Jim Kress wrote:
> 
> Treading carefully, here I go ...
> 
> I disagree with the Social Engineering analysis presented by Tina.  My
> experience, in Engineering and IT Consulting, is that this area of endeavor
> is well represented by many women.  I hire them and have for 20 some years
> (in companies large (e.g. Ford) and small (too many examples to count ...)).
> As a matter of fact, my wife has a BSCE, BSEE, MSEE and is very active in
> these areas.  The IT projects I currently manage are staffed at least by 50%
> females or more.
> 
> So ...
> 
> I think some other comments made in this thread need to be re-examined in
> the light of current reality and not colored by past prejudice or opinions
> or other politically motivated criteria that are inappropriate for
> discussion here.
> 
> Jim

This topic does require a careful tread... :)

I agree that this newsgroup isn't the place for prejudice or political
opinions but I haven't seen anything inappropriate in this thread yet, which
was started by someone wondering why there seemed to be so few women using POV-Ray.
As for the current reality, contributors to this newsgroup seem to be nearly
all male, which suggests that Pov users are mostly male. I doubt that the
current reality lends convincing evidence of an even (or mostly female) gender
balance in the 'hard' sciences, or in most technical fields, even noting your
experience. Obviously this doesn't mean that there are no counter-examples.
There are female Pov artists, computer programmers, physicists, etc. But
currently there tend to be fewer women in these areas as there are men.

As for the mental differences (now that I've committed myself on this topic) I
suspect that they are minimal (although not nonexistent) and that society is
at fault more than genetics (everything's always society's fault!) for this
gender imbalance.

-Mark R.

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