OddAnon

newbee: I’m going to assume the question isn’t rhetorical, and answer it as well as I can.

Suppose we have a generation of people, and among those people are the top 1000 potential programmers of the generation. All sorts of things could influence who are among them, such as inborn traits and abilities, experiences, developed ways of thinking and work ethic, and efforts in different areas. Whatever the causes, these people have the potential to change the world with their incredible abilities. Assuming there isn’t anything that would make it particularly more likely for them to be male or female (a claim which many would dispute), it’s reasonable to assume that there would be approximately 500 males and 500 females in the group. When these young men and women are deciding what careers to go into, not all of them will decide to go into programming. If there is something causing the women among them to decide not to go into the field, then fully half of the top people are lost. They will instead go into other professions, where they may not be as successful. A country may look at their numbers of successes in a field, and compare it to another country’s, and remark “Why is it that they have so many more successful people in this area?” and the statistics will show that the other country doesn’t have a larger amount of successful men in that field, they simply took action against the circumstances that were causing them to not have any women go into the field. The failure to do this cause the first country to lose half of their talent, and that’s why they have so much fewer successes in total.

Berel is a young man deciding what field to go into. He rightly feels that becoming a doctor would not be a good fit for him, and looks for other options. He does not know it, but Berel has the potential to be an incredible nurse, and were it an option of serious consideration, this would be clear to him. He would enjoy the career immensely, and do a great job. But it is not an option that he considers; why would he? Men don’t become nurses, women become nurses! And so, Berel instead becomes a third-rate accountant, and nothing becomes of his abilities. His good friend Hirshel, for whom being a kindergarten teacher would have been a dream job that he would have been great at, instead becomes a taxi driver. His sister Fayge becomes an occupational therapist instead of a civil engineer, and wastes her talent at a job she doesn’t like and never really excels at.

Most people don’t have stories like this, and most of those who do generally don’t know what they might have had if the gender roles hadn’t removed many options from their lists. But you asked why people work toward there being an even split between genders in every profession, and stories like this are why. Excluding half the population from a profession means that people have fewer options, and the options they choose instead are often worse.

Now, there are of course many things to consider besides for just how successful a person can be, how much they’ll enjoy their jobs, and how much it will fit the life they’ve planned for themselves. Mixed-gender workplaces come with all sorts of hazards that need to be taken into consideration. A career may generally not be a good fit for one gender for other reasons. All these things need to be carefully considered, and many young people will need to consult a rav about these issues. But if the problems can be mitigated, should we keep people out of these careers anyway, just to preserve the gender roles? Are they truly so important? Are they really worth the tremendous cost?

Is it worth it?

The middle of nowhere is on a small Chilean island in the South Pacific called “Rapa Nui”, or “Easter Island” in English. The island has a population of under six thousand, and is as far from the main body of human civilization in Eastern and Southern Asia as it’s possible to be while staying on land. Closer to the outskirts of nowhere are several more islands, along with one large landmass known as the Americas, containing several somewhat notable nations including the Federative Republic of Brazil, the United Mexican States, and the United States of America. The Americas are home to almost a billion people, the majority living in north-eastern nowhere, or North America. The inhabitants live their lives mostly peacefully, happily living distant from the rest of humanity, on a large outpost some ten thousand kilometers from the landmass known as Afro-Eurasia, the dwelling place of the other 6.1 billion humans on Earth.