Django Girls one year later

If you claim that "power" drives everything, yet fields with no power difference have disparities which directly mirror the disparities you claim are driven by "power", that suggests there is an underlying theory that doesn't use power at all and which predicts more things.

By Occams razor, the latter theory is the one which should be used.

Because we should be able to happily enjoy our differences in one area (gender), and still not be judged in our ability to perform something completely unrelated (programming).

Obviously a social programme centered on cupcake tasting and yoga is catering to who one might consider stereotypical girls. But there are (I guess, I'm a white male in an engineering job after all) many ladies who don't want to disguise as androgynous (un-gendered?) trying to fit in, just to be able to have the job they want...

And, frankly spoken, I for one welcome a more gender balanced office. Because we are diverse and should enjoy interaction with each other. Work related (as equal peers) or not (as different gendeds).

That's not always enough to fund sufficient research, especially as those avenues of research show no more promise in uncovering a more fundamental model or validating/rejecting theories better than the ones that are currently explored.

> yet fields with no power difference have disparities which directly mirror the disparities you claim are driven by "power", that suggests there is an underlying theory that doesn't use power at all and which predicts more things.

If only you were right about the facts then your (unique, I must say) theory -- which I can only guess at[1] because you won't state it clearly -- would merit a closer look, but you're not. You are equating existence of bias with existence of bias, but with no regard to effect size. Here are the facts: http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...

CS participation was the same or higher than math and physics, and now it's significantly lower. The difference today between participation in math and physics vs CS (and engineering) is far higher than the relative difference between biology and physics. Indeed, it is higher than the relative difference between English and physics.

The social power theory is currently the only theory that has enough evidence to support it, and it gathers more evidence every day, which is why it is the (current, at least) consensus of the scientific community. Your theory (whatever it is), describes neither the observed differences in academia nor in the industry and runs counter to the body of knowledge we've accumulated about power dynamics, group behavior etc.

[1]: If your theory claims innate ability is a major cause of the difference, then it has been disproven. No differences in innate ability were found to be even in the ballpark of the participation difference we see in society. At this point in time, we can say with a high degree of confidence that innate ability is not a major explanation. Even evolutionary theories would reject ability-based explanations, as there is little reason for such huge differences in ability (way beyond difference in physical strength) in a species where the two sexes play almost identical roles (compared to, say, insects). If you have another theory, please state it.

Certainly. Non-hegemonic groups are marginalized from seats of power. After a long struggle, they may increase participation. Put another way: groups with more power tend to preserve and increase the power difference between them and less powerful groups, while the less-powerful groups may gain a share of the power after a struggle.

Sadly, it's not my theory, but one of the most elementary theories -- backed by countless evidence -- of the social sciences, supported by studies in anthropology, sociology and history (with some backup from social psychology, too).

Can you state your theory clearly, or, at the very least, state what evidence compels you to doubt the current scientific consensus?

> Make sure to include a clear definition of "power", and make sure this definition is clear enough that I can at the very least evaluate "more" and "less" power.

I have done so on numerous occasions in the past in our conversations. Please refer to them or look up "power" on Wikipedia. The short description is influence, and if you'd like a description with a more quantitative "feel", I'd say the power a person has is the number of people they can influence indirectly (i.e. graph reach) summed over the magnitude in the change of behavior they cause in each affected individual.

> I.e., I have no idea why you consider academic physics to have more power than academic biology

I don't. See my other response to you.

> Are you implying that women don't make individual career choices based on their interest and aptitude, but instead "concentrate [their] efforts" in some sort of collectivist power grab?

I'm stating the much-observed, well-known fact, that society pushes and directs us in various directions. What we see as "free choice" is, in fact, "free choice under societal pressures and restrictions". That behavior is not collective but individual, only biased. Just like any fair coin is free to make a choice how to land, yet we can make very accurate predictions on the result of a thousand coin tosses. Collective behavior is not always the result of collective decisions.

> I always thought women were just people like me, making selfish individual decisions to maximize their money/lifestyle/career enjoyment.

All of us make selfish individual decisions, but the (probabilistic) fitness function is largely determined by large-scale, emergent properties of the system. Think of individual particle movement and temperature or of Brownian motion. There are no collective decisions involved -- only individual "decisions" and local interaction -- yet the end result is that global factors heavily influence the distribution in behavior of the individuals. The effect of social influence on personal choice has been heavily studied in social psychology, and, in fact, in zoology too.