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Comment by cabalamat | Hacker News Reader

It's because Russia isn't a particularly nice place to live. From the article:

> Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects.

They do tech because it provides a way of getting a good life. In the West, where conditions are less harsh, women don't feel the need to go into tech to get a good life.

Similar considerations explain why female university students are more likely to do STEM subjects in Iran than in Sweden.

This, incidentally, blows out of the water the argument made by some feminists that women don't do STEM because of conditioning in nasty patriarchal societies.

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Without engaging in any of the rest of your comment, I'm going to call out again the attempt to shift goalposts from tech to STEM in general. Tech people want to believe that the gender disparity in their field is shared among all the STEM fields, but, of course, it is not: women are far better represented in other STEM fields. Computer science, physics, and engineering have similarly acute gender disparity. The rest of the STEM fields --- including mathematics --- have closer to 50/50, and some STEM fields, like molecular biology, have better than 50% representation of women.

so would you say those fields that have >50% women would need to work on their gender diversity to include more men?

Since molecular biology has something like a 54/46 distribution and tech has something like a 19/81 distribution I'd probably tell anyone who told me I should focus on the injustices of molecular biology to shove it up their ass.

54/46 is considered gender equal ratio in Sweden as its within the 40%/40% line.

However the argument that we should put our focus based on how high the gender unequal distribution is is an fascinating argument since here in Sweden we have a perfect record of every employed person profession (as part of the tax record). We can list every professions and their gender distribution, and naturally very few of the stem professions are at top or even in the top 20. Worst two professions (of each gender) had midwife and floor tile worker at both >99.4% of each representative gender.

The data for female dominated professions was midwife and dentist at 99.6% and above, with pediatric at 98%. For male dominated profession at 99%-98% it is tile worker, mechanic, thin plate worker, carpenter, concrete worker, electrician, and last plumber. With 90% of people working in a profession with less than 40% women or 40% men, IT with a distribution of 81%/19% is quite average and unremarkable on the list. molecular biology, being in that small 10%, is much more remarkable because it actually has a gender equal distribution.

In case this needs to be spelled out for you, and I apologize if it doesn't, but the subtext of there being a unique gender disparity in tech not shared by thematically similar STEM fields, let alone STEM in general, is that the causal agent is misogyny.

If you have any facts to back up that strong assertion, I am sure people are interested. Otherwise, a blanket accusal of 'misogyny' is asinine and nonproductive.

Here you go:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=+Numquam+ponenda+est...

I wasn't the one who downvoted you but I'm sure you're aware that the other side of the argument (that claim it's not misogyny) also cites Occam's razor.

Therefore, for either side to claim that the "simplest explanation is misogyny" or "simplest explanation is preferences" is seen as unconvincing to the opponent.

My personal rule is that anyone who deigns to use latin in their arguments also has to use all English words in their dictionary form, and not their colloquial expression.

As per that, your use of misogyny to mean something apart from ingrained dislike or contempt for women is wrong.

You're using misogyny as if its a synonym for any expression of differing attitudes to men and women, regardless of if the outcome is good or bad, and if the participants feel happy or poorly about the situation.

That colloquial usage is utterly disqualified if you want to turn this into a formal argument.

I'm aware that you are a celebrity here and I'm a nobody.

And I agree with you in a lot of things, including that we should make workplaces more inclusive.

But being right does not entitle you to be rude, passive agressive, using various tricks to silence everyone.

Think about this: if someone else behaved like you are doing now (edit: in this whole thread) - and wasn't a celebrity or otherwise safe - they might very well have to face unpleasant consequences (edit: was something like might very well have to find a new job).

There's nothing passive about my take on this problem. And nobody's being "silenced", at least not by me.

Until you mentioned the posters 'celebrity' status, I hadn't even read their username.

Usernames, and personalities, are very de-emphasized on HN.

I'm also uncertain what issue you have with their behaviour?

Where can I find that breakdown of the data?

I'm very interested in looking at the raw numbers.

Thank you.

http://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/en/ssd/

Labour market - The Swedish Occupational Register

In English no less.

Great resource.

Thank you!

A taste: (unfortunately I can't link to the actual report)

Gender pay-gap in IT related fields is <5% (for the same occupation and education) vs 10 to 20% for the general private sector.

> to shove it up their ass.

C'mon man. You're better than that.

Giving you an upvote (yep, parent was downvoted for some reason) and say agree:

I too have seen tptacek communicate a lot better than today.

People who care about a 19/81 split in one field in college when college as a whole is a 66/33 split should... well you already offered a suggestion at what they should do.

