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> most of the countries that observed fall within a range of 30% That's huge > If this were socially determined, we'd expect some countries to have 80-90% wom

> most of the countries that observed fall within a range of 30% That's huge > If this were socially determined, we'd expect some countries to have 80-90% women in technology That's assuming social pressures are randomly distributed. But we don't observe 50/50 split between patriarchy and matriarchy. > Furthermore, what differences that are observed contradict the idea that rigid gender roles cause lower rates of women in tech Maybe because it depends which gender roles are applied and not their rigidity? The nerd/geek being an awkward boy with glasses troppe is specifically a western concept for example. Women in Eastern Europe worked in factories side by side with men for generations. Gender roles does not equal your concept of gender roles like women not liking/belonging/choosing not to be in tech.

manfredo 7y ago
Whether or not a range of 30% is "huge" is a subjective judgement, but that's besides the point. The point is, there are zero observed instances of women forming the majority of a the technology workforce in any county. I'm not sure if it's even possible to put countries in a binary between patriarchy and matriarchy. Instead, the study presented put countries on a scale that measures overall gender equality. And what difference we do observe is that patriarchal countries have higher rates of women in tech, but still lower than parity. Countries with gender equality (is this what you mean by "matriarchy"?) have low rates of women in tech often in the 20-10% range. So in "patriarchies" we see more female representation, but still lower than the majority and in egalitarian countries we see > The nerd/geek being an awkward boy with glasses troppe is specifically a western concept for example. And yet, the disparity between women and men in technology exists outside of western countries. Thus, attributing the disparity between men and women in tech to tropes like these is not effective line of reasoning. This is exactly the point that I'm making: attributing the gender distribution in tech to social factors is difficult when said distribution is observed across a wide variety of societies. > Women in Eastern Europe worked in factories side by side with men for generations. This was the same case in Western Europe and Asia as well - I'm not sure why you chose to highlight this fact. > Gender roles does not equal your concept of gender roles like women not liking/belonging/choosing not to be in tech. I'm not sure what you're writing about here, this sentence does not make sense to me. The point is that highly unequal societies with strict gender roles see more women in technology than more egalitarian societies. And for what it's worth, while 20% representation in tech in the united states might seem low at first glance it's actually not at all uncommon to have fields that are >95% one gender or another. Tech is on par with "Health practitioner, support technologists, and technicians", "Loan interviewers and clerks", "Printing press operators", and a couple percent above "Couriers and messengers" as far as gender disparities go [1]. 1. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...
- throwaway8548 7y ago
  > Countries with gender equality (is this what you mean by "matriarchy"?) No... I mean the dictionary definition. Where men didn't have the right to vote, work or own property until recently, where women are expected to own and make all the money, where men are raised to be married away, where men are expected to make the coffee and women to run the meeting. So on and so forth. I'm afraid that entire paragraph does not address my comment because you misunderstood what matriarchy means. > And yet, the disparity between women and men in technology exists outside of western countries Not if you take into consideration the labour participation rate... If you do, the disparity basically disappears. These societies with rigid gender rules tend to have less women overall working at all. > This was the same case in Western Europe and Asia as well - I'm not sure why you chose to highlight this fact. But they were forced to do that until the 90s under communism, I'm not talking about peasants in the middle ages. I mention Eastern Europe because I'm trying to give you alternative explanations for women participation in STEM. Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies. What do they have in common? They are not the West. They don't have the West's cultural norms. Ergo, one of those norms is stopping women from going into STEM. That, to me, sounds more likely. Much easier to explain vs trying to find something in common between India and Eastern Europe, which is pretty crazy. > I'm not sure what you're writing about here, this sentence does not make sense to me. The point is that highly unequal societies with strict gender roles see more women in technology than more egalitarian societies. And my point is your cultural expectation do not translate to other cultures. There might be a specific gender inequality that stops women from entering STEM. That may or may not exist in a society, independent on what gender inequality is overall. Vastly different societies like India and Eastern Europe have similar participation rates, despite the fact that Eastern Europe is much wealthier. If what you said is true, you'd expect Eastern Europe to have lower participation rate than India, but that's not the case. Correlation broken. > not at all uncommon to have fields that are >95% one gender or another That just means the problem is beyond just STEM, not an explanation.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    > No... I mean the dictionary definition. Where men didn't have the right to vote, work or own property until recently, where women are expected to own and make all the money, where men are raised to be married away, where men are expected to make the coffee and women to run the meeting. So on and so forth. I'm afraid that entire paragraph does not address my comment because you misunderstood what matriarchy means. We would expect to see even lower rates of women in STEM. The data shows an inverse relationship between women gaining more rights and resources and women's representation in STEM. > Not if you take into consideration the labour participation rate... If you do, the disparity basically disappears. These societies with rigid gender rules tend to have less women overall working at all. Yes, they do. Differences in labor force participation do not hold up to scrutiny. Plenty of the countries with less women's equality also have high labor force participation [1]. > But they were forced to do that until the 90s under communism, I'm not talking about peasants in the middle ages. I mention Eastern Europe because I'm trying to give you alternative explanations for women participation in STEM. Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies. What do they have in common? They are not the West. They don't have the West's cultural norms. Ergo, one of those norms is stopping women from going into STEM. That, to me, sounds more likely. Much easier to explain vs trying to find something in common between India and Eastern Europe, which is pretty crazy. But India and Eastern Europe still see low rates of women in technology. In fact, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic see the same or lower rates of women in technology than in the United States. You're pointing out these differences, and these differences do not yield higher rates of women in technology. So why do you seem to think that these differences are significantly affecting rates of women in technology. > And my point is your cultural expectation do not translate to other cultures. There might be a specific gender inequality that stops women from entering STEM. That may or may not exist in a society, independent on what gender inequality is overall. Vastly different societies like India and Eastern Europe have similar participation rates, despite the fact that Eastern Europe is much wealthier. If what you said is true, you'd expect Eastern Europe to have lower participation rate than India, but that's not the case. Correlation broken. Eastern Europe does have lower rates of women in technology than India. India has ~30% women in STEM [2]. Whereas the Eastern European countries have representation mostly in the range of 20-25%. > That just means the problem is beyond just STEM, not an explanation. Correct. The "problem" is that men and women have difference interests, and this difference is largely universal across different societies. Does social influence have some effect? Probably. We observe that countries with less rights and opportunities for women do have higher rates of women in technology than more egalitarian countries. But this influence only shifts the representation of women in tech by 10-15%. 1. https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/female_labor_force_participation/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/female_labor_force... 2. https://research.swe.org/2018/07/india-undergraduate-education/ https://research.swe.org/2018/07/india-undergraduate-educati...

