Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

That is pretty awesome.

I remember back in high school in the Soviet Union (then, what became one of the ex-Soviet Union republics, much like Georgia), there were quite a few girls in my class who were doing well above and beyond what boys would be in math, informatics (what we called computer science) and physics. Remember asking a girl for help to understand integrals.

So there is something to it in that part of the world. And yeah I think strong role models help. One of the girls' father was a programmer that helped probably.

And other aspect, I think they didn't have as many stupid and bad role models to look at -- no teen pop models, no Snapchat, our school didn't have cliques, not as much backstabbing. There was not any emphasis on sports as extra-curricular activities (How I know to compare, you might ask? Well I actually went to a year to a US High School as well so got a pretty good first hand view of both sides).

Heck for a while someone invited kids from our school to join a sports riffle club (or target shooting, whatever shooting .22 riffles sport is, always wondered if it was KGB or army looking for snipers to train...). And even there, half of those that joined were girls. And they hit the targets better and most consistently than us boys because they were more dedicated and we just goofed around more.

Maybe I am being nostalgic here, but I think there is something to the differences in culture. Although I wish I had a better idea exactly what it is.

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm.

I still remember how I did not get jokes about inferiority of girls when we emigrated to Western Germany - I simply had never ever heard one before.

What speaks against your theory is that men died on all sides in WWII, but in the West (read: democratic societies), women's rights developed in a distinctively different/slower way.

PS: Yes, it was not all rosy, childcare was dual-use, it was also used for indoctrination of the youngest and even to some degree to control/check on the parents.

EDIT: It's probably revealing that my initial impulse is to consider this story as irrelevant because it focuses on the gender. Yes, after 26 years in the West I understand why it is relevant.

Communist revolutions threw out the old order entirely, including the part where women were considered inferior to men. There was never such a revolutionary change in the West.

Writing here to support this. Is all true.

I grew up in a very communist country, where the gender didn't matter, men and women were expected to be treated equally. The misoginism was barely noticeable. Salary didn't pay attention to sex, were really equally paid.

Leter I emmigrated in Germany. I was tottaly surprised how misoginist the society here is. So much, that there are laws that enforce the equality between man and woman. This is now so much tilted towards women, that man are most of the time suppressed, just because they are men. This is also not healthy, but, hey, we lived in matriarchy before, so we will survive just as well.

I can't find the link now, but I remember reading about a paper (probably through Marginal Revolution) that showed that, in the GDR, because men and women worked equally and earned equally (in the general case, party leaders aside), a lot of cultural gender equality just became the norm. E.g. men couldn't impress women with nice cars or any of the other status symbols that are so common in the West, and had to 'convince potential mates' through their personalities and actions.

So a lot of the gender roles of the West were basically obliterated, i.e. there was no real stay-at-home mother in the GDR, all mothers were working mothers. Seems to fit your experience, and the GP as well.

Also, there were almost no nice cars to be had.

Social signalling is relative to the things available for that society. Even if there were no "nice cars" available by your standards, there still were "impressive" cars, relative to the society in question.

I used to live there. East Germans got West German TV. They knew about West German cars.

(And in any case, the range of cars available was much more compressed. Thus there was less differentiation at the high range.)

No I think except for the politicians and military most people just got the standard model of Trabant or nothing.

You could also get a Wartburg, a Moskvitch or a Lada, and a few others. Probably also Skoda, but I don't remember hearing about them back then.

The big brass were driving Volvos. They were nice cars, but Sweden was seen as sufficiently neutral and socialist-like.

>E.g. men couldn't impress women with nice cars or any of the other status symbols that are so common in the West, and had to 'convince potential mates' through their personalities and actions

Is this gender equality? It sounds, and it may just be because you simplified it to fit into a single line, that the men were still having to impress the women. Wouldn't gender equality have been the end of there being a set gender having to impress the other?

> there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work

There is something to it. In the soviet era, those three girls would have been praised for their success and presented as a proof that the world (or at least the commie world :)) is a fair place where everybody can succeed with enough determination and work. This was intended to send the message that women are expected and welcome members of the workforce and made for a reasonably sane atmosphere.

OTOH, the author here starts with complaining how the world isn't fair, despite having a counterexample at hand, and then follows with bitching about Y chromosomes and discrimination before even naming those girls. WTF. I certainly wouldn't want to go into environment where nobody cares about my work and I'm basically a tool used by sad people to make others feel sad.

Isn't "everybody can succeed with enough determination and work" the American Dream in a nutshell? (not talking about how it works out in practice, since that's not the point in your "soviet era" scenario either)

The American Dream of success is different. In the US, for various reasons (probably including mobility & lack of local extended family) part of the dream is to have Mom stay home with Kids while Dad works 40 hrs/week to afford the House, Car, and TV. Those are different contours than the more communal ideals espoused in the Soviet Union or even most of Europe today.

This isn't exactly my theory, this is something fairly well documented that I have come across in general reading.

>men died on all sides in WWII

I'm not sure if you're aware of how far the scale of deaths in the Soviet Union exceeded any Western country - East Germany was probably close, which is an interesting correlation: were there any communist countries without major gender imbalances?

I don't think many people were killed in e.g. Slovenia (and the rest of ex-Yugoslavia). Yet we had communism and almost perfect sex equality.

The overall number of World War II casualties in Slovenia was thus of around 7.2% of the pre-war population, which is above the Yugoslav average, and among the highest percentages in Europe.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_Lands_in_World_War_II

It also probably had to do with religion. The US was heavily religious compared to the Soviet block. And religion usually puts women in their place behind men.

As someone who has lived in western Germany all his life but has relatives that lived in the GDR I have come to a similar conclusion. The system of the GDR was horrible but there was an inherent gender equality (mostly due to pragmatic concerns of extending the workforce imo). The west had the "luxury" of role-casting women as the stay at home mom. Married women used to require their husbands permission for quite a lot for quite some time in western Germany (they couldn't open a bank account until the late 60s for example iirc).

In the GDR equality between the genders was supposed to be a done thing, so no one talked about feminism.

Women did work. But we had few women in management and leadership positions.

What speaks against your theory is that men died on all sides in WWII, but in the West (read: democratic societies), women's rights developed in a distinctively different/slower way.

The Soviet Union had by far the MOST male casualties of any side in the war. 30 MILLION people died, far more than anywhere else.

https://www.rt.com/news/265603-ww2-losses-interactive-video/

Another explanation could be that during the hardships of the post-Communist era everyone was on their own, men and women equally. In Russia, the percentage of women in management positions is still the highest in the world (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-womens-day-business-idUSKC...).

The economy was so inefficient that they had to utilize everything they had to sustain it. There is also communist narrative about equality.

Smallbore is the sport you're talking about.

The Soviets were very good at it and made some fine rifles, I used to use an old Vostok in high school, cheaper than a German Anshutz, and almost as good.

Ah yes. Thanks! Remember the arm belt. And a bunch of other technques we learned (the full breath then stopping at a half breath, etc...)

Found a picture even:

http://d2dt9vg05qkweq.cloudfront.net/media/1534055/web_joe-f...

(notice the arm belt).

We had a nice facility. When it rained we used air rifles inside for practice.

First thing I noticed in that picture was that the rifleman is left handed. As a casual marksman, using club rifles, I'm often frustrated by the bolt being on the wrong side (catering for all the right-handers).

We had a shooting range in our school basement (and it was a bog-standard Soviet school). Those were the best lessons ever.

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