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In developing countries where women (and men frankly) study STEM in higher numbers it's likely that those women come from elite families (considering the vast majority of population in these countries do not have a chance to pursue higher ed). As a result we're looking at a an elite microcosm that is, by virtue of its own access to education and enthusiasm for remaining (recognizing fierce competition) in the elite tier of an otherwise incredibly gendered society.

Yes, obviously, Bangladesh as a whole is a much more gendered society than the U.S. But it's still an interesting microcosm to look at because it's one where both boys and girls are intensely encouraged to pursue STEM. And in India, we see much higher rates of women participating in STEM (despite India being a much more gendered society overall): http://www.hcixb.org/papers_2017/hcixb17-final-37.pdf (45% women with CS degrees, versus 21% in the U.S.).

And even though these folks are elite relative to their own societies, in absolute terms, even a rich Bangladeshi has a similar level of material wealth as a middle class or upper middle class American. It's a microcosm that's still in a mode of striving to protect and enhance their material prosperity, and may be less able to indulge in the "benign" sexism of having lower expectations for girls. (Specifically, having lower expectations for them to go into fields like STEM necessary for both their own economic prosperity and the nation's) than for boys.

There is a so called Gender Inequality Index by the UN which highlights different criteria http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII

My 10 year daughter loves legos but complained the other day it seems only boys play legos. I would argue that legos and building things for fun is STEM, and it's curious why girls aren't encouraged to play with legos as much as boys in the U.S. This is despite things like lego friends that are targeting younger girls. Once they hit around 10-11, then all the legos seem to be engineering oriented (robotics etc..), which she loves but can't understand why other girls don't get it.

Note: Am Indian and can totally see the same problem you noted.

My theory is that many not-that-rich countries didn't have opportunity to go through a period where some jobs are thought as strictly male/female (think 50s in the US). Coming from such a country, and being a woman, I never heard from my parents, or another adult for that matter, that engineering wouldn't be suitable for a girl. This wasn't just because there is money in engineering. It was the same for less lucrative professions in STEM. The concept of woman needing to pick a suitable profession was just not there. Education was important for both genders. I am very thankful for that and it bothers me when people say women from my part of the world enter STEM just because of money. It's just not true for majority of STEM women that I met.

> Bangladeshis perceive STEM as important, and encourage both girls and boys to pursue it (even if they don’t expect girls to stay in the work force after they get married).

That could be a critical factor. The other factor that I've heard posited is that career opportunities for women are limited in less liberal countries, so they take what they can get. This would be why Iran has gender parity in computer science, for instance.

In Iran, women make up 70% of science and engineering majors, as well as 70% of medical students. These are not low status professions in Iran (Ahmadinejad was an engineer). So what professions are they being excluded from that they would prefer that they go into science and engineering instead?

All kinds. There are literally hundreds of articles written about this:

https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/05/25/its-mens-club/discrimi...

I don't see what "status" has to do with it. It's a matter of political and religious restrictions specific to that culture.

Yeah, you're absolutely right that by not taking into account things like STEM participating, the metric ignores exactly this kind of thing.

Having said that, if you just want to know how it was literally defined here, I found this comment helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16408092

Women in the USSR were common in engineering degrees because many other high skill careers like law, medicine, philosophy and politics weren’t open to them.

Bangladesh isn’t that different and rich families send their daughters to get a degree so they would be more appealing to prospective husbands.

You can’t just pick random statistics and extrapolate data from them the fact is still that the more options women have the less they seem to go for specific fields which includes the engineering part of STEM.

People ignore the fact that many many men chose STEM not because they want too but because it’s expectd it’s the default career path for the new blue/white colar worker.

Myself and everyone else I know went into STEM as a career because it was “easy money” the amount of effort required to get into it is actually fairly low when compared to careers like law or medicine and the payout on average is much better.

That said the career for most people in IT isn’t going to be exactly overly satisfying and fulfilling.

Bullshit right in the first paragraph. Women snipers, women tank drivers, women pilots were not uncommon in USSR during the second world war. Half of the lawyers were women in USSR by 1980, although the comparison to US would be meaningless, the legal profession there is pretty different. Politics and philosophy... Peuh. These are not professions even in US.

Sorry that’s not true on both accounts.

Yes the USSR has had women in combat (so did other allied nations, even the US it just didn’t sent them to the front lines) however in very small amounts and mainly for propaganda purposes and while some of them achieved great things as far as anyone can be great in a war these weren’t by any stretch of the imagination the norm.

In the post war economy women were locked out of many positions my mother had to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to teach in secondary education being both Jewish and a woman it took her nearly a decade to pass retarded committees and gain enough favors.

While the USSR might have been seen as a “feminist” heaven back in the day it was far from that it was and Russia is still is very old fashioned in some regards closer to 19th century court than to the bra burning days of the 1960s in the West.

And as far as women’s emancipation went it wasn’t as much emancipation as it was exploitation.

Lenin has seen women as part of the workforce and the USSR used them as such but delegated them to the most basic tasks and positions with progression and advancement near impossible regardless of their qualifications and effort.

Education was also seen by many as a way to escape having to work in the factories and fields.

I’m not entirely sure what your experience is with Russian culture and history but it seems we have quite different views of it.

But if you are willing to read then Wikipedia has decent articles about women and feminism in the USSR and I suggest a book called Gender in 20th century USSR.

I strongly suspect that your mother's unfortunate experience was 100% caused by official Soviet antisemitism, not by anything about her gender. Post-war Soviet policy was to deny most Jews the right to even study in prestigious universities, to deny them higher degrees for spurious reasons, and exclude them from many research institutions [1] - is it any wonder that your mother found it difficult to obtain a university teaching position?

> While the USSR might have been seen as a “feminist” heaven back in the day it was far from that

Compared to the West at the time, the USSR was feminist. I have talked to several Soviet Jewish women who emigrated to the US in the 1970s. All of them were struck by blatant gender discrimination that was normal in America at the time, but to them seemed like something out of a 19th century novel; for example, needing a husband's permission to open a bank account.

[1] See, for example, https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Антисемитизм_в_советской_матем...

It wasn’t just antisemtism it was the fact that women barred from any progression.

Sure in US it might have been oh honey why do you need to work but in the USSR it was much worse it was horrible exploitation under the guise of liberation.

It is a bit too late, but I just stubled upon a mini-series documentary by Leonid Parfenov about Russian Jews. As Parfenov points out, Russian Empire and then Soviet Union and contemporary Russian went over periods of both antisemitism and judophilia. Those interested in the history of Russian Jews should really watch it.