manfredo 7y ago

Whether or not a range of 30% is "huge" is a subjective judgement, but that's besides the point. The point is, there are zero observed instances of women forming the majority of a the technology workforce in any county. I'm not sure if it's even possible to put countries in a binary between patriarchy and matriarchy. Instead, the study presented put countries on a scale that measures overall gender equality. And what difference we do observe is that patriarchal countries have higher rates of women in tech, but still lower than parity. Countries with gender equality (is this what you mean by "matriarchy"?) have low rates of women in tech often in the 20-10% range. So in "patriarchies" we see more female representation, but still lower than the majority and in egalitarian countries we see > The nerd/geek being an awkward boy with glasses troppe is specifically a western concept for example. And yet, the disparity between women and men in technology exists outside of western countries. Thus, attributing the disparity between men and women in tech to tropes like these is not effective line of reasoning. This is exactly the point that I'm making: attributing the gender distribution in tech to social factors is difficult when said distribution is observed across a wide variety of societies. > Women in Eastern Europe worked in factories side by side with men for generations. This was the same case in Western Europe and Asia as well - I'm not sure why you chose to highlight this fact. > Gender roles does not equal your concept of gender roles like women not liking/belonging/choosing not to be in tech. I'm not sure what you're writing about here, this sentence does not make sense to me. The point is that highly unequal societies with strict gender roles see more women in technology than more egalitarian societies. And for what it's worth, while 20% representation in tech in the united states might seem low at first glance it's actually not at all uncommon to have fields that are >95% one gender or another. Tech is on par with "Health practitioner, support technologists, and technicians", "Loan interviewers and clerks", "Printing press operators", and a couple percent above "Couriers and messengers" as far as gender disparities go [1]. 1. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

