Originally Posted by wings&wheels
No.
What I am saying is that for whatever reason(s), women in the US do not enter the STEM fields at the same rate as men nor at the same rate as in some other countries and it has nothing to do with capability. Because of this, we have folks who could have been capable engineers, developers, mathematicians, etc. who never even start to pursue the studies. Essentially, our STEM professionals are being selected from a smaller overall population than it could be.
Ok, that makes more sense. However, I'm not exactly sure how you got to the conclusion that we have a smaller population. It's not like engineering classrooms are sitting half empty because of lack of interest from women. They instead seem to be more interested in humanitarian types of careers. Just walk into any nursing clinic or human resources and see how many men you see.
I would agree that there could be a void if these women and men decided to do absolutely nothing, but they just pursue what naturally interests them, so I don't see where the void would be as far as talent is concerned.
From a diversity point of view, I could see an argument there, but diversity alone only take you so far, true talent and passion is what makes the difference.
