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There's something that continuously goes unsaid in the US tech industry where we do massive amounts of soul-searching about the lack and/or poor treatment of wo

There's something that continuously goes unsaid in the US tech industry where we do massive amounts of soul-searching about the lack and/or poor treatment of women in STEM: the ex-republics of the Soviet Union, while they have plenty of other problems, do not have this specific problem.

matt_wulfeck 11y ago
my personal observation over the years says that the vast majority of new female engineers have come from foreign countries. Or are American citizens who immigrated here after middle school. We're celebrating a narrowing gender gap, but American women seem to be largely left out.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  I wonder which of these other nations are. Perhaps their engineering cultures are more gender-egalitarian than ours.
  - hackinthebochs 11y ago
    The best explanation I've seen is that in countries with high economic insecurity, people are motivated to work at lucrative careers with low barriers to entry, despite their lack of inherent interest. Programming is top of the list almost everywhere. The survival instinct surely is egalitarian. But in countries with less economic insecurity this motivation to work in a field without an inherent interest simply isn't there. Perhaps this motivation is different across genders in wealthier countries (men are more likely to go into fields they don't like), or men simply like technical fields at higher rates.
  - user_0001 11y ago
    Equally as important, perhaps they do not have it drilled into them that beauty is all they should aim for. Everything they see is that women should be (model level) beautiful. Should flaunt their women-ness. Advertising, makeup, dolls, television, films play a bigger part than the so called sexism that exists in engineering cultures
    - ae_keji 11y ago
      The fact that makeup exists speaks a lot about our culture and how it views women.
      - meowface 11y ago
        Are you saying makeup doesn't exist in Eastern Europe?
        ae_keji 11y ago
        Well, it exists everywhere, but so does sexism.
        gozur88 11y ago
        So... it doesn't have anything to do with our culture at all, then?
        ae_keji 11y ago
        Human culture, I guess if you step back far enough. I say culture because I don't think makeup is tied to genetics.
        meowface 11y ago
        What evidence do you have that makeup is actually linked to sexism at all?
        ae_keji 11y ago
        That women wear it daily while it doesn't even cross most guy's minds. Also that women wear it, and are expected to wear it, to look better while, again, the concept rarely crosses most men's minds.
        meowface 11y ago
  - surfmike 11y ago
    Totally anecdotal, but I seem to meet disproportionately many woman engineers from Russia and Iran.
  - kaitai 11y ago
    It's not really about egalitarianism per se, it's about what roles women are expected/allowed to take, and what roles men are expected/allowed to take. The decision that engineering or programming is a "male" role is a fairly arbitrary one that we've made in the US. In some countries programming is seen as a good job for women because it's an indoor job, maybe you can be in a predominantly female environment, it involves typing, it's not that prestigious so you're not fighting to climb a career ladder. It's a commodity job so you can enter and leave the workforce as necessary to deal with family issues. None of these things is really about the work that needs to be done, unless we're talking about work that absolutely requires upper body strength. It's all just framing, perception, almost marketing. That's why I find the gender essentialist stuff nonsense. Why is being a top chef a male job and a home cook a female job? Because one requires bluster? You will often find that in countries with fabulously successful women programmers, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, these jobs are just considered jobs rather than Magical Jobs for Extraordinarily Smart Ninja Rockstars.
- home_boi 11y ago
  Weirdly enough, these foreign female engineers never complain about "culture problems" even though they make up the majority of female engineers.
  - kevinwang 11y ago
    But just because you don't hear them complain doesn't mean that there aren't problems.
  - clementangerine 11y ago
    They definitely do; I've had plenty of private conversations with non-American women in CS about sexism. I think Americans are just more likely to be openly vocal about it.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
tenpies 11y ago
There was an interesting Norwegian documentary that looked into this[1]. The overall observation was that societies where women were extremely free, usually ended up with the same gender distributions as societies in which they were less free (e.g. few women in STEM). By contrast, societies where women were only somewhat free, the number of women in STEM exploded (although I don't recall if it was quite 50/50). Without considering other factors, it almost seemed like some degree of social pressure to stay out of STEM was necessary to get the most women to be interested in it. --- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Was there extra social pressure to stay out of STEM in in the less free societies? A couple plausible alternative explanations that quickly come to mind are greater reliance on aptitude testing and having more motivation to get a job that granted more freedoms. (I don't have any idea if those are true, it just seems that there could be lots of things that would explain the difference)
- clevernickname 11y ago
  Came here to post that documentary (the entire series of which is freely available, btw[1]). I think you misinterpreted it slightly, however. The documentary presents evidence (strongly denied by the Norwegian social scientists interviewed) that male and female brains are wired differently, to be good at and enjoy different activities. It even goes so far as to show studies that link receiving an excessive amount of the opposite sex's hormones during prenatal development to developing the stereotypical interests of the opposite sex early in childhood. When a very egalitarian, gender neutral society like Norway exhibits more "traditional" gender distribution in the workforce than a less egalitarian one, the Norwegian social scientists thought this must be because of institutional sexism, or cultural brainwashing reinforcing gender roles, or whatever other excuse you've heard a million times. The documentary instead posits the idea that in a society where you are truly free to do what makes you happy, maybe it's normal that less women than men would want to be engineers and less men than women would want to be teachers or nurses. Whereas in "somewhat free" societies that have higher numbers of women in "male" jobs, these societies are usually much less affluent than, say, Norway. So of course people will end up doing jobs that they may not particularly enjoy, they have to to survive. It's not mild social pressure "daring" women to go against the grain or anything that could be imported, it's economic pressure forcing people to take whatever jobs are available (or indeed, having jobs assigned to them by a planning committee). Humans are adaptable, of course. When an intelligent person is forced (directly or indirectly) into a role that they may not have chosen themself, they will most likely learn to be competent. And both intellectual outliers and people (as mentioned above) with prenatal hormone mismatch can account for people that do exceptionally well in a role dominated by the other gender. But the question is, are you really making society better if you are forcing average people into certain roles to fulfill your political goals? Or are you increasing the amount of unhappiness in the world and perhaps even driving down the average competency in that field? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask
lr4444lr 11y ago
Is it largely the industry's fault though, or some mix of the dominant culture and the education system that sets a trajectory at a much earlier age which is very hard to reverse? Women are only about 18% of the computer science majors. EDIT. NPR had an interesting perspective on this, thought I'd share: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
Swizec 11y ago
Coming from an ex-communist country to the US as a 25 year old I was shocked that the whole "Wife stays at home to take care of kids" is actually seen as a real thing to do in 2016. I was certain this was something that only happens in old sitcoms.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gozur88 11y ago
Assuming it's actually a problem and not an outgrowth of womens' preferences.

