I basically agree with everything you said exept for this part. We have not studied gender issues and relations long enough to differentiate with certainty between nature vs. nurture on these Topics.

I would argue that the reason a large amout of female students when presented with computer sience still wouldn't be as interested as boys, is because of their home invironment. Because 'it's something that girls don't like to do' is a reinforced stereotype in many parents heads to this date. The struggle for equality has not been going on long enough to erase centuries of cultural identity and gender stereotypes. I'm not even talking about something that is done with bad intent or even conciously. It's as simple as calling your little girl to help you build a computer, while relating how things work, thus fostering an early interest, vs. refrainig from doing so because you would just bore her. A home invironment that does not trust a girl with technical knowlegde will probably result in a woman with a lack of interest in technology just as much as a boy that did not get to do any domestic work would probably grow into a man less than inclined to go into a nursing profession.

While bringing the subjects to students as early as kindergarden or primary school is a good step, they usually cannot reverse behaviour patterns learned at home, earlier in life.

And on the subject of the gender inequality in nursing professions an intersting tidbid is perhaps that, higher pay correlates directly with the percantage of men found in the professions. In my country secondary school teachers, which are among highest payed in the wider field of nursing and education are about 50/50 men to women. Primary school teachers get lower wages than that and there is a higher percentage of women among them. Kindergarden teachers get payed less than that and have an overwhelmingly female demographic. Similar result can be found in the health/nursing sector.

When asked what would make these professions more attractive to men, the overwhelming anwer was simply, better payment. It wasn't some natural inclanation that kept the men from working in these fields, in fact many would have liked to, but they felt like their work wasn't valued enough. This suggests that historically women are trained to be content with lesser payment. This is in the process of being rectified with higher payments across the board being fought for, but it's a long process.

On the topic of your friend, as others have said, if it really is how you say and he was suggested to leave based solely on that statement that would be wrong.

But there are so many factors at play (not in the least that this is a second hand story, from an offended party, that we don't know the other side of) that's it's hard to make a judgement call. As others have suggested he should probably inquire friendly why exactly he is being fired.

binary solo said:
He should have said "more women in IT is a desirable thing." Because that is true and has the benefit of being something the review panel would want to hear.

But why is it more desirable?, a large portion of IT jobs will never, in the entire time said employee has the job, hinge on the gender of said employee.

Then he should have gone on to say "promoting IT to girls should start at school, where girls can start getting interested in IT at a young age where it can become second nature to them, like it became second nature to me when I was X age after spending hours [doing computery stuff]." Because this is a good strategy for making sure women can get IT jobs based on merit rather than a quota system.

But then you introduce a preferential treatment based purely on gender, where girls would be singled out for "targeted" education, the simple truth is, the field is more interesting to men then women, i fail to see why this is a bad thing, especially when the majority of IT jobs will never need a specific gender to be accomplished - There are women in IT, but they are there because they actually found it interesting and chose to go down that path.

More over, most IT jobs arent the glitzy glamour people seem to see them as, Office Space, a popular comedy film makes a good example of a daily grind IT placement where gender both does not matter, and the actual job itself is seen as unattractive, underpaid and undervalued.

Then he should have said, "Making the IT work environment female friendly is also important, and I take pride in being a person who does not discriminate or pre-judge a person's worth based on race, gender, sexual orientation or nationality. When women know that they will enter a workplace and be treated well then they will be more likely to want to make IT their chosen career. I think I am a good example of what is required to make an IT workplace a welcoming and supportive environment for women." Because I'm sure your friend would indeed make sure a woman felt as welcome to his workplace as he would a man. Or is he the sort of person who would look at a woman and automatically think she was hired because she was a woman and therefore be less welcoming and supportive of his new work colleague?

Women generally have asperations of what they want to do in life in early childhood, most girls I knew in highschool daydreamed about finding the perfect man, getting married and having kids, or becoming doctors, dentists, florists, vets, I was basically alone in my interest for computers, not because of any issues with how girls are brought up or educated, but because all of my friends considered it boring, but one thing is for sure, at such an age nobody what so ever were sat there on the schoolyard grass thinking "Well i really would like to become a ___ but the work environments for women in such positions is less than inviting".

Even in college and eventually university, people are rarely considering such things.

With what he said, which was to skirt around the question, the review panel probably interpreted his views as the way you describe your and his attitude in your third line of the OP "He and I both do not give into this third-wave feminism 'made up stats' and 'oppression' bullshit." So having probably interpreted his response correctly they were probably right to not extend his internship if they don't want to keep someone on who "...does not give into this third-wave feminism 'made up stats' and 'oppression' bullshit." As a person with that attitude is not a good fit for that company.

