Pay in postage stamps.

You assume that I have a problem with the very part of the arguments here that I really have no problem with at all. The only words of yours I disagree with are "and achievement", at least when it comes to intellectual and not physical pursuits. Very few women will stand up and tell you that men and women are the same with different bodies. Personally, I've only ever heard one person seriously posit that theory outside of the internet, and it was a guy. And I laughed in his face.

But yeah, if I wanted to invest the time, I could go through and pick out all the stupidity, all the hypocrisy, all the assholishness in the comments here. But that stuff really stands out on its own, so why be deliberately argumentative and point it all out? That's not going to increase understanding of the issues here, it will just make people defensive and less open to considering new ideas. Why don't I, instead of your suggestion of declaring what specifically I oppose, expand on a few of the ideas here that I think have merit?

I'll start with an idea you've already brought up.

Yes, men and women are different. We have totally different mental and emotional structures. Anyone who denies this has no hope of ever understanding a person of the opposite sex. Does this mean that intelligence in certain fields is related to gender? I haven't seen evidence that that's the case, but there are definite general differences in inclinations between the sexes--as pointed out in TF summary of the A.

Women still love working in science, programming, number theory, mapping the human genome, designing space probes, every damn thing. Women have mathematical and scientific interest and ability. A hell of a lot of them do. You'd have to live under a rock to say that women have not made great contributions to STEM fields.

It's also true that a lot of women do go into creative, socially-focused, and/or traditionally 'feminine' lines of work simply because that's truly where their interests lie. Also, a lot of women want to be stay at home mothers. My mother was. That isn't wrong, or backwards. Many also simply don't have the economic option of not working--and many fathers wish they had the option of staying home to raise their kids, too. But generally men have a wider array of opportunities, better pay and benefits, and more chance for promotion. Looking at these facts, it only makes sense that as it stands, fathers usually end up as the primary breadwinners. It isn't right, but there it is. And it isn't always wrong, either.

Speaking of fathers, there's a lot of insightful discussion here about them. Just a few excerpts:

I would vote in support of paternity leave legislation. Hell, I'd campaign for it. Parents ought to be able to spend more time with their kids. That option should be open for both men and women.

Men with kids shouldn't be discriminated against in the workplace. Both mothers and fathers ought to have the ability to have fewer hours at work to spend more time at home. I think that there's a lot of moral decay in our society that could be avoided if parents just had more time to spend with their kids. More hours usually means more stress, and greater stress increases the statistical risk of domestic abuse. A lot of working families have to have two incomes just to scrape by, and many have to work overtime, especially if they're salaried. And a career in research/academia doesn't necessarily mean a fat paycheck like many for some reason seem to think.

Less time with their parents affects the development of children. It's deeply harmful whenever a field of work discriminates against workers with families, whether they're men or women, both in the short-term and the long-run.

I support shortening the workweek for moms and dads with young children, while still giving full-time benefits. Yeah, it's understandable that workers without children would be pissed off. But they ought to realize that parents inherently have more work to do in any given day, and that raising well-adjusted, healthy children is legitimate work that benefits everyone in society.

I'll budge on it, to an extent. Should single dads be eligible for child support? I think so, personally. This is a cruel world to live in for any single parent. In a truly egalitarian society, where true equality exists and women make as much money as men and have the same career opportunities open to them, single dads absolutely ought to be eligible for child support. The problem right now is that women are socially marginalized. Men aren't. (That is, as long as they are white, heterosexual non-Jews who are not disabled, not overweight, and under fifty-five. But that's an entirely different rant.)

The deck is demonstrably stacked against women. Speaking in terms of economics, requiring many women to pay child support to men would disproportionately cripple them financially. Being male is not a social stigma that men must struggle to overcome, so men have more and more varied opportunities to earn money, and to advance in the workplace, than women do. Plus men get paid more in general.

It baffles me when men cry 'Sexism!' because of a measure that tries to offset the socio-economic disadvantages that women have to contend with. That's like saying a racial minority is 'racist' for holding a grudge against the race that oppresses them.