matt_wulfeck 11y ago

my personal observation over the years says that the vast majority of new female engineers have come from foreign countries. Or are American citizens who immigrated here after middle school. We're celebrating a narrowing gender gap, but American women seem to be largely left out.

Apocryphon 11y ago
I wonder which of these other nations are. Perhaps their engineering cultures are more gender-egalitarian than ours.
- hackinthebochs 11y ago
  The best explanation I've seen is that in countries with high economic insecurity, people are motivated to work at lucrative careers with low barriers to entry, despite their lack of inherent interest. Programming is top of the list almost everywhere. The survival instinct surely is egalitarian. But in countries with less economic insecurity this motivation to work in a field without an inherent interest simply isn't there. Perhaps this motivation is different across genders in wealthier countries (men are more likely to go into fields they don't like), or men simply like technical fields at higher rates.
- user_0001 11y ago
  Equally as important, perhaps they do not have it drilled into them that beauty is all they should aim for. Everything they see is that women should be (model level) beautiful. Should flaunt their women-ness. Advertising, makeup, dolls, television, films play a bigger part than the so called sexism that exists in engineering cultures
  - ae_keji 11y ago
    The fact that makeup exists speaks a lot about our culture and how it views women.
    - meowface 11y ago
      Are you saying makeup doesn't exist in Eastern Europe?
      - ae_keji 11y ago
        Well, it exists everywhere, but so does sexism.
        gozur88 11y ago
        So... it doesn't have anything to do with our culture at all, then?
        ae_keji 11y ago
        Human culture, I guess if you step back far enough. I say culture because I don't think makeup is tied to genetics.
        meowface 11y ago
        What evidence do you have that makeup is actually linked to sexism at all?
        ae_keji 11y ago
        That women wear it daily while it doesn't even cross most guy's minds. Also that women wear it, and are expected to wear it, to look better while, again, the concept rarely crosses most men's minds.
        meowface 11y ago
- surfmike 11y ago
  Totally anecdotal, but I seem to meet disproportionately many woman engineers from Russia and Iran.
- kaitai 11y ago
  It's not really about egalitarianism per se, it's about what roles women are expected/allowed to take, and what roles men are expected/allowed to take. The decision that engineering or programming is a "male" role is a fairly arbitrary one that we've made in the US. In some countries programming is seen as a good job for women because it's an indoor job, maybe you can be in a predominantly female environment, it involves typing, it's not that prestigious so you're not fighting to climb a career ladder. It's a commodity job so you can enter and leave the workforce as necessary to deal with family issues. None of these things is really about the work that needs to be done, unless we're talking about work that absolutely requires upper body strength. It's all just framing, perception, almost marketing. That's why I find the gender essentialist stuff nonsense. Why is being a top chef a male job and a home cook a female job? Because one requires bluster? You will often find that in countries with fabulously successful women programmers, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, these jobs are just considered jobs rather than Magical Jobs for Extraordinarily Smart Ninja Rockstars.
home_boi 11y ago
Weirdly enough, these foreign female engineers never complain about "culture problems" even though they make up the majority of female engineers.
- kevinwang 11y ago
  But just because you don't hear them complain doesn't mean that there aren't problems.
- clementangerine 11y ago
  They definitely do; I've had plenty of private conversations with non-American women in CS about sexism. I think Americans are just more likely to be openly vocal about it.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

