> If society wants gender equality and too few women in STEM leads to inequality rise, than society can change it by foridding sexism talk, by changing education practices, by using media to educate adults and so on. Society can create environment where any sensible parent would try to make her daughters to like math and her sons to not being sexist.
But why should "society" want gender equality, if the individuals, that comprise it, don't?
Consider the following paraphrase:
"If society wants traditional family values, and people being gay lead to erosion of these values, then society can change it by forbidding homosexuality. Society can create environment where every sensible parent will want their kids not to be gay or lesbian."
This is often argued from conservative side, under assumption that homosexuality is all nurture. You argue the same way against women's preference against computer science, again, under assumption of nurture (which is quite likely to be wrong according to science).
So here is the is-ought fallacy of yours. This is a moral issue (what _ought_ be), regardless of the actual origin (nature or nurture) of the people's usual preferences, which are what _is_.
To be fair, I don't have a big problem if that "society decision" is a democratic vote (that is one person one vote) on the matter. But it's important to realize that this goes against moral preferences of many people, which are more liberal (including mine).
> "If society wants traditional family values, and people being gay lead to erosion of these values, then society can change it by forbidding homosexuality. Society can create environment where every sensible parent will want their kids not to be gay or lesbian."
> This is often argued from conservative side, under assumption that homosexuality is all nurture. You argue the same way against women's preference against computer science, again, under assumption of nurture (which is quite likely to be wrong according to science).
Um... It is just a little more complex.
Of course, it would be nice, if we was able to start with moral judgement, select terminal goal, and only then start to search for ways to reach that goal. But we are not omnipotent, and therefore while finding solutions for social problem we need to take into consideration possible ways to implement those solutions. It would be not very bright to select unrealistic goals. For example, if homosexuality is all nature, than it would be difficult to get rid of it, it would be either impossible or would need some kind of eugenics with artifically guided evolution, which is morally bad and no-no.
I didn't touch question "is equality good or bad". It is some kind of ethical question. I assume that equality between men and women is good and important fight now because it is the current consensus in society.
So, equality is the terminal goal. Equality is ought to be, right? Then we must find the best way to it. And for it we should know nature it or nurture, because if it nature than the terminal goal can be unreachable. For finding the best way to archieve equality we need to investigate causes of inequality, we need to know is this causes are nature or nurture ones, because without this knowledge we probably would try to do stupid things which will not work. And probably our investigations reveal that there are no acceptable way to archieve perfect equality, than we would need to find some compromise, to solve some kind of optimizational problem dealing with tradeoffs.
> To be fair, I don't have a big problem if that "society decision" is a democratic vote (that is one person one vote) on the matter. But it's important to realize that this goes against moral preferences of many people, which are more liberal (including mine).
Of couse such a facts we all should know, but there are historical examples when opinion of some big groups of democratic society didn't matter. For example, ~50 years ago there was a lot of white supremacist, but society decided that their views is their problem and shouldn't be considered while changing society.
Accepting or rejecting views of some group is moral judgement somewhere on the level of finding terminal goals for society. I'm not ready for such a judgements, moreover I'm not USA citizen and it is just not my problem. All my speculations based on assumption that equality is good and society is ready to do something about it.
But why should "society" want gender equality, if the individuals, that comprise it, don't?
Consider the following paraphrase:
"If society wants traditional family values, and people being gay lead to erosion of these values, then society can change it by forbidding homosexuality. Society can create environment where every sensible parent will want their kids not to be gay or lesbian."
This is often argued from conservative side, under assumption that homosexuality is all nurture. You argue the same way against women's preference against computer science, again, under assumption of nurture (which is quite likely to be wrong according to science).
So here is the is-ought fallacy of yours. This is a moral issue (what _ought_ be), regardless of the actual origin (nature or nurture) of the people's usual preferences, which are what _is_.
To be fair, I don't have a big problem if that "society decision" is a democratic vote (that is one person one vote) on the matter. But it's important to realize that this goes against moral preferences of many people, which are more liberal (including mine).