What he did was to make the observation, and quite rightly so, that the employers were looking to fill a quota, something many employers are now implamenting to look good on the books, and so his response was to affirm what was best for the company, without resorting to naming genders, i.e. hiring a women is fine if she can do the job, but how about we dont just hire women because theyre women?.

The current trend is to hire women and in some cases ethnic minorities based on such to even out the workforce, even if that means taking on staff who would otherwise have been considered unfit for such positions, this is fundamentally unfair on those that took the time to BE skilled for such positions, who are now being omitted from possible employment over something they have zero control over, their gender and race.

How hard would it be to say "Everyone benefits when a formerly male dominated profession becomes more gender balanced"? Because this is true. And if you don't believe it then perhaps your gender attitude is rather less civilised than you think.

Actually, given how companies are approaching it, this is nonsensical, when people are hired based on gender and race in place of skill, you are bringing on dead weight and forcing existing staff to take up the slack and/or use their work hours training the new employees up to te level needed to do the task at hand, by hiring based on gender/race over skill, you are holding back the entire company and negatively impacting the workflow of your existing workforce.

When the position calls for a skilled employee and gender will not impact the role in any way, skill and experience should be the only factor for hiring for said position, having a "gender balanced workforce" has no actual benefit beyond looking good on paper, and comes with a detrimental effect if you arrived at a gender balanced workforce by comprimising your hiring process to fudge numbers.

And indeed your friend should probably feel relieved that he is not going to be working at a place that does "give into this third-wave feminism 'made up stats' and 'oppression' bullshit." I mean if I was working at a place and found out all the management and most f the workers were racist arseholes I would be looking to leave and if it came time to an employment review and I did not respond with the appropriate racist answers I would be more than happy for them to suggest I don't look to extend my time there. Surely if he is as good as you say he is, he will find a job easily, so it's no big loss to terminate his connection with this business.

I am genuinely too blown away by the terrible comparisons here to even respond to this fully, other than to say, he made it clear that gender of new employees shouldnt be an issue and even stated, without naming genders, that more should be done to make the profession more attractive at an early age, something you yourself were suggesting too.

And in terms of hiring people based only on technical merit, there are actually social and workplace benefits to hiring someone who is in a minority in a profession who is competent ahead of hiring someone who represents the majority who is more competent. Also most employers don't just take technical competence into account when making hiring decisions, they look at lots of factors and weight each factor differently. No one is advocating hiring people who are incompetent merely because they represent a demographic minority in the industry. What people should consider is the longer term benefit to the industry of hiring people who were straight B students but are of a demographic that is under-represented in the industry over someone who is a straight A student but is of a demographic that is over-represented in the industry.

That may be the case for some professions, IT is not one of them, if someone cant do the job without guidence, hiring that person puts the entire team at a disadvantage, makes deadlines slip, pulls staff of projects to get the new employees up to speed.

And yes, many companies are actually running with quotas now where they will have a round of interviews and if interviewee A is great and male, and interviewee B is good and female, B will be hired over A, with gender being the deciding factor, as apposed to their overall benefit to the company based on skill, nowhere is the more prevelant than the US, with LA and California in general going balls to the wall nuts on portraying themselves in a positive light to the media / executives.

Ultimately, what it boils down to is simple, women are different to men, and often choose a different path in life, this isnt a bad thing, nobody needs coercing into deciding on a life plan at an early age just so that "more women might choose IT as a profession in 10 years time", people should be hired based on their skill level, experience and strength of their application, gender and race should not play a role in it what so ever, only then could you call it equality with a straight face.

In the end, while asperations play a role initially, for most people they take any job they can, be that IT, janitorial, secretarial or similar, not because they WANT to do that as a profession, but because unemployment is less attractive.

a large portion of IT placements are considered undesirable, regardless of the applicants gender, and what leads us to a situation where a higher portion of IT placements being male, is because when sat in the job centers a woman looking for a job will choose a job such as checkout clerk, receptionist or childcare over IT positions, and men will take IT positions over the others, what drives this? simply the difference in genders, a difference we should not demonize or label a problem, the genders are different, everyone is unique, the onus to insist that difference between genders, race and attitudes is wrong is one that stifles creativity, individuality and above all, freedom.

If two workers are basically identical in skills and you decide to hire the one from poorest family, minority or gender to bring more variety and point of views to company it can be beneficial...