tenpies 11y ago

There was an interesting Norwegian documentary that looked into this[1]. The overall observation was that societies where women were extremely free, usually ended up with the same gender distributions as societies in which they were less free (e.g. few women in STEM). By contrast, societies where women were only somewhat free, the number of women in STEM exploded (although I don't recall if it was quite 50/50). Without considering other factors, it almost seemed like some degree of social pressure to stay out of STEM was necessary to get the most women to be interested in it. --- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70

maxerickson 11y ago
Was there extra social pressure to stay out of STEM in in the less free societies? A couple plausible alternative explanations that quickly come to mind are greater reliance on aptitude testing and having more motivation to get a job that granted more freedoms. (I don't have any idea if those are true, it just seems that there could be lots of things that would explain the difference)
clevernickname 11y ago
Came here to post that documentary (the entire series of which is freely available, btw[1]). I think you misinterpreted it slightly, however. The documentary presents evidence (strongly denied by the Norwegian social scientists interviewed) that male and female brains are wired differently, to be good at and enjoy different activities. It even goes so far as to show studies that link receiving an excessive amount of the opposite sex's hormones during prenatal development to developing the stereotypical interests of the opposite sex early in childhood. When a very egalitarian, gender neutral society like Norway exhibits more "traditional" gender distribution in the workforce than a less egalitarian one, the Norwegian social scientists thought this must be because of institutional sexism, or cultural brainwashing reinforcing gender roles, or whatever other excuse you've heard a million times. The documentary instead posits the idea that in a society where you are truly free to do what makes you happy, maybe it's normal that less women than men would want to be engineers and less men than women would want to be teachers or nurses. Whereas in "somewhat free" societies that have higher numbers of women in "male" jobs, these societies are usually much less affluent than, say, Norway. So of course people will end up doing jobs that they may not particularly enjoy, they have to to survive. It's not mild social pressure "daring" women to go against the grain or anything that could be imported, it's economic pressure forcing people to take whatever jobs are available (or indeed, having jobs assigned to them by a planning committee). Humans are adaptable, of course. When an intelligent person is forced (directly or indirectly) into a role that they may not have chosen themself, they will most likely learn to be competent. And both intellectual outliers and people (as mentioned above) with prenatal hormone mismatch can account for people that do exceptionally well in a role dominated by the other gender. But the question is, are you really making society better if you are forcing average people into certain roles to fulfill your political goals? Or are you increasing the amount of unhappiness in the world and perhaps even driving down the average competency in that field? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask

lr4444lr 11y ago

Is it largely the industry's fault though, or some mix of the dominant culture and the education system that sets a trajectory at a much earlier age which is very hard to reverse? Women are only about 18% of the computer science majors. EDIT. NPR had an interesting perspective on this, thought I'd share: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

Swizec 11y ago

Coming from an ex-communist country to the US as a 25 year old I was shocked that the whole "Wife stays at home to take care of kids" is actually seen as a real thing to do in 2016. I was certain this was something that only happens in old sitcoms.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

gozur88 11y ago

Assuming it's actually a problem and not an outgrowth of womens' preferences.