It can often be a surprising exercise to look at the history of fields that are supposed to play to "natural" gender strengths and examine how they've evolved over time.
> As computer scientist Dr. Grace Hopper told a reporter, programming was "just like planning a dinner. You have to plan ahead and schedule everything so that it's ready when you need it... Women are 'naturals' at computer programming." James Adams, the director of education for the Association for Computing Machinery, agreed: "I don’t know of any other field, outside of teaching, where there's as much opportunity for a woman."
Swap out some of the specifics, and the general tone of argument hasn't changed much since back then. It's just that we've now decided to substitute in other "obvious" conclusions about who is suited for which jobs.
It can often be a surprising exercise to look at the history of fields that are supposed to play to "natural" gender strengths and examine how they've evolved over time.
> As computer scientist Dr. Grace Hopper told a reporter, programming was "just like planning a dinner. You have to plan ahead and schedule everything so that it's ready when you need it... Women are 'naturals' at computer programming." James Adams, the director of education for the Association for Computing Machinery, agreed: "I don’t know of any other field, outside of teaching, where there's as much opportunity for a woman."
Swap out some of the specifics, and the general tone of argument hasn't changed much since back then. It's just that we've now decided to substitute in other "obvious" conclusions about who is suited for which jobs.