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Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

Ya, all east asian countries, you're right. China is interesting especially to me though because, just anecdotally, there seem to be an unusually high number of Chinese female STEM graduates. Not sure what's going on there, but they seem to have solved the gender gap in STEM somehow. Could just be i've encountered an unusual sample too, though.

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Easy, just tell everyone that anyone can study STEM as long as they work hard. Do you know Noether, Marie Curie, Grace Hopper, Chien-Shiung Wu, and many more female scientists and engineers are household names? They are featured in mass media, in text books, and in our bedtime stories.

Gender bias in STEM? That's a god damn first-world problem.

Yep. Reduce wealth and increase economic pressure enough so that survival is dependent on a finding a good job, and suddenly, magically, "bias" disappears.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321

"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."

Then, when wealth (and all other measures of gender equality) dramatically increase and people become free to choose to do whatever they want, largely free from economic survival pressure, suddenly, magically and inexplicably, "bias" pops up again.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

Of those examples, I can almost guarantee you that all of my friends and family from outside of STEM fields have only heard of Curie.

> Not sure what's going on there, but they seem to have solved the gender gap in STEM somehow

That's because you're not familiar with the actual data. Iran also has gender parity in STEM. The nordic countries have equal or worse gender ratios than America. It's called the gender equality paradox: the more gender equal a country, the less women choose STEM paths.

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