Or we could stop acting as if the metric at the end is what we need to equalize, look at it only as an indicator, and then find issues to fix. If 19/81 is caused by some actual sort of discrimination, we can fix which ever issues we identify. Just as we can with the 66/33 split.

Where are you going to expend your energy? The whole world is full of misogency, do you spend your time trying to fix that, or worry about the compartively small number of times men face unfairness?

Flip this same argument around, and you get accused of derailing/silencing: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Misdirected_feminism

Hmmmmm, that's a really good point. I suppose I agree that in general an argument that there is worse shit in the world is probably a bad reason to ignore other problems. In this case however it'd be difficult to do anything about biases against men without exacerbating sexism further.

If you can think of a way of making things fairer for men, without making things worse for women at the same time I'm all for it.

> In this case however it'd be difficult to do anything about biases against men without exacerbating sexism

How so? It's not even established that an unequal gender ratio is "sexism" at all.

> so would you say those fields that have >50%

Notice what was written. It was not >50%. It was better than 50%

What is better than 50 % ?

The original comment was:

> and some STEM fields, like molecular biology, have better than 50% representation of women.

not ">50%"

not "more than 50%"

not "higher than 50%"

but "better than 50%"

Of all the variations, only the last one has a moral value attached to it.

It's either greater or lesser than 50%. If so if not greater, then you are saying lesser than can be "better"?

It's a distance from optimal, making it worse no matter which direction it is.

But then "so would you say those fields that have >50%.." is a valid question by that measure.

I don't think you mean that >50% is better, but your general point is right. Other STEM fields are not as male dominated. Even physics is not as bad as CS. I had several women TAs in physics, but none in CS/programming.

Others are far worse than IT, like mechanical engineering.

CS, EE, MechE, Physics.

When you say "others" it's helpful to convey the distribution. Overwhelmingly, STEM has better gender parity than CS. And MechE might be the only STEM field worse than CS.

Do you have a citation re:mathematics? As a person in mathematical physics, I would be /very/ surprised to hear that math is a more gender balanced field than physics.

I do somewhere; I'll track it down and relay the numbers. But also I'll say that this matches my own personal experience: go to an academic cryptography conference sometime and note how many more women you see than in a generic CS conference. There are more women mathematicians than computer scientists and physicists.

I haven't attended any crypto conferences but, I do work a bit with high school STEM programs and I can tell you.. higher ratio of male to female, BUT, those female students are far more interested in the math / crypto fields than the males (which leads me to believe they will stick to it career wise vs the male students. So it's not too surprising your observations.

In Spain it is about 50-60%: http://www.rsme.es/comis/mujmat/estadisticas/facultades.htm

Note that the problem it is specific only to some degrees, in general women are advancing in most western countries: http://politikon.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/4.png

"Tech people want to believe that the gender disparity in their field is shared among all the STEM fields"

It's convenient for both women's studies departments and tech recruiters to pretend other fields don't exist. It is taboo to talk about it, to the point that I haven't come across any serious piece of writing that dared to seriously contemplate the question of "what are the girls choosing to do instead?", but I don't think it has much to do with psychoanalytic undercurrents.

> what are the girls choosing to do instead?

https://nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsb20161/uploads/1/6/at03-12...

Wow. I knew there was a disparity; I didn't think it was this stark.

I'm aware that there are statistics. Nobody interprets them. (also the link doesn't even include medicine (edit: it does i just missed it D:))

> the link doesn't even include medicine

It does mention nurses, nurse practitioners, and technicians.

There are no female "Agricultural engineers"?

I find that hard to believe.

Interesting. Seems like the biggest ones are Nursing (83.4%) and Teaching (81.1%; kindergarten teachers in particular are 97.7% women!).

If women are represented in the rest of STEM but not the T - doesn't that challenge the narrative of "social conditioning" being the root cause?

What I mean is, there isn't anyone out there telling women that physics is cool whereas programming is not. My bet is that anyone encouraging their little girl to be a physicists would be equally enthused about electrical engineering.. but I could be wrong.

I think when people decide what a good career would be, they're going off what little knowledge they have. And programmers aren't displayed on TV as big earners - but rather scrawny stinky anti-social dorks. And sadly there's a source of truth to this..

Software just isn't cool. It's actually pretty un-cool. I don't know how to change that.

> Software just isn't cool. It's actually pretty un-cool. I don't know how to change that.

I'm currently as an exchange student in China, and every time I tell someone that I'm studying CS, they are like "Oh my god, that's so cool!".

Somehow I'm still completely surprised when I hear that reaction. I have no idea what causes this perception, I need to remember to ask next time.

