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It's a legacy of socialist regimes enforcing gender ratios. Gender disparity is usually proportional to freedom of choice. ie. countries where there's less pres

by Bayart 5y ago

It's a legacy of socialist regimes enforcing gender ratios. Gender disparity is usually proportional to freedom of choice. ie. countries where there's less pressure to choose a particular field are more disparate in their gender ratios across disciplines.

orwin 5y ago
I'm not sure about that, i've hear Professor Emeritus Mallard talk about his youth in the genetical field and the first use of computers to assist geneticists, he told me that he basically never saw men doing computer work, and that changed in the 80s, along with the culture.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  There were a lot of women in computing in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and they've mostly been forgotten by the "Women don't really like this stuff" crowd.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I never encountered any in the 70s.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Were they 'into' it though, or did the nature of the secretarial work they were doing change? At least as I understand it, that was predominantly (of course there were exceptions, and female scientists, etc.!) the reason for the rise and fall of it. I'm not arguing for or against '"Women don't really like this stuff"' - I'm just saying an example against it needs to be women liking this stuff, not merely doing this stuff.
  - wheelinsupial 5y ago
    Apparently the amount of women in computer science majors peaked in the early-80s around 36-37%: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
- twic 5y ago
  The story i've heard is that the olden days, operating a computer was seen as clerical work, just like being a secretary, so ideally suited to women. Then we got 8-bit microcomputers in every home, and operating a computer became a technical hobby, so ideally suited to boys. The generation of boys growing up playing with computers, and girls not playing with computers, swamped any existing biases in the industry. I wonder if the communist countries had the former phase, but because not so many homes had computers, not the latter.
  - notanzaiiswear 5y ago
    How many women were in electronics? I think the 8 Bit Homecomputer thing grew out of the electronics hobby, not office computers.
  - zajio1am 5y ago
    > The story i've heard is that the olden days, operating a computer was seen as clerical work, just like being a secretary, so ideally suited to women. The fact is that in the old days, there really was plenty of clerical work around computers that just disappeared. Like rewritting data to punched cards and swapping wheels with punched tapes. My grandmother worked in 'data-processing facility' in a communist country, the facility employed many women, but they were (from whay i heard) essentially clerical positions without much CS/EE knowledge.
oldsecondhand 5y ago
It's a legacy of socialist systems where you can have 2 years of paid maternity leave and then go back to your previous job.
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  Also I guess you HAVE to go back to your job. Everybody has to do their part for society.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    The Soviet Union also tried to encourage having children. Not only did they have maternity leave, there was even a 6% income tax on childlessness.
  - burntoutfire 5y ago
    Not true, at least not in Communist Poland. Jobless single men were sometimes prosecuted, but a stay-at-home-mom was something completely normal in families which could afford it (which there weren't that many of).
PeterisP 5y ago
I was born in USSR and I don't recall any aspect there that would amount to "enforcing gender ratios". The way I recall the "gender politics" of the communist 1980s was that formally, gender was effectively ignored; in practice there were quite some prejudices; but the notion of discrimination wasn't even discussed much so anything similar to "affirmative action" or even caring about gender ratio would be quite alien to that regime. And yes, there were proportionally quite many female engineers and computer scientists. I might guess that this perhaps was facilitated by prejudices/discrimination in the "more macho" fields of construction engineering and industrial engineering, so all the high school girls with good STEM results would go to math and computer science fields instead of all the programs with a focus on heavy industry - but even those had a decent proportion of female engineers.

by Bayart 5y ago

orwin 5y ago

I'm not sure about that, i've hear Professor Emeritus Mallard talk about his youth in the genetical field and the first use of computers to assist geneticists, he told me that he basically never saw men doing computer work, and that changed in the 80s, along with the culture.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
There were a lot of women in computing in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and they've mostly been forgotten by the "Women don't really like this stuff" crowd.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I never encountered any in the 70s.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Were they 'into' it though, or did the nature of the secretarial work they were doing change? At least as I understand it, that was predominantly (of course there were exceptions, and female scientists, etc.!) the reason for the rise and fall of it. I'm not arguing for or against '"Women don't really like this stuff"' - I'm just saying an example against it needs to be women liking this stuff, not merely doing this stuff.
- wheelinsupial 5y ago
  Apparently the amount of women in computer science majors peaked in the early-80s around 36-37%: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
twic 5y ago
The story i've heard is that the olden days, operating a computer was seen as clerical work, just like being a secretary, so ideally suited to women. Then we got 8-bit microcomputers in every home, and operating a computer became a technical hobby, so ideally suited to boys. The generation of boys growing up playing with computers, and girls not playing with computers, swamped any existing biases in the industry. I wonder if the communist countries had the former phase, but because not so many homes had computers, not the latter.
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  How many women were in electronics? I think the 8 Bit Homecomputer thing grew out of the electronics hobby, not office computers.
- zajio1am 5y ago
  > The story i've heard is that the olden days, operating a computer was seen as clerical work, just like being a secretary, so ideally suited to women. The fact is that in the old days, there really was plenty of clerical work around computers that just disappeared. Like rewritting data to punched cards and swapping wheels with punched tapes. My grandmother worked in 'data-processing facility' in a communist country, the facility employed many women, but they were (from whay i heard) essentially clerical positions without much CS/EE knowledge.

oldsecondhand 5y ago

It's a legacy of socialist systems where you can have 2 years of paid maternity leave and then go back to your previous job.

notanzaiiswear 5y ago
Also I guess you HAVE to go back to your job. Everybody has to do their part for society.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  The Soviet Union also tried to encourage having children. Not only did they have maternity leave, there was even a 6% income tax on childlessness.
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  Not true, at least not in Communist Poland. Jobless single men were sometimes prosecuted, but a stay-at-home-mom was something completely normal in families which could afford it (which there weren't that many of).

PeterisP 5y ago

I was born in USSR and I don't recall any aspect there that would amount to "enforcing gender ratios". The way I recall the "gender politics" of the communist 1980s was that formally, gender was effectively ignored; in practice there were quite some prejudices; but the notion of discrimination wasn't even discussed much so anything similar to "affirmative action" or even caring about gender ratio would be quite alien to that regime. And yes, there were proportionally quite many female engineers and computer scientists. I might guess that this perhaps was facilitated by prejudices/discrimination in the "more macho" fields of construction engineering and industrial engineering, so all the high school girls with good STEM results would go to math and computer science fields instead of all the programs with a focus on heavy industry - but even those had a decent proportion of female engineers.