To be clear, by lower status (and I said "lower", not "low", very specifically) I was not saying anything negative about those professions or the people who work in them. I was only referring to their status within society at the moment, in that they are not accorded great power or influence, or feted in the same way as e.g. tech entrepreneurs, doctors, or lawyers are. I think that nursing and teaching should be much higher status jobs than they currently are and I think their importance is undervalued, which frequently tends to be the case for professions dominated by women.
You mention college professor as a high status position, which I think supports the point I was making, as whilst the majority of school teachers are women, the majority of professors are men.
As to people gravitating towards careers that interest them, I think that is begging the question a bit, as it avoids considering why people gravitate towards the positions that they do. Are women more likely to go into nursing than into tech because of some intrinsic preference, or because nursing is much more frequently presented as an appropriate career path for them than tech, and they can currently see a lot more women doing that than applying to YC or whatever? I would suspect the latter.
You mention college professor as a high status position, which I think supports the point I was making, as whilst the majority of school teachers are women, the majority of professors are men.
As to people gravitating towards careers that interest them, I think that is begging the question a bit, as it avoids considering why people gravitate towards the positions that they do. Are women more likely to go into nursing than into tech because of some intrinsic preference, or because nursing is much more frequently presented as an appropriate career path for them than tech, and they can currently see a lot more women doing that than applying to YC or whatever? I would suspect the latter.