The gender distribution in my classes is still 90%+ male, though. Somehow the different image of the field does not translate into more female students.

> doesn't that challenge the narrative of "social conditioning" being the root cause?

> Software just isn't cool. It's actually pretty un-cool. I don't know how to change that.

I don't see how you find this to be a conflict. If software is presented as "uncool", is that not social conditioning?

Not sure what you are talking about.

In India. Mechanical engineering sees least enrollment from women. Many times there no girls in the Mech eng class at all. Or worse, 1 or 2 who go and tell other girls not to take up Mech ever.

The issue isn't discrimination at all. You regularly have to do physically demanding work. Welding, Metal cutting work with a myriad other stuff. Of course you may argue Women do physically demanding work all the time. But the point is such women come from a background of poverty which demands such a lifestyle.

If you come from anywhere a above lower-middle class lifestyle the overall lifestyle of your family never prepares you for this.

I don't care how many lego sets you buy for your girl. Nothing prepares for you for a certain things.

> The rest of the STEM fields --- including mathematics --- have closer to 50/50

Citation needed for this. From a quick look from a paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.06196.pdf it seems like this statement is true at the undergraduate major level, but certainly not true at the doctoral level.

This is particularly relevant as unlike engineering/tech, where a Bachelor's (or less) suffices for the majority of work, the same is certainly not true in mathematics.

As an illustration of this, note that for many people graduate school in mathematics is spent trying to come up to speed with the current research efforts of the community, unlike engineering where one is (generally) expected to be a "producer" once one hits graduate school.

Anecdotal from female friends who have started down the path to PHD in stem fields, you basically have to forgo having children until you are in your 30's.

The current path of ~10 years of schooling through women's 'best' biological time to have a child is, I imagine, a reason for some of the discrepancy between male and female post undergrad.

It's not even that niche though is it? A lot of the women I work with have started having kids in their mid-30s. In the US, I think overall people are marrying later and having kids later, IIRC.

You can, but then you would have complications. My friends in their later 30s are having more trouble conceiving and bringing children to term.

On the other hand, my friends who had children in their early-20s had no issues.

>better than 50%

This wording reminds me of that which Obama also used with respect to gender in STEM & education:

>In fact, more women as a whole now graduate from college than men. This is a great accomplishment

-Barack Obama

Source: http://www.newsweek.com/president-obama-reflects-impact-titl...

I hesitate to hold up mathematics as a good example. There are an encouraging number of female majors but further down the pipeline the numbers get much worse. For tenured faculty positions the latest number [1] I've seen is 14%.

[1] http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/

That's a valid criticism. As you say I was conflating one thing with another (wider) thing that it's part of.

>This, incidentally, blows out of the water the argument made by some feminists that women don't do STEM because of conditioning in nasty patriarchal societies.

No, it absolutely does not.

You suggest "overall society might affect individual choices" and then from that premise reach the conclusion "overall society definitely does not affect individual choices."

>[Women get into] tech [in Russia] because it provides a way of getting a good life. In the West, where conditions are less harsh, women don't feel the need to go into tech to get a good life.

Consider hypothetical societal differences [that may be patriarchal] that may make "a good life" to a Russian woman a totally different thing than "a good life" to an American women. Consider, even if definitions were identical, societal differences [that may be patriarchal] that may make make pursuing a good life much harder (or even downright impossible, see Saudi Arabia) in one country vs another.

I could go on.

For one example, after Title IX of the Higher Education Act was passed in 1972 female enrollment in medical school went from around 10% to over 20% in just 2 years. It's now around 50%.

> They do tech because it provides a way of getting a good life. In the West, where conditions are less harsh, women don't feel the need to go into tech to get a good life.

But does it now? All of 'the West' isn't Silicon Valley.

I live in 'the west', Western Europe to be exact, and while I probably make more than a plumber or a shoe salesperson, I'd say someone with a medicine, law or business degree tends to make a lot more than I do, under easier conditions, and in those fields, you're not considered old at 40, and you're not on call in the weekends. IN terms of 'a good life', tech isn't the best return on investing 5 or 6 years of your life in a degree.

It's probably not a coincidence that these are the degrees women like to pursue. For a job that requires a college degree, 'tech' isn't that rewarding in terms of money or 'the good life'. It's rewarding in terms of getting to work in tech. You really need to want to work in tech to do it. This may be stupid prejudice of mine, but I get the impression guys tend to think more in terms of what they want, and girls tend to think more in terms of what would be smart of practical.

