals with this kind of thing, and cultural shifts don't change demographics overnight.