I have actually learned something from all of this: when men and women work the same jobs, their salaries are actually a lot closer than I thought: women only earn about 5% less than men. Now, that does not address the lack of opportunity that they face in fields like engineering.
You say that they choose not go into engineering, I say "why is that the case?" Let's put aside the jobs that require physical strength. Why are there so few women in fields like engineering and software development? Could it be that they don't choose them because they are not encouraged, or even discouraged to do so from a very young age? Our country has a history of pigeon holing women into certain jobs, like "Hostess" or "Secretary" or "Telephone Operator".
And I bring up "Hostess" because I find it really interesting that you used that as your example. Why? I had to ask myself, at the risk of insulting all of long term hostesses out there, is "Hostess" really a career aspiration for little girls? I can see "Welder" being such for little boys, but why "Hostess"? Why not "Nurse"? Or "School Teacher" which are other "careers" that are dominated by women.
Just food for thought. I would say, "Nevermind, don't answer that.," but I don't assume that you won't give some thought to the question. As I said in my first sentence, your reply did make me do some research. I discovered that within the same field women and men are actually pretty damn close in what they earn.
But I also found that in the fields I mentioned above (engineering, software development etc.) that do not require physical strength, women are under-represented as a percentage of the work force. I think that "they choose not to go into them" is a really, really lame answer, but if it is the answer, I ask "Why? Since women can do these jobs just as well as men?" It seems less than ideal to me even if I look at it from just an economics point of view. Shouldn't we be making better use of the resources at our disposal? why are we letting all of the capabilities that women have to offer go to waste?
I would love to hear what you think about all of this, Parasaurolophous (if that is your real name!)
Oh and Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays / Enjoy your day off ... whatever works for you and anybody else that has bothered to read all of this!