Are they guaranteeing throughput? Then it's meaningless for most folks. It's like putting tires rated for 200 MPH on your care and assuming it will now go 200 MPH.

Presidents, governors and mayors all do this kind of thing -- call up private businesses and ask them to do stuff. The mayor may call a local business and ask it to reconsider withdrawing its sponsorship of the local youth baseball league. The governor might call up union leaders and senior management in a strike, particularly if it affects things lots of people need like transit or health care.

This is the exercise of *soft* power, of influence rather than of compulsion. Obama can't call Apple and compel them to change their stance. But he can call Tim Cook and *persuade* him, possibly with more success than Michael Lynton, particuarly given that the two may be having some kind of dispute. Ego *does* play a role in CEO decision making.

Glad you brought that up. The modern day conveniences had taken the housewife position from a full time job, to one that can be accomplished in short order. So a lot of women were likely getting bored out of their minds. And while little children are in need of constant attention, after they are all off at school, there is a vacuum that needs filled.

Now your mentioning of women working outside the home is interesting, because it brings up the matter of the "Rosie the Riveter" women working in industry during World War 2.

These ladies performed completely competent work. So why, after the war, did they so willingly trade off their war work, to go back to being housewives?

Note - you applied the word "bad" here. For most of my career, I wouldn't have thought of doing anything else. That's not a "bad" job.

But the rub is this. Many - most? women wouldn't do what I did. Why? I dunno, I can only give reasons from experience. And perhaps for many people, a job with irregular hours, travel, sometimes dangerous work, sometimes working in primitive conditions, and work so diverse in nature, I kept a suit shirt and tie as well as farmer clothing because I never knew what would come up. For some, that was a bad job. I loved the variety of the work. But no reason why any motivated female couldn't do it.

And I think that's the point. Motivation. Not all tech jobs are as demanding. But if I only programmed all day - yeah, I'd not find that a good job.

Back in the 1980's when anything Japan, including the stinky sushi was the in thing, I shook my head in disbelieve

At that time I was still relatively new in America, and the "blindly following the trend" thing that was happening in the US of A was in some way, comparable to what happened in China back in the "culture revolution"

We human beings supposed to have enough brain power to think, but looking at how people were/are behaving, no matter if it's in the US of A or in China, sometimes I have to wonder if that defect in the human beings would one day cause our own downfall

Watch out for the boomerang, man !

Whatever the West is doing to Russia now it will ricochet and the amplified effect will eventually land on the lap of the West

Whenever I scan a document or an article and the word 'Diversity' pops up ... sigh!, yet another useless Political Correctness piece of crap!

The theme is always the same --- no matter if it's tech, or business, or wealth, or whatever-you-can-think-of, their basic argument is that someone has been _WRONGED_ and we must do everything to right the wrong, to make sure that the disenfrenchised party is disenfrenchised no more !

The 'common theme' is 'GAP', and the adjective can be 'racial', or 'gender', or 'wealth', or whathaveyou

They never care to address the WHY, they only want to talk about the "injustice"

The society is not going forward if every time they come up with something new the rest of us have to stop everything in order to 'help the disenfrenchised'

Disclaimer: I am a patent holder

I entered the field back in the 1970's and guess what? Patents were already there !

While it is true that patent trolling were not considered to be trendy back then, but the existence of patents in itself had already stiffen innovation somewhat

While we geeks and nerds kept on trying out new ideas, the institutions (universities and research labs) we worked for were sweating bricks and had to check with their attorneys to make sure that we were doing did not trespass on somebody else' patents

The idea of patents were good, when it was invented, however, that idea does not suit the present days environment anymore. Due to the abuse and trolling, patents have become a big hindrance to the society to move forward

Face it, smart kids were mercilessly teased in school since a long time before 1994. But being socially awkward, these kids stick to what they ARE good at, like tinkering with computers. This provides an escape for them, since they don't have a clue how to be accepted by others.

Girls tend to mature socially earlier than boys. They DO understand how to relate to others socially, and they don't want any part of the kind of treatment they see their smart male friends enduring. So...they do the smart thing...they stay away.

Is this all a terrible injustice? Probably. But we shouldn't be blaming the men. They are the ones who stuck with their quest despite the pressure. If there is anyone to blame, blame Hollywood, which (at the time) produced movie after movie reinforcing the "nerd" stereotype.

Would it not be true that natural selection would select for women who were predisposed toward being risk averse? If you want your offspring to survive to reproduce, you can't be doing the prehistorical version of base jumping.

And for men, especially in prehistoric times, those who took risks might have been rewarded with more and better food, and therefore could provide more for their offspring.

Simplistic, it's true, but I have to say there is something to it. My better half is quite risk averse - but it happened after we had a child. Before that, she was into horseback riding and some sports. After the child was born, th ehorseback riding tailed off unti she just stopped. Now, she's pretty much stopped any risky behavior at all. As in a merry-go-round is beyond her comfort level.

On the other hand, I'm into Hockey (playing) motorcycling, and regularly climb towers and rooftops as part of my other hobby. As a concession, to her, I haven't bungee jumped - yet.

This is not to say that if a woman wants to do something, she shouldn't because it is a "guy thing". If she can, there's no reason why she shouldn't.

There are people her who pull out the sexist card, the downmods, unless you conform to their very narrow perception of reality. Someone called me sexist because I noted it isn't difficult to walk over to the "boys to section", after I said I'd let my daughters play with any toy they wanted, be it tradional male, or female type toy. Expect this post to be hit with either flamebait or troll about ten minutes after I post it.

And yes, that quote is in the story.

I thiink the answer to why a lot of women are not going into particular fields is twofold. First off, you have to really really want to be a STEM worker. There are better paying jobs, with better job prospects, better pay, and one each shitload more prestige than STEM work.

If my offspring was engaged to a programmer, I'd ask him or her if they had any plans for when their job was outsourced.

In my own case, I spent a lot of extra hours, including overnights at the job. Field trips with indeterminate length of stay. Lost a lot of vacation, (Got a couple months a year, took a week or less. Times that over 30 plus years.

I think that for all the bitching and moaning over this subject, the answer is much simpler than the variations on the "Men suck" meme.

In the earlier days of post liberation, women tried a lot of different careers. Eventually, they found out which ones they wanted to be in. And it doesn't have a whole lot to do with what we are hearning about.

I find it hard to believe that the often shy geeks in STEM fields are more sexist than the business people in industry where "escorts" are a standard practice. It does not compute.

And I have worked in efforts to engage young women in STEM fields. In the end, I've come to the conclusion that there two ways to get more women in STEM fields. Either force more women into them, or fire men until we reach equal gender representation.

Just once I'd like to see a discussion on /. where women's experiences aren't discounted.

Maybe women have experiences men don't have and that we can't understand? Maybe us men shouldn't poo poo statistics just because they haven't "seen" discriminatory actions in the same way I shouldn't don't say there's no "racial bias" in policing just because I haven't experienced it personally (and probably won't).

But maybe I'm hoping for too much. Has /. even had a female on staff ever?

Well, if they use average age, that figure idoesn't mean you hit 20, and you're dead.

But back in the day, infant mortality was pretty high, and there wasn't much in the way of treatment for things we consider NBD now. So average age was a lot less than likley maximum age.

As for the business of having offspring, reproduction happened pretty much as soon as it was possible. Our present day belief of getting married and starting a family in our mid-30's or even early 40's is a completely artificial construct. This is why I have always questioned the modern day truism that it is better to wait maybe 15 years after you can reproduce to start to reproduce. Hard to imagine all that evolution providing that for us.