This person goes on to say that they will surely be modded as 'flamebait', but their post is standing at +3 Insightful right now. I'm only going to respond here to the bit that I agree with: affirmative action, at least as it stands, is...kinda problematic. It's got good intentions, but it just hasn't been carried out intelligently, and some important parts of the theory behind it are flawed.

For example, let's look at exactly the kind of example you usually get to oppose affirmative action. The argument is legitimate, even if it's hackneyed. It is also true.

My dad's an electrician. An ace one. But he couldn't find work where he and my mother used to live in a suburb of Chicago, because his employers couldn't hire any more white males, even though they desperately needed more electricians.

That's a retarded way to try to introduce more equality into the work force, and really it only increases the problem because a legitimate bitterness at the unfairness arises among all the good white male electricians who can't get jobs, as well as the employers who need more electricians under their payroll. (Obviously this applies to other professions as well). Meanwhile, women and minorities are not getting any more jobs, nor gaining any more freedom to choose the career that they are most suited for.

This situation only lends support to the reactionist demonization of the struggle for equal rights. It's a cost without a benefit; it's putting the cart before the horse. Give scholarships, give opportunities for the same training to marginalized groups, reduce costs and other barriers to getting into certain types of school and vocational training, and increase the availability, accessibility, and veracity of information about all fields of work.

But don't strong-arm people into jobs they aren't qualified for. Don't force employers to hunt around for applicants who simply aren't there and may never be interested in a given field, even in a totally fair system. Instead, empower people to become qualified for the careers they really want. Don't force niche employers to change the way they hire, until it has become clear that marginalized groups are receiving as much of the same training as everyone else and still being overlooked. Social change, toward equality, is good. But stupidity isn't going to help anybody.

And I'll close by saying that I think it's reasonable to guess that even in a totally fair society, males will still outnumber females in certain professions. Different professions attract different sorts of people, after all. Journalism tends to attract liberal thinkers, much to the consternation of conservatives. Does that mean conservatives aren't hired as journalists? Turn on FOX News. Law enforcement tends to attract people with more aggressive personalities. Does that mean all cops are bullies? No, only every single one I've ever met, but I have it on good authority that good cops do exist, and I don't think that non-aggressive men and women are discriminated against in that job market. I've never heard someone complaining that they got passed over for a job because they're not a dick. (Well, not in law enforcement, anyway...)

I think every kind of discrimination is equally intolerable, and truly, right now I think that gay rights is a more pressing issue than women's rights. I am a woman, but I'm not gay. At least if I fall in love with a guy, I'll be allowed to marry him. Most men in the US can't say that, and that makes me more viscerally angry than any other current domestic social issue.

I would like to preface this comment by disclosing that I am a 'n00b'.

I love /., mainly because I enjoy the open and insightful discussion of topics and ideas that I have only recently begun privately educating myself about, being a longtime casual Windows user who is about fed up with the associated bullshit. I came here initially while trying to demystify Linux (which I am still working on). I was surprised and intrigued by finding this interesting aggregation of so-called 'geek news' articles, about a third of which are totally incomprehensible to me, but most of which I would never find out about from any major news outlet, including many about topics of great importance and influence on this world and the future. It was a real eye-opener, and remains an invaluable resource as I educate myself about things I'd never learned or thought about before, such as net neutrality, intellectual property law, &c.

But most of all I enjoy reading the comments. The 'mod' system was a little challenging to get used to, but I love the open discussion, the outrageous as well as well-reasoned arguments laid out intelligently and democratically. Much of the information and ideas I've come across here I never would have otherwise found, and it has dramatically influenced by own critical thinking. The information brought me in the door, and the insight, open-mindedness, and general spirit of free thought and intelligent public discourse hooked me.

But whenever I read an article on the front page having to do with women, I read the comments on it and my blood runs cold.

The males on /., in general, seem to me to be a very forward-thinking bunch most of the time. It's hard to wrap my brain around the response I keep seeing here when it comes to women's issues.

I think you're thinking of the Equal Rights Amendment, and the National Organization for Women.