Now I can imagine that for someone in India or Romania, a degree and skills in tech means you could work for customers in the west or even move there, and make a lot more money than you would otherwise, while a business or law degree and skills don't transfer as well across borders, so the same dynamic of choosing what you want versus what would be the smart choice leads to a different decision.

Hard to say that people in medicine, law, or business have easier conditions than you do.

What do you do, that's in worse conditions than those fields?

Indeed. Medicine and law require far more schooling / apprenticeship before the rewards start to overcome the difficulties (such as debt), often far more than even 5-6 years. All 3 can easily require being on-call at inconvenient times, and definitely require well above 40 hours a week.

Yeah, but are you looking at this from the Silicon Valley point of view, where a computer programmer can expect a 6 figure income straight out of college? Because that's far from the norm in the parts of 'the West' where I live.

Is that true, though? Does Silicon Valley really pay 6 figures for entry-level? I guess with cost of living they probably have little choice.

The cost of living in the SF area is about comparable to that in major cities in western Europe. You can't easily make a 1:1 comparison, some things are way more expensive on one side of the Atlantic, and some on the other.

I'm not claiming the job is "easier". Making a website isn't exactly brain surgery. I'm saying the reward is higher in terms of your income and status in society.

> This, incidentally, blows out of the water the argument made by some feminists that women don't do STEM because of conditioning in nasty patriarchal societies.

No it doesn't

At most it suggests that in more desperate circumstances women will be motivated to climb that hill and struggle through it

It doesn't mean there isn't a problem

Just an anecdote but my female cousin from China wanted to be a vet, but economic pressure forced her to pursue CS in Canada instead.

> This, incidentally, blows out of the water the argument made by some feminists that women don't do STEM because of conditioning in nasty patriarchal societies.

It does no such thing, because there is no universally agreed upon metric by which we can rank the degree of any given form of "conditioning in nasty patriarchal socities." It could simply be the case that, in this regard / with your example, this is a dimension in which the West is more patriarchal than Iran.

I think Russia never was a classic patriarchal society. At the family level matriarchs always played as important and prominent role as patriarchs. Yes, in the past the official power institutions were almost completely male dominated. However there were notable exceptions such as semi-mythical princess Olga, emperatresses Anna I, Elisabeth, and Catherine II. Also Peter I came to power as the result of power-struggle with regent-princess Sophia Alekseyevna. Actually when the party of Peter I won, the actual power was grabbed by his mother Natalia Naryshkina whose nickname was she-bear. Peter became the true ruler of Russia only after her death. There were other notable historic women in Russian history such as princess Sophia Palaiologina. All in all throughout Russian history there were many much-revered and/or influential women. Also some folk fairy tales feature mighty female warriors. In particular there is a story about a knight Stavr Godinovich who was arrested by the king Vladimir and was rescued by his wife Vasislisa Mikulishna by winning in several contests ranging from wrestling to chess-playing. I believe gender biases for ages were weaker in Russia than in Western Europe let alone Middle East and you name it.

> This, incidentally, blows out of the water the argument made by some feminists that women don't do STEM because of conditioning in nasty patriarchal societies.

I don't understand your logic here. Isn't the more natural conclusion that the desire to get a good life is stronger than the conditioning?

> It's because Russia isn't a particularly nice place to live. From the article:

What does that have to do with anything? In what country do you get an engineering degree, heck a degree of any sort with a goal to be broke? Obviously, there is a financial motivation, but you can find the same motivation in the United States and women tend to avoid going down this path here.

Russian women, in general, are more into this type of thing than the American counterparts. You are trying to downplay this and make it seem like they are doing it out of desperation. They are not, thank you very much.

It's pretty ignorant and shortsighted, the educational system in Russia always favored math, engineering, and science sans gender bias.

>Obviously, there is a financial motivation, but you can find the same motivation in the United States and women tend to avoid going down this path here.

In societies with weaker social safety nets, the motivation to go into a field with high earning potential but that you have no inherent interest in is greater. Someone from the U.S. will be less motivated by financial security than someone from Russia.

It's simply a remnant from the soviet union where women were expected to work and contribute the same way that men did

I wonder how many men are also choosing tech for the money.

I know I did, I wanted to study sociology but that doesnt pay the bills.

Just because representation is better in one patrialchal society doesn't really say anything. There may for instance be competing factors, for instance financial (as you have literally just suggested).

This doesn't really give any evidence for or against the argument that women avoid stem because of conditioning.

Indeed. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison. I'd be curious to know about other factors that are related to life choices and opportunities, such as:

... what's the social safety network like? Is there welfare? Are there government programs that will help with housing / food / healthcare for a single mom (working or not)? This absolutely influences things.

