Hi Jimmy -
Please note the inconsistency in your two comments: in the first one, you say that subtle (actually, not so subtle) cues such as clothing should be dismissed; but in your second comment you ask about what cues might be responsible for women not wanting to study engineering.
I absolutely do believe that clothing plays a role. Biology and evolution has embedded within us a very high responsiveness to signals pertaining to sex, and clothing — especially tight, revealing, or attention-getting clothing— is a massively strong trigger deep down in paleomammalian cortex (limbic system) and amygdala. Expecting people to pretend that clothing is not distracting is simply expecting too much. I appreciate a woman’s appearance as much as the next guy, and I am not prudish at all, but I simply don’t want to be distracted at work — at work I want to focus on work — and so I personally would prefer that women dress conservatively at work, and men as well; I would not want to have men going around the office in muscle shirts and tight pants. As I said, I think that women undermine themselves by dressing in an attention-getting manner at work, and I don’t want women to be undermined in any way — especially given the discriminatory challenges that they have.
As for social cues that might discourage women from entering engineering, I am sure there are many such cues, and I would like to change that. However, I think we should be careful about assuming that numerical parity is a goal. Men and women are potentially different in the aggregate, although each person is an individual and might be different from the norm. Each individual person deserves a chance, and deserves the same treatment, opportunities and pay as their equals; but as long as there is not discrimination, people have a right to choose, and in the aggregate men and women might continue to choose differently. For example, men don’t usually become psychotherapists for whatever reason — the psychotherapy field is overwhelmingly dominated by women (my wife is one), and that is not a “problem” — we don’t need to try to engineer our culture so that more men become therapists.
Please don’t misconstrue my comments: I acknowledge that women have discriminatory challenges in technical professions, and it is certainly not “their fault” — far from it. Discrimination against women matters to me, and I want to help to change it. Toward that end, I think it is important that we (women and men) differentiate between what is true discrimination and what is merely bad behavior, as well as what behaviors contribute to the problem. Otherwise, we will sound biased and we will not get the support of those who feel unfairly categorized, and the cause of women in tech will sound less legitimate and more like whining. The claims of the cause need to be accurate, clearcut, and balanced — not extremist. Extremism causes division, not convergence.
