winscape 2188

I started to say "you're making my point for me", but I wonder ....

Here's a bit of the message I was replying to, again:

So my women-doctors example was meant to refute the claim that whatever ratio exists is necessarily "natural" and not something that needs to be fixed, since a "natural" ratio would stay the same over periods of time short in comparison to (physical) evolution, which doesn't seem to have happened in the case of women and medicine.

However, if "natural" means not just "the inevitable result of biology" but "the inevitable result of the combination of biology and culture" ....

Well, I guess one thing my example might still demonstrate is that "natural" ratios can change when the culture changes. So some future cultural changes might result in at least 50% of monitor gurus being female. Or not -- it's hard to say.

But anyway, if cultural changes *can* affect these ratios, then it does make sense to ask whether one should make such changes -- i.e., would they have negative effects that would be worse than the negative effects (if any) of gender imbalance? Maybe the answer is "it's not broke so bad that fixing it wouldn't be worse" -- but I think someone should be asking.

-- B. L. Mbuttingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.