... what's the legal marital environment like? Are the laws regarding divorce more or less favorable to women in one place vs the other (property, child support, alimony, allowance of 'no-fault' divorces, burden of proof, etc)? This will also influence choices.

In both of these tangents, actual risk and perceived risk in various life choices is different based on the answer to those questions.

>This, incidentally, blows out of the water the argument made by some feminists that women don't do STEM because of conditioning in nasty patriarchal societies.

Yep, that one anecdotal line from an article totally destroys the idea of any sort of patriarchy or sexism happening in the US.

Sheesh, this is the top comment? Give me a break.

The fact that this is the top comment is very related to the actual issue.

I came from mech eng, and the cluelessness and defensiveness techies display when their field's hostility towards women is discussed is incredibly messed up.

Maybe because there is no hostility towards women? Have you seen a bunch of programmers who were not happy about prospect of getting some girls among coworkers?

Yep there's no hostility at all towards women in any tech field, ever. It's all just a made up problem by feminists trying to spread cultural marxism

I have never witnessed any. I'd even say that girls were treated with more respect. Maybe it has something to do with me living in exUSSR country. But for some reason there are mostly males talking about this problem, and for some reason they cannot except the possibility of women making the choice by themselves — there must always be some evil male forcing them and succeeding.

Yes. Even on HN there are those comments.

It's hard to find them because they were, correctly, flagged and Algolia search doesn't return dead comments, but they do exist.

> I came from mech eng, and the cluelessness and defensiveness techies display when their field's hostility towards women is discussed is incredibly messed up.

If you were an innocent bystander and being tarred with an overly broad brush by people with an agenda, I would imagine that you'd be annoyed and defensive too. What's actually messed up is that attempting to argue your own innocence is furthermore taken as conclusive proof that you are guilty, as alluded to in the above quote and elsewhere in this topic.

Frankly, I fall under an underrepresented category that these identity politics advocates are purportedly trying to help (more than one actually) and even _I_ don't wish to be in any way associated or represented by them because they're just that absurd and alienating to ordinary people.

I've done mechanical and chemical engineering, I've worked in software. Software guys are particularly oblivious and particularly defensive in my experience.

Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash put it really well:

> It was, of course, nothing more than sexism,the especially virulent type espoused bymale techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.

The comment mentions two other countries.

No, it would if it were hypothetically true.

Also, you purposely expanded the scope from "women don't do STEM because.." to "any sort of patriarchy or sexism happening in the US" in order to construct a straw-man.

This makes no sense, would men not also want to escape this hard life? Why would the ratios be different to elsewhere? It could be life is even worse for women but you don't say that.

The usual 'Not enough woman in STEM' argument is made by trivial and narcissistic Westerners.

The reason why women in Iran, Russia, Romania etc choose STEM and woman in Sweden and the US don't is because it is deadly serious which profession they choose. The same seriousness in not in evidence in the West. In the US, people (often from rich families) are spending tens of thousands to study trivial subjects. Americans are infantilised to such a degree that they unable to recognise their infantilisation.

The same impetus is seen in all the tech people from India. Do you think they are all really interested in Richard Stallman? No, they just need to eat.

If this were true - if needing a good job for a good life predicted going into STEM among women - you'd expect poor women in western countries to flock to STEM training as well. Do they?

Do they flock to ANY kind of education?

Quite often towards lower-level nursing and other medical tech fields. For instance, you can have a decent paying, stable, career as a CNA, with the potential to progress towards being an RN, with just an associate's degree from a local community college. A significant fraction of the young women I graduated from high school with have gone that route.

Poor in a western country isn't equivalent to poor in an eastern europe or south asian country. You might expect higher rates, but not on par with what you see from Russia and the like.

Not if there are enough "more feminine" success models floating around in the public consciousness. Why aim for a Sheldon Cooper career if you can dream of becoming Rachel Green or Carrie Bradshaw?

And those are not even pure fantasy: an economy that is far down the service economy road towards what would be better characterized as an ad economy offers quite a few career options far from male-dominated fields that are both "serious" enough to be considered a possible path to success (vs the make-ends-meet-until-marriage spirit of traditional female occupations, think nurse instead of doctor) and still sufficiently down-to-earth to not be considered starlet territory (like the traditional girly pipedream careers of acting, modeling, singing). Why aim for engineer if you can dream of VP for social media outreach? In an economy that is closer to industrial than to service/ad, evading male-dominated fields comes at a much bigger price in career options.

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