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Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

> In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces

The data does not support correlating those two. "Gender equality" in this report refers to the factors in Table 1 at http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/mea... , which is about things like life expectancy and number of female politicians and salary - not about disrespect, unrightful criticism, and scrutiny in technical fields on the basis of sex.

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This trend hold in even the most progressive countries. Do you seriously think that "STEM across the world in multiple different cultures are prejudiced against women in precisely the same ways so as to produce the same gender disparities in the same fields" is a more reasonable explanation than there being some other factor, like some kind of inherent disinterest in these subjects?

Don't take my word for it though, there are actually plenty of studies showing that the "people vs. things" theory far better explains these gender disparities.

Of course it does. Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries. The data overwhelmingly shows that when you give men and women equal opportunities and the freedom to make their own choices, that men and women, on average, make different choices.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Apart from those who buy into the world view that the only two groups in any society are the oppressed and their oppressors, which is clearly just toxic bullshit.

> Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries.

Given that the leader of the free world has said that he's not a feminist, I'm not sure I would say that it's ingrained into the culture. It's a recent cultural phenomenon of these countries, sure. But Western civilization has a much deeper culture of patrilineal succession, of the priesthood being restricted to men, of only men having political representation, of the father being the head of the household, etc. That stuff doesn't evaporate from a culture quickly, and even today many of those are strongly believed by huge parts of Western civilization.

I'll ignore the irrelevant marxist talking point and trump references, and redirect you back to the data. The Nordic countries always lead in these stats.

These are the countries that are the most egalitarian in the world, where 3rd wave feminism forms a major part of social policy, where women have an equal level of opportunity to men and the freedom to choose their own paths in life. The data shows that under these conditions, this freedom has a negative correlation to women choosing a career in STEM.

You can't say that this is a remnant of some patriarchal system of oppression, because as women's freedom has increased in those countries, their participation in STEM has decreased.

> I'll ignore the irrelevant marxist talking point

Which part of the parent comment was a "marxist talking point"?

Wow, good job focusing on minute details instead of addressing the overall point your parent is making.

However, I'll indulge you and hazard a guess:

* The historically naive and somewhat incorrect generalization of some ill-defined "Western" culture (what time frame is he using?) * the negative portrayal of it * and the implicit assumption that any part of the portrayal is somehow unique to all Western countries, but not the rest of the world.

I will give you that this criticism of "Western culture" probably doesn't really relate to traditional Marxism, which more or less worked within the framework of Western culture.

I believe your parent might have had the concept of "cultural Marxism" in mind.

The study doesn’t say anything about feminism being ingrained in those cultures.

> not about disrespect, unrightful criticism, and scrutiny in technical fields on the basis of sex.

Well since these are claims you can undoubted produce data that all of these issues are significant across the entire field?

Sure, give me a research lab and some funding. I don't know that there have been many rigorous studies across all of STEM that measure this effect and give an answer one way or another.

For tech in particular, see the Kapor Center's report: https://www.kaporcenter.org/tech-leavers/ (which, it should be noted, reports on people who have left tech: the percentages in that report should not be read as the fraction of people in tech who decide to leave).

For studies like these, it actually helps to look at the data rather than just skim the headlines/talkimg points, which tend to cherry pick to support the narrative.

For example, when "left due to unfair treatment" is unpacked by group, white women are the lowest percentage! (28% vs. 38% for white/asian men).

Yes, that's true. Again this is the percentage thing I mentioned—the study is not claiming that more white and Asian men leave because of unfair treatment than women, it's claiming that of those who leave, more white and Asian men report unfair treatment as a motivation than women do.

So this study shows that unfair treatment is a less important reason for women leaving tech than it is for Asian and white men.

Why, then, are other people commenting here claiming that bad treatment of women is the main reason they leave tech, and at alarming numbers, no less?

If the raw fraction of women leaving is much higher than it is for Asian and white men, then the net effect is that a higher percentage of women are leaving because of unfair treatment than men are.

Also, it's certainly the case that unfair treatment is a problem worth solving regardless of gender.

(I don't think the design of that particular study was equipped to answer the question of what the raw fraction is / whether the numbers are in fact alarming, so people who are making that claim are not making it solely on the basis of information in that study.)

That site certainly seems to be though, given the bold quotes plastered everywhere.

Right, and it seems that those relative percentages are the relevant figures, which might also be why they were reported.

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