The amendment was introduced in the twenties. Labor Unions opposed it, not women's rights advocates. The democratic party began supporting it around the eighties.

The National Organization for Women supported the amendment to the bitter end. They still support it, in fact. What killed all serious attempts to pass the amendment, then? The rise of conservatism.

Even if you're not going to do any actual research, at least have a rudimentary understanding of a topic before you spout off.

And another thing that affects the market is: advertising. Linux obviously doesn't need to have an advertising budget. Microsoft has a gargantuan advertising budget. So does Apple. People don't choose products based on what's actually available and what's actually best...you already know this. They choose the best of what they know is there. Until Linux advertises, other operating systems will garner a greater share of the market.

Until we reach a point in our economy where informed research actually drives the impulse to buy, expect Linux to have a lower percentage of the market share.

Lookin' kinda lonely there, handsome.

That makes sense. However, what it makes sense to do is not always what gets done.

In the eyes of some medical institutions, they see a cost in changing the records, but no change in what they can feasibly charge per patient nor any promise of an increase in their number of patients. They see a definite cost and only a nebulous possibility of future gain.

But let's say you're right and even without government intervention, within the next two years most US medical institutions digitize their records. Let's give a high figure and say 95% of them do this.

That remaining 5% will still cause problems when patients realize that health care is better and cheaper with other providers, or just leave for other reasons, and have to deal with beaurocracy in order to transfer records that they might need immediately. The possibility that something in their previous medical records might affect their treatment from their new physicians might escape them entirely. The record either might not get there in time or they might not see any reason to request its transfer at all. The original record might be lost by fire or natural disaster or any number of things. Creating electronic records (SECURELY) makes sense, but businesses don't want to make sense. They want to make money.

Also, with the economic shitstorm, why not create some immediate clerical jobs? Not everyone can help build roads and lay cable.

Well, it's true that there aren't as many female nerds as male nerds.

But there is a vast and growing army of female dorks.

Probably about three quarters of all fanfiction is written by women. Go to a comic, anime, or other such dorky conference, and it'll be swarming with women. Even the gaming scene has been experiencing an influx of females in recent years. Clearly women have no distaste for pouring their time and devotion into socially-marginalized pursuits with almost unsettling gusto.

So why do so few women get into IT and computer science? Read all of the comments on this article for your answer. Be sure to also read 0 and -1 modded posts.

Some people are right, some people are wrong, some people are perfect illustrations of the problem itself. Here is a very elegant little microcosm of the IT gender dilemma.

So, how do you solve it?

History has shown that you can't wait for people to change their hearts and minds on their own. They never will. The behavior must change first, and then, little by little, people will start to realize: "Oh, those black kids actually do learn the same as our kids when given an equal opportunity to succeed. That social stigma was totally ungrounded in reality. I can't believe those racist people used to segregate our children, how awful."

If anyone wants to see more women entering into IT, first give them incentives to do so. Something that will offset the uninviting yet inevitable social unpleasantness that they will have to deal with in the workplace. Scholarships, sign-on bonuses, any number of things might help. Start with students entering college--become a greater presence at job fairs and the like, and give female students reasons to consider such a field of study.

IT guys aren't inherently unpleasant or bigoted. In fact, in my experience, and perhaps because of the nature of the work itself, people in IT are very open-minded individuals, even if some are a little socially stunted. In time, men will learn how to work with women--if not as perfect equals, then at least as well as they do in most other fields.

But that can't happen if hardly any women ever show up.

Give them a reason to join that outweighs the discomfort of overturning a social stereotype, and over time, you'll see more women in the field.

I generally assume that people are usually arrested for little to no reason. I know sometimes that's not the case, but I live in a rural area. My experience with cops has led me to conclude that they are just bullies, and they harass people just out of boredom. The job seems to attract only people who are belligerent, aggressive, opportunistic and nasty. When I see someone in the back of a cop car, I feel a pang of sympathy.

This poll would've probably have had much different results if taken before the millions of job cuts...I know I might have answered differently if I actually had a job right now.

Thanks for the nightmares, man.