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It also has the highest rates of prostitution and human trafficking of women. Turns out all you need to make tech attractive to women is to reduce the wages of

by antt 8y ago

It also has the highest rates of prostitution and human trafficking of women. Turns out all you need to make tech attractive to women is to reduce the wages of every other job they might enjoy more to below starvation levels.

abenedic 8y ago
So I am not Bulgarian, and not currently in that hemisphere. That said I feel as though this is unfair to many in the ex-Soviet blok countries. There was a push in many to force equality of the genders, which may or may not have been misguided. One of my Maths professors who was very influential to me, was from that region and that time. I thank everyday that she was in a country and position to learn that. Otherwise I would be unemployed like my brother.
- antt 8y ago
  I am Bulgarian. The "push for gender equality" under communism is largely misunderstood, and purposefully so, in the West. As an example the entrance exams for primary school teachers were more competitive than the exams for any of the hard sciences or any type of engineering. My mother failed her teaching exam, yet was accepted into the Naval Academy, a cross between MIT and West Point. Those women who would have had the prestige of being teachers, the relatively high salaries, the early retirement and a whole host of other benefits lost them during the transition to the point that today being a teacher is one of the worst possible jobs. So now they are moving to tech, their second or third choices under Communism.
  - abenedic 8y ago
    Thank you for commenting, I have not lived in a way to understand the tradeoffs. I do not mean to miss understand. Where I am from I worked with many women in tech, who all graduated from technical universities. I do not know. I hear a lot about how in the west women are dissuaded from tech. I do not know.
  - robotomir 8y ago
    >the Naval Academy, a cross between MIT and West Point Buuuullshiiit.
- close04 8y ago
  The "push" was quite simple: they wanted people who could do the job and the gender was very far down the list of requirements. Technical universities were full of female soon-to-be engineers because there was nobody to tell them it's not a woman's job. These were among the relatively few well paid jobs so everybody would go for them. And women were expected to work just as men did since one income per family wouldn't be enough. There was never a time in the recent history of those countries when women were expected to stay at home (more than the maternity leave) or have menial jobs so there was no reason to have that imbalance. This is seen pretty clearly in the gender pay gap for some of those countries [0] and the average number of women working in science and tech [1]. Today on average you can make just as much money in PR as in engineering. Since the choice is much wider now it's easier to fall prey to that "not a job for a woman" BS. I can assure you if an engineering job became one of the few ways to escape poverty the balance would quickly shift towards neutral. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Gender_pay_gap_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Human_resources_in_science_and_technology_-_stocks https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
  - doombolt 8y ago
    The pay for engineering was actually quite poor in Soviet block. If money were what you wanted, you'll go into coal mining. Sadly, most of those to-be-engineers of both genders will find themself sitting 9-to-5 doing nothing useful, and then their jobs will evaporate as socialism fails.
    - close04 8y ago
      > as socialism fails You mean "as communism failed". I wasn't talking about the Soviet bloc as it is today but the former "USSR-aligned" countries like those referenced in this article (countries like Bulgaria or Romania) during communist times. They were and still are in that region of prosperity where they could never afford to have a single income earner in the family so pragmatism led to a more uniform development path for both men and women alike. So in those communist times they pumped out tens of thousands of qualified engineers with no regard to their gender. And while some of the opportunities they had in their home countries may have dried out over the past few decades that "legacy" of not caring about gender means today's Europe is full of such "eastern" male and female engineers doing everything from writing software for your bank to designing the suspension of your car. There may be countries that "import" more skilled female engineers than they bother to produce internally. Probably for the same reason prosperous countries like Switzerland, Germany, UK, or Austria pay their women ~20% less than the men. If you work in IT and have any kind of contact with teams outsourced in Eastern Europe you probably already noticed that you're just as likely to deal with qualified women as with qualified men. As for coal mining every single piece of literature I've come across about that period mentions low wages, no paid overtime, 7 day work week, pay cuts for not meeting production quotas, poor living conditions, "shortened" lifespan, etc. That's a far cry from the engineers working to build cars like Bulgarrenault, Bulgaralpine, Pirin-FIAT, Chavdar, and whatever else they were manufacturing at the time. Full disclosure: I am not Bulgarian and never lived there.
ivanhoe 8y ago
No, it's about the radically different life style than in US. In all Eastern Block countries, at least in cities, women were expected to go to school, work and pursue their careers regardless of their marital status. Partially because of lack of money so families needed both salaries, and partially because of communistic ideas of equality, for a woman to be just a housewife was not very common, nor respected life choice for the generations who grew in socialism. It was something reserved for old ladies and wives of politicians. And education was free so there was a lot of women (and still is) in natural sciences, and they naturally later moved into IT as it grow more popular (and started paying better). Also women had (and mostly still have) many benefits that were not that common in West, like long fully-paid childbirth leaves, easy getting free days when kids are sick, long vacations, etc. Socialism had a terrible productivity and was bad for 100 and 1 reason, but it was stimulating time for people (regardless of gender) to do science and tinker with stuff.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  Which is why there is a miniature socialistic universe - lets call it university- for that phase in the west.
oblio 8y ago
You do know that men face the same "starvation level" wages outside of tech, no? (they're not really starvation-level, just pretty bad poverty...) Human trafficking happens just because men are desperate for sex, especially with good looking, young women. And in the West they are willing to pay what are huge amounts for it, relative to salaries in Bulgaria. It would happen to men, too, if there was a market for it...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jonathan7711 8y ago
Care to share us your nationality so we can dig out something offensive about it? *Not a bulgarian, just offended by an unrelated and offensive comment.
- antt 8y ago
  I am Bulgarian, but thanks for being offended on my behalf for what I said about myself.
nikolay 8y ago
I think it's actually the lowest in the Eastern Bloc. And if there's prostitution, it's Gypsy prostitution, which is something totally off-topic.

