Dan Drezner ‘90 notes that he hasn’t “angered feminists” in awhile and so links to recent discussions of why women are “underrepresented” in technology jobs.

Dan quotes a Boston Globe article:

Rosenbloom and his colleagues used a standard personality-inventory test to measure people’s preferences for different kinds of work. In general, Rosenbloom’s study found, men and women who enjoyed the explicit manipulation of tools or machines were more likely to choose IT careers - and it was mostly men who scored high in this area. Meanwhile, people who enjoyed working with others were less likely to choose IT careers. Women, on average, were more likely to score high in this arena.

Personal preference, Rosenbloom and his group concluded, was the single largest determinative factor in whether women went into IT. They calculated that preference accounted for about two-thirds of the gender imbalance in the field.

Don’t tell Professor Wendy Raymond! Consider this Q&A in the Record.

Do you see your gender as having an effect on your work or your education?

Yes. At Williams, my gender has less of an effect than at any other place, and part of that is the fact that the biology department has so many women members. It’s the first place I’ve been where women are half or more than half of the department. Gender has always played a role because there are so few women in chemistry. I have certainly experienced sexist behavior from my colleagues. Often that behavior is so ingrained in out social fabric that those colleagues have no idea that they’re doing it.

Part of what I’ve done as a woman in science is to objectively educate my colleagues as to these problems. For example, one common thing people do when they invite people to conferences is to invite their friends, who often happen to be guys who they grew up in science with so the program will be 80 percent male, even though woman are about 50 percent of biologists. We have to educate people that gender should be one thing you consider when you invite people to give talks at a meeting. That’s a gentle example.

Want to get funding for a meeting from someone like Raymond? Better make sure that 50% of the speakers/attendees are women.

I feel that it’s excellent for Williams students to have a lot of female professors in their early years here as it breaks own their expectation that scientists will be men. At Williams, it’s clear that’s not the case. I only hope that improves the way men and women leaving Williams will see their scientific colleagues, they won’t always assume that they’ll be male. Unfortunately, in the other physical sciences women are not as well represented.

That’s right. The world will not be a truly just place until half the physicists and mechanical engineers are women. And don’t forget to ensure that 50% of the elementary school teachers are men.