With your caveats in place, I think we agree. And equivocation was just to provide an alternative reference point before I realized you were pointing out the upper echelon. In general, I still think its worth pointing out because what you did was over generalize, and while with the caveats here I agree with you, whether accidental or not, the media and the commentors on high profile forums really need to stop over generalizing things to make a point.
It is a horrible habit and one encouraged by mainstream media. Criticising people in power is a great thing enabled somewhat by western democracy, european socialism, and great places like this and other on the internet, but the over generalizing is hurting not only the United States but our ability to gain traction en masse as people on effective action versus aggregate ignorant responses to emotional appeals, which are harder and harder to track who has the most influence in.
For example, note the article last week on HN about how so many people have concerns about AI, which have evolved into worries and now very emotionally charged political opinions, but there is a huge mismatch between understanding what AI is, what different forms of it are, the concept versus the level at which it exists in reality, the challenges, the inherent differences between AI and the brain, how little we know about the brain, and the ways in which it can be employed. I literally can't tell you how many people believe in the next 3 years everyone will be reading the newspaper on the way to work in self driving cars and that this is just right on its way to happening and in 8 years we will all be over run by robots.
Having the facts and educating the masses as more Tech Ceos and tech ideas influence society at a fundamental level of oepration is crucial in the next 10-50-100 years, and keeping CEOs of corporations making this technology is a priority too, but I don't think demonizing them off the bat from the get go and assuming everyone in those positions is a sociopath is either data based, accurate, or productive moving forward as a society.
By over generalizing, stereotyping and demonizing anyone who fits into a mainstream stereotype (tree hugging liberals, evil republicans) I argue that we as people are giving our ideas, definitions, and opinions away to be swayed by mass media instead of scrutinizing core issues and communicating an empowered (not just emotionally strong) response with effective action.
That being said, I actually really like the idea of what you said regarding asking other intelligent females why they chose other paths despite there being some obvious cultural influences/good initial guesses such that it does not offer as much prestige as being a lawyer or doctor.
I also agree with you, of the few other women I interact with at work and my technical school, most are Asian or Indian based ethnicity. I would say in the countries they come from, providing concrete and measurable value measured by income is encouraged over more abstract forms of valuation (being an Art History major) because of globalization and the countries need to catch up in realms of measureable competition with first world countries.
In addition, theres probably not many work visas lying around for art history majors, and less of a chance for people working in other countries who desire to experience western work world and benefit from it to actually accomplish that.
The work visa issue in the tech force is a whole different story but not too hard to figure out/find out about.
At the end of the day, all women in general, not just looking at ones already in high performing roles (doctors, lawyers versus engineers) humans tend to operate on incentive, and as a 26 yr old female who is not entirely hideous and is able to have a decent conversation with a human being, I can tell you for myself it is way too easy to underperform, get shoved into auxiliary roles, marketing roles, front facing roles, sales roles, marry one of the many men to choose from in the industry and thats after going through years of emotional isolation from being a minority in all of my classes and struggling to maintain healthy boundaries with friends because they were mostly guys and I was one of the only girls around, and one of the only girls around with shared interests.
I have actively and deliberately avoided being in these roles but the number of times I've been asked approached about it or given the opportunity, highly encouraged or crticisized for not engaging in these less technically developing roles is really high and not even close to being on par with my male colleagues. "oh youre an ambitious female in a tech job, lets have you spend 80% of your time being the poster child for a female in tech, instead of actually being a female in tech"
good intentions pave the way to...umm I don't want to sell hell but "unintended socioeconomic repercussions"
Being and staying a highly technical female engineer and staying in core disciplines development (aka for me GPU kernel dev, Graphics programming ...etc I was Electrical Engineering with Computer Science minor) and shaking off all the men who want to put you in the kitchen because your the best thing on their team department or even company since sliced bread is not just not easy but emotionally burdensome sometimes.
Anywhere I work, it takes all the men who are interested in me men about two years for it to slowly kick in as if this is an algorithm they have to develop inside their head and debug until an output comes out, that I'm actually not at work husband shopping. Men have said this to me quote above like...its some kind of novel.
The saddest part is alot of these men actually want high performing women to be housewives, so if you even get to the already thinned out demographic of being a female engineer in a highly technical role in a male dominated environment, now you have conservatively 1/10 men at your company who would rather you be having their family and staying at home, and unlike other men, they have the money to do it and support you. While this is not the path I have or plan to take, I have seen many women take this path, and by many I mean the many of the few who end up in highly technical roles.
If you look at stats, even more alarming than the high performing women who choose to go to to other careers outside of STEM, are the ones who leave the workforce all together to be full time moms. No opinion or judgment on that, raising humans is not trivial and every person gets to decide how they do that within reasonable bounds of law, but to pretend its not a significant factor is delaying addressing the issue.
Google health insurance allows females to freeze their eggs to give birth later, and to me thats just an initial example of goign in the right direction towards technology development in healthcare and the business around it so that women don't have to feel like raising children and working is a choice they have to make. Some women pull it off, but it could be easier, alot easier and alot healthier, and we could increase the time range at which women could have healthy kids safely by alot. I hope to see biotech focus on women reproduction and kids going forward to help address this issue as well.
I think at the end of the day for high to low performing women, its very easy to not be high performing or highly technical. There's not enough incentive at the individual level, and too many easy ways out, even if at the other end we can see the cumulative benefits on many fronts cultural ,technical, impact, integration, design etc that could be had from having 50/50 in the tech force.