paul wheaton wrote:Maybe a good question is: why do people even ask?
I suspect that the question is a stepping stone placed by the person asking the question, to illicit a certain response which will allow them to move on to suggest that there is some unfair discrimination that has lead to the numbers in the statistics being as they are. But then again, some folks just might be curious.
Why aren't there more X people in Y field of study?
I would imagine the factors involved are numerous and complex. Though I'll be the first to admit that I like a short and sweet answer, some things can't be boiled down to a soundbite. That's the trouble with discourse in today's age. There's too much info and not enough time. AND nobody has enough time to really dissect all of these complex questions, but we all still want an answer. So we go with the quickest, most basic thing that we can come up with and we go with that. Even if somebody put a ton of effort into writing a book completely devoted to answering that specific question, almost nobody would bother reading it. That's kind of how we operate now.
Of course this is just my stupid opinion.