Hacker News Reader

Comment by CoolGuySteve | Hacker News Reader

Something I've noticed after 10 years in tech/finance is that there are very, very few western women in engineering roles. I think I've only ever worked with 1 woman who wasn't an Eastern European or Asian immigrant (and yeah, I eventually married one of the immigrant ones).

The gender gap is purely cultural, and we should be learning from what those cultures are doing that's different than us. This article really hits the nail on the head in terms of what we do in the west (ie: "math is for boys!") vs other places where your sex isn't really factored into what subjects are appropriate. It's very good.

View on HN

>The gender gap is purely cultural, and we should be learning from what those cultures are doing that's different than us.

The countries with low gender gap in science/tech are also the countries that measure low on general measures of gender equality. It turns out there isn't anything to learn from these cases. In regions with low gender equality and weak social safety nets, technology is seen as the means to economic security and thus empowerment. Conversely, regions with high gender equality and strong social safety nets have the largest gender gaps. There is something to be learned from this, but we probably won't like what we find.

Instead of hinting at something, why not just tell us how you really feel? Is it because it's a conclusion that is generally not accepted when put in plain terms?

Not op but since you asked, I will draw the conclusion.

Given that we observe a larger gender gap in countries that are more gender equality we can conclude that when men and women feel more equal their choice of profession diverge.

i don't think you're allowed to speak that heresy in polite society.

Which is a shame, because even though it makes sense, I am not sure it is true because it isn't debated.

You can say it as much as you want. That won't make you any less wrong, of course.

You've got a huge number of confounding variables here that you're not accounting for. Gender equality and cultural attitudes towards gender roles are not simple metrics, you can't infer that just because some aspect of a culture demonstrates superior gender equality to another that this culture is necessarily superior in gender equality in every way. Attitudes are vastly more complicated than that, and there's no reason to believe that a society that is more progressive in one sense can't be more regressive in another.

It is definitely possible that it is just confounding variables, I don't know I haven't really looked into it. One thing I know is that if the correlation went the other way, it would be a good data point that the gender gap is cultural.

The HN guidelines ask you not to take HN threads further into ideological flamewar, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I disagree with being categorized as such, but respect your decision.

Maybe one day people are going to learn to not treat "the other" as a homogenous invariant being. Your comment blindly factors out for example the possibility that the social class the science and tech folk originate from is different from a more ample and lower class suffering more gender-related inequalities which when factored in skews the picture dramatically. Many of the regions you refer have largely multifaceted and mostly multi-ethnical demograpic structures.

Yes, I was puzzled at first, reading the article. Because I don't think of India as a paragon of sexual equality. But then, I realized that the author is probably upper-class.

Well this does not simply boil down to economics, too. In Turkey for example (where I'm from), we have a very complex gradient of secular and religious cultures, where the economical situation of the individuals or of the families are only a small determinant in what part of such a gradient they are. Especially in this day and age where local cultures are becoming but a simple debile component of a more global archi-culture.

Yes, thanks. I didn't mean to imply economic wealth. Because she notes that money isn't an important goal. I'm too ignorant about South India to know what her background might be. Maybe something like academic? Or intellectual?

Read the whole article. She makes it abundantly clear that her parents were not upper class. Just middle class what in the context of that region means "no private transportation of any sort let alone a car". I assume they had bicycles at most.

As I clarified, upper-class doesn't equal wealthy.

Just because a culture scores low on overall gender equality doesn't mean you can't learn something by looking at it. Your point about an inverse correlation of gender equality and gender gap is certainly interesting, if true, but that doesn't mean we can't make useful observations like the GP's. Even if a particular culture has low gender equality overall, if they have high gender equality in a particular area it might be useful to look at it.

If we made a poll for boys and girls from the age they learn to speak until 18 years old, and asked to rate 3 statements:

Math is important.

Money and getting a high paying job is important.

Having rich social life and a large family.

What will the gender differences be, and which will have a bigger extreme? Which will see an reinforced difference as the children grows older and into puberty, the time where career directions are usually made? Last, how does the economy of the country in which the children live influence the answers.

Here is a bet: Its all about the second question, for which math correlates to. Culture will influence children to strive for money if there is a risk to not have food on the table, roof over their head, and parents that will go without both at elderly days. This result in gender roles to merge on the subject of being the provider. "math is for boys" is identical to the idea that "beauty parlors are for girls"; inter-gender competition thats are effective strategies when other basic needs are fulfilled. Focusing on inter-gender competition while starving is a poor strategy. A collaborating evidence to that bet would be if women in countries with lower gender segregation in tech has a better chance in escaping poverty through math than marriage. It would then be maladaptive in those places to have stereotypical gender roles where men are the sole providers.

>those cultures are doing that's different than us.

1. One of the very few jobs that is well paid. So you are either a software engineer or poor.

2. There is not social stigma associated with being an engineer. infact its the opposite, see point 1.

3. Even in India "math is for boys" meme is strong but point 1 overpowers everything else.

> The gender gap is purely cultural

Unless you can point me to a non-poor country where this is true, I would say 'The gender gap is purely economical '

Rather, it seems it has to be biological, but it's left to flourish most in wealthy countries.

The resistance to this gender essentialist conclusion is easy to understand, but it shouldn't change anything to true egalitarians. If someone's suitable for a job, hire them. Gender or race quotas are sexist and racist, by definition, and it's those policies that are endangered, not egalitarianism.

You have a point, from the perspective of immediate equity. But such quotas are driven by long-term equity goals. And there's more to it than reparations for past injustice. It's about social transformation.

"and we should be learning from what those cultures are doing that's different than us"

If people are being oppressed/suppressed, then surely we have some things to learn.

But cultures are often 'just different' and one may not be better than the other because more women or men do this or that.

We also have gendered roles in teaching, construction etc., nobody is screaming injustice.

> The gender gap is purely cultural...

It may be smaller in other cultures, but it's my impression that it's still there. At least among non-Western immigrants to the U.S., there are still at least 2-3 males for every female engineer.

Dunno about the quality or authoritativeness of the numbers, but this link indicates that India still has plenty of room for growth, assuming that 50/50 is the ideal gender ratio.

http://blog.belong.co/gender-diversity-indian-tech-companies

Even at the college level in India, it isn't uncommon to see a 2:1 male to female ratio in engineering classes. Women in India do face plenty of bias, most of which stems from the fact that they are expected to get married and take care of their families. So investing in their education isn't seen as a priority as the assumption is they won't be able to fully concentrate on their careers once they have a family and kids. Now there are some castes where this bias isn't as strong - like Iyers and Iyengars for example, but they are the exception rather than the norm. Even amongst those castes, you'll find plenty of men who think that they are naturally gifted when it comes to math and science. So they claim they can goof around in college and still get good grades while women, who lack that natural talent, have to spend all their time mugging up for exams.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com