throwaway8548 7y ago
> Countries with gender equality (is this what you mean by "matriarchy"?) No... I mean the dictionary definition. Where men didn't have the right to vote, work or own property until recently, where women are expected to own and make all the money, where men are raised to be married away, where men are expected to make the coffee and women to run the meeting. So on and so forth. I'm afraid that entire paragraph does not address my comment because you misunderstood what matriarchy means. > And yet, the disparity between women and men in technology exists outside of western countries Not if you take into consideration the labour participation rate... If you do, the disparity basically disappears. These societies with rigid gender rules tend to have less women overall working at all. > This was the same case in Western Europe and Asia as well - I'm not sure why you chose to highlight this fact. But they were forced to do that until the 90s under communism, I'm not talking about peasants in the middle ages. I mention Eastern Europe because I'm trying to give you alternative explanations for women participation in STEM. Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies. What do they have in common? They are not the West. They don't have the West's cultural norms. Ergo, one of those norms is stopping women from going into STEM. That, to me, sounds more likely. Much easier to explain vs trying to find something in common between India and Eastern Europe, which is pretty crazy. > I'm not sure what you're writing about here, this sentence does not make sense to me. The point is that highly unequal societies with strict gender roles see more women in technology than more egalitarian societies. And my point is your cultural expectation do not translate to other cultures. There might be a specific gender inequality that stops women from entering STEM. That may or may not exist in a society, independent on what gender inequality is overall. Vastly different societies like India and Eastern Europe have similar participation rates, despite the fact that Eastern Europe is much wealthier. If what you said is true, you'd expect Eastern Europe to have lower participation rate than India, but that's not the case. Correlation broken. > not at all uncommon to have fields that are >95% one gender or another That just means the problem is beyond just STEM, not an explanation.
- manfredo 7y ago
  > No... I mean the dictionary definition. Where men didn't have the right to vote, work or own property until recently, where women are expected to own and make all the money, where men are raised to be married away, where men are expected to make the coffee and women to run the meeting. So on and so forth. I'm afraid that entire paragraph does not address my comment because you misunderstood what matriarchy means. We would expect to see even lower rates of women in STEM. The data shows an inverse relationship between women gaining more rights and resources and women's representation in STEM. > Not if you take into consideration the labour participation rate... If you do, the disparity basically disappears. These societies with rigid gender rules tend to have less women overall working at all. Yes, they do. Differences in labor force participation do not hold up to scrutiny. Plenty of the countries with less women's equality also have high labor force participation [1]. > But they were forced to do that until the 90s under communism, I'm not talking about peasants in the middle ages. I mention Eastern Europe because I'm trying to give you alternative explanations for women participation in STEM. Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies. What do they have in common? They are not the West. They don't have the West's cultural norms. Ergo, one of those norms is stopping women from going into STEM. That, to me, sounds more likely. Much easier to explain vs trying to find something in common between India and Eastern Europe, which is pretty crazy. But India and Eastern Europe still see low rates of women in technology. In fact, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic see the same or lower rates of women in technology than in the United States. You're pointing out these differences, and these differences do not yield higher rates of women in technology. So why do you seem to think that these differences are significantly affecting rates of women in technology. > And my point is your cultural expectation do not translate to other cultures. There might be a specific gender inequality that stops women from entering STEM. That may or may not exist in a society, independent on what gender inequality is overall. Vastly different societies like India and Eastern Europe have similar participation rates, despite the fact that Eastern Europe is much wealthier. If what you said is true, you'd expect Eastern Europe to have lower participation rate than India, but that's not the case. Correlation broken. Eastern Europe does have lower rates of women in technology than India. India has ~30% women in STEM [2]. Whereas the Eastern European countries have representation mostly in the range of 20-25%. > That just means the problem is beyond just STEM, not an explanation. Correct. The "problem" is that men and women have difference interests, and this difference is largely universal across different societies. Does social influence have some effect? Probably. We observe that countries with less rights and opportunities for women do have higher rates of women in technology than more egalitarian countries. But this influence only shifts the representation of women in tech by 10-15%. 1. https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/female_labor_force_participation/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/female_labor_force... 2. https://research.swe.org/2018/07/india-undergraduate-education/ https://research.swe.org/2018/07/india-undergraduate-educati...