I personally don't think an even split in every area is the right way to go. But the percentage of men in nursing is in the single digits - far from 'an even split'. There are concrete benefits to having more male nurses - some patients respond better to being handled by a member of a given gender. Same thing with teachers for young children, in that more male teachers means having a broader, better range of role models. 'Matching the demographic proportions' is a stupid goal, but 'well-represented' isn't.

This is going to sound like an is-therefore-it-ought-to-be fallacious argument but it makes sense to me that there are more female nurses simply because women are better suited to the task and more importantly want to be nurses? I mean there are probably historical reasons for the low number of male nurses and other things to attribute the low ratio to but we didn't sit down one day and force females to be nurses.

Healthcare and educations has way bigger problems than some patients responding better to male nurses. There's a lot of what I consider grasping at straws when it comes to this sort of discussion. Let's start by talking about the curriculum and spending and stuff that has way more of an impact on our society.

1) Unless there is reason to believe that the skills involved in doing a good job are widely different between genders, it represents a waste of human talent.

2) Unless there is reason to believe that interest in the job is widely different between genders (and that this difference either causes no unhappiness/difference in social status, or is completely unavoidable) it represents a loss of potential happiness.

This isn't rocket science.

Adding "This isn't rocket science" or equivalent at the end of a post doesn't make you right by the way, it does make you sound arrogant though. There are reasons to believe that skill and interest in genders vary, the premise of both of your arguments is weak, but I'll reply as though it was valid.

> 1) Unless there is reason to believe that the skills involved in doing a good job are widely different between genders, it represents a waste of human talent.

If either gender can be equally skilled at something it doesn't matter if one person is using their skill at nursing and another at coding, the split doesn't have to be the same. All women could do nursing all men could code, where's the waste of talent?

>2) Unless there is reason to believe that interest in the job is widely different between genders (and that this difference either causes no unhappiness/difference in social status, or is completely unavoidable) it represents a loss of potential happiness.

Essentially - "there are women who would be happy if they coded but they don't, so we should encourage more women to code". In our current society there is little pressure from anyone to avoid career paths that don't fit the gender role. You're pushing for equality when it is isn't needed because of "potential happiness" - hey there are men who would enjoy ballet dancing but we don't have enough men doing it so let's spread the word.

Sorry I don't buy any of this equal society crap, let people do what they want.

Say our model is that talent is a bell curve, with equal distribution among the genders, and that our (simplistic) goal is to maximize the talent available for a given profession. Then we expect 50% men, 50% women. Isn't that obvious?

> In our current society there is little pressure from anyone to avoid career paths that don't fit the gender role.

Tell that to a male nurse.

I guess I'm being arrogant, but you're being willfully blind. It may turn out that it just happens that men prefer some jobs. But given that the gender expectations that we have change over time (http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-...), it deserves extra scrutiny, rather than the assumption that it is natural.