by antt 8y ago

abenedic 8y ago

So I am not Bulgarian, and not currently in that hemisphere. That said I feel as though this is unfair to many in the ex-Soviet blok countries. There was a push in many to force equality of the genders, which may or may not have been misguided. One of my Maths professors who was very influential to me, was from that region and that time. I thank everyday that she was in a country and position to learn that. Otherwise I would be unemployed like my brother.

antt 8y ago
I am Bulgarian. The "push for gender equality" under communism is largely misunderstood, and purposefully so, in the West. As an example the entrance exams for primary school teachers were more competitive than the exams for any of the hard sciences or any type of engineering. My mother failed her teaching exam, yet was accepted into the Naval Academy, a cross between MIT and West Point. Those women who would have had the prestige of being teachers, the relatively high salaries, the early retirement and a whole host of other benefits lost them during the transition to the point that today being a teacher is one of the worst possible jobs. So now they are moving to tech, their second or third choices under Communism.
- abenedic 8y ago
  Thank you for commenting, I have not lived in a way to understand the tradeoffs. I do not mean to miss understand. Where I am from I worked with many women in tech, who all graduated from technical universities. I do not know. I hear a lot about how in the west women are dissuaded from tech. I do not know.
- robotomir 8y ago
  >the Naval Academy, a cross between MIT and West Point Buuuullshiiit.
close04 8y ago
The "push" was quite simple: they wanted people who could do the job and the gender was very far down the list of requirements. Technical universities were full of female soon-to-be engineers because there was nobody to tell them it's not a woman's job. These were among the relatively few well paid jobs so everybody would go for them. And women were expected to work just as men did since one income per family wouldn't be enough. There was never a time in the recent history of those countries when women were expected to stay at home (more than the maternity leave) or have menial jobs so there was no reason to have that imbalance. This is seen pretty clearly in the gender pay gap for some of those countries [0] and the average number of women working in science and tech [1]. Today on average you can make just as much money in PR as in engineering. Since the choice is much wider now it's easier to fall prey to that "not a job for a woman" BS. I can assure you if an engineering job became one of the few ways to escape poverty the balance would quickly shift towards neutral. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Gender_pay_gap_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Human_resources_in_science_and_technology_-_stocks https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- doombolt 8y ago
  The pay for engineering was actually quite poor in Soviet block. If money were what you wanted, you'll go into coal mining. Sadly, most of those to-be-engineers of both genders will find themself sitting 9-to-5 doing nothing useful, and then their jobs will evaporate as socialism fails.
  - close04 8y ago
    > as socialism fails You mean "as communism failed". I wasn't talking about the Soviet bloc as it is today but the former "USSR-aligned" countries like those referenced in this article (countries like Bulgaria or Romania) during communist times. They were and still are in that region of prosperity where they could never afford to have a single income earner in the family so pragmatism led to a more uniform development path for both men and women alike. So in those communist times they pumped out tens of thousands of qualified engineers with no regard to their gender. And while some of the opportunities they had in their home countries may have dried out over the past few decades that "legacy" of not caring about gender means today's Europe is full of such "eastern" male and female engineers doing everything from writing software for your bank to designing the suspension of your car. There may be countries that "import" more skilled female engineers than they bother to produce internally. Probably for the same reason prosperous countries like Switzerland, Germany, UK, or Austria pay their women ~20% less than the men. If you work in IT and have any kind of contact with teams outsourced in Eastern Europe you probably already noticed that you're just as likely to deal with qualified women as with qualified men. As for coal mining every single piece of literature I've come across about that period mentions low wages, no paid overtime, 7 day work week, pay cuts for not meeting production quotas, poor living conditions, "shortened" lifespan, etc. That's a far cry from the engineers working to build cars like Bulgarrenault, Bulgaralpine, Pirin-FIAT, Chavdar, and whatever else they were manufacturing at the time. Full disclosure: I am not Bulgarian and never lived there.

ivanhoe 8y ago

No, it's about the radically different life style than in US. In all Eastern Block countries, at least in cities, women were expected to go to school, work and pursue their careers regardless of their marital status. Partially because of lack of money so families needed both salaries, and partially because of communistic ideas of equality, for a woman to be just a housewife was not very common, nor respected life choice for the generations who grew in socialism. It was something reserved for old ladies and wives of politicians. And education was free so there was a lot of women (and still is) in natural sciences, and they naturally later moved into IT as it grow more popular (and started paying better). Also women had (and mostly still have) many benefits that were not that common in West, like long fully-paid childbirth leaves, easy getting free days when kids are sick, long vacations, etc. Socialism had a terrible productivity and was bad for 100 and 1 reason, but it was stimulating time for people (regardless of gender) to do science and tinker with stuff.

Pica_soO 8y ago
Which is why there is a miniature socialistic universe - lets call it university- for that phase in the west.

oblio 8y ago

You do know that men face the same "starvation level" wages outside of tech, no? (they're not really starvation-level, just pretty bad poverty...) Human trafficking happens just because men are desperate for sex, especially with good looking, young women. And in the West they are willing to pay what are huge amounts for it, relative to salaries in Bulgaria. It would happen to men, too, if there was a market for it...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jonathan7711 8y ago

Care to share us your nationality so we can dig out something offensive about it? *Not a bulgarian, just offended by an unrelated and offensive comment.

antt 8y ago
I am Bulgarian, but thanks for being offended on my behalf for what I said about myself.

nikolay 8y ago

I think it's actually the lowest in the Eastern Bloc. And if there's prostitution, it's Gypsy prostitution, which is something totally off-topic.