At the root of this discussion is much about gaining resources and status in the search for "happiness." Discrimination is about oppressing or assure dis-infrancising a lesser group to gain a bigger slice of the pie, nothing more, nothing less.
Another commonly held belief is working harder alone will gain wealth, social status and all that. In reality many human societies simply do not work this way at all. Connections, relationships and who one might know or associate with, access to funding and economic-social entitlements has much to do with where any one particular individual or group might end up.
*One can work as hard as they possibly could and never have the economic might as a banker-investor with trillions of dollars at their beckon-call. Simply put, this is why the wealth stays wealthy if they understand the dynamics of how to use and leverage their wealth.. and with wealth comes social status, political influence and power over others-society-culture.
These are just a few realities of human nature, it is a product of human evolution, primal-instinctive drives that lives on tho this day.
Motivated and capable technical folks go off to start companies where possible and not allow themselves to be under the thumb of banker-investor-bean counters, but are left to answer to market demands and expectations. Marketing has much to do with creating a brand identity brand image and selling appeal to get an audience to spend their $.
In the ideal free market world, it would be gender blind and free of gender bias. In the current market reality, this simply is not true for a host of reasons.
http://learningfromexperiencelarryhirschhorn.blogspot.com/2014/12/women-in-high-tech-disappointments-for.htmlBernice
It shouldn't be necessary, but unfortunately it often is, because, well, humans are humans, and some of then are not nice and/or are simply not capable of treating all people equally.
And it's not just about gender, that's a drop in the bucket, you can get the same or worse discrimination/harassment/non-acceptance in engineering and almost any other industry etc for:
- race
- religion
- height
- sexuality
- political bent
- physical disability
- mental disability
- personal hygiene
- whether you drink or smoke
- choice of clothes
- your hair style
- what qualifications you have or don't have
- where you got those qualifications
- how tactful you are
- how proactive you are or aren't
- the way you talk
- your accent
and I could probably list dozens more if I thought about it.
The hard core feminists seem to forget this, and think it's all just about gender