I TAKE issue with Elaine McArdle's "The freedom to say 'no'" (Ideas, May 18). She ends one paragraph by writing, "One forthcoming paper in the Harvard Business Review, for instance, found that women often leave technical jobs because of rampant sexism in the workplace," then continues, "But if these researchers are right, then a certain amount of gender gap might be a natural artifact of a free society."
Yet somehow she concludes that women might actually be freely choosing to avoid technical or engineering careers. In what way is a workplace rampant with sexism "free"?
If sexism is rampant in technical jobs, I suppose researchers could say that women "choose" to leave those jobs, much as prisoners "choose" to confess to crimes after being waterboarded. Both such choices are attempts to escape an intolerable situation.
I'm sure a woman who has been given less pay, a smaller office, less research funding, and years of subtle yet pervasive abuse feels perfectly "free" to find another career.
SHANNON LARKIN
Cambridge
