Is Gender Share a Problem in Careers?

For years and years, it has been common knowledge that women earn less doing the same jobs as their male counterparts.  This is an issue that has slowly improved, although much work must be done.  But, as Paul de Palma discusses in the article “Women, Mathematics, and Computing”, the amount of women working in certain fields has steadily risen, and in some cases, female graduation rates are nearly identical to that of males.  de Palma shows that this trend holds true in fields such as biology and law, but not in computer science and related fields like engineering.  The author proposes this is because of the tinkering nature of programming, which is something that boys grow up doing.  Well, if boys are more interested in tinkering with toy vehicles and girls are more interested in playing doctor and veterinarian, then perhaps because they are naturally interested, they will choose a career path to follow their interests.  Young ladies and young men are different, and for the ladies who like to tinker and have a mathematical mind, go for it, enter in to the male dominated field.  But as far as I am concerned, it isn’t that the job market or college admissions are unfair, it is just that women and men are wired differently and naturally have different interests.  If a lady does decide to go in to computer science, I give her more credit, and perhaps her different way of thinking will result in changes to they way things are done or modifications to programming languages.  But to say that careers and graduation rates should be balanced is silly – an individual should do what they are interested in and are good at, and should not let their gender stand in the way.