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Comment by throwaway8548 | Hacker News Reader

> most of the countries that observed fall within a range of 30%

That's huge

> If this were socially determined, we'd expect some countries to have 80-90% women in technology

That's assuming social pressures are randomly distributed. But we don't observe 50/50 split between patriarchy and matriarchy.

> Furthermore, what differences that are observed contradict the idea that rigid gender roles cause lower rates of women in tech

Maybe because it depends which gender roles are applied and not their rigidity?

The nerd/geek being an awkward boy with glasses troppe is specifically a western concept for example.

Women in Eastern Europe worked in factories side by side with men for generations.

Gender roles does not equal your concept of gender roles like women not liking/belonging/choosing not to be in tech.

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Whether or not a range of 30% is "huge" is a subjective judgement, but that's besides the point. The point is, there are zero observed instances of women forming the majority of a the technology workforce in any county.

I'm not sure if it's even possible to put countries in a binary between patriarchy and matriarchy. Instead, the study presented put countries on a scale that measures overall gender equality. And what difference we do observe is that patriarchal countries have higher rates of women in tech, but still lower than parity. Countries with gender equality (is this what you mean by "matriarchy"?) have low rates of women in tech often in the 20-10% range. So in "patriarchies" we see more female representation, but still lower than the majority and in egalitarian countries we see

> The nerd/geek being an awkward boy with glasses troppe is specifically a western concept for example.

And yet, the disparity between women and men in technology exists outside of western countries. Thus, attributing the disparity between men and women in tech to tropes like these is not effective line of reasoning. This is exactly the point that I'm making: attributing the gender distribution in tech to social factors is difficult when said distribution is observed across a wide variety of societies.

> Women in Eastern Europe worked in factories side by side with men for generations.

This was the same case in Western Europe and Asia as well - I'm not sure why you chose to highlight this fact.

> Gender roles does not equal your concept of gender roles like women not liking/belonging/choosing not to be in tech.

I'm not sure what you're writing about here, this sentence does not make sense to me. The point is that highly unequal societies with strict gender roles see more women in technology than more egalitarian societies.

And for what it's worth, while 20% representation in tech in the united states might seem low at first glance it's actually not at all uncommon to have fields that are >95% one gender or another. Tech is on par with "Health practitioner, support technologists, and technicians", "Loan interviewers and clerks", "Printing press operators", and a couple percent above "Couriers and messengers" as far as gender disparities go [1].

1. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

> Countries with gender equality (is this what you mean by "matriarchy"?)

No... I mean the dictionary definition.

Where men didn't have the right to vote, work or own property until recently, where women are expected to own and make all the money, where men are raised to be married away, where men are expected to make the coffee and women to run the meeting. So on and so forth.

I'm afraid that entire paragraph does not address my comment because you misunderstood what matriarchy means.

> And yet, the disparity between women and men in technology exists outside of western countries

Not if you take into consideration the labour participation rate... If you do, the disparity basically disappears.

These societies with rigid gender rules tend to have less women overall working at all.

> This was the same case in Western Europe and Asia as well - I'm not sure why you chose to highlight this fact.

But they were forced to do that until the 90s under communism, I'm not talking about peasants in the middle ages.

I mention Eastern Europe because I'm trying to give you alternative explanations for women participation in STEM.

Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies.

What do they have in common? They are not the West.

They don't have the West's cultural norms. Ergo, one of those norms is stopping women from going into STEM.

That, to me, sounds more likely. Much easier to explain vs trying to find something in common between India and Eastern Europe, which is pretty crazy.

> I'm not sure what you're writing about here, this sentence does not make sense to me. The point is that highly unequal societies with strict gender roles see more women in technology than more egalitarian societies.

And my point is your cultural expectation do not translate to other cultures.

There might be a specific gender inequality that stops women from entering STEM. That may or may not exist in a society, independent on what gender inequality is overall.

Vastly different societies like India and Eastern Europe have similar participation rates, despite the fact that Eastern Europe is much wealthier.

If what you said is true, you'd expect Eastern Europe to have lower participation rate than India, but that's not the case.

Correlation broken.

> not at all uncommon to have fields that are >95% one gender or another

That just means the problem is beyond just STEM, not an explanation.

> No... I mean the dictionary definition. Where men didn't have the right to vote, work or own property until recently, where women are expected to own and make all the money, where men are raised to be married away, where men are expected to make the coffee and women to run the meeting. So on and so forth. I'm afraid that entire paragraph does not address my comment because you misunderstood what matriarchy means.

We would expect to see even lower rates of women in STEM. The data shows an inverse relationship between women gaining more rights and resources and women's representation in STEM.

> Not if you take into consideration the labour participation rate... If you do, the disparity basically disappears. These societies with rigid gender rules tend to have less women overall working at all.

Yes, they do. Differences in labor force participation do not hold up to scrutiny. Plenty of the countries with less women's equality also have high labor force participation [1].

> But they were forced to do that until the 90s under communism, I'm not talking about peasants in the middle ages. I mention Eastern Europe because I'm trying to give you alternative explanations for women participation in STEM. Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies. What do they have in common? They are not the West. They don't have the West's cultural norms. Ergo, one of those norms is stopping women from going into STEM. That, to me, sounds more likely. Much easier to explain vs trying to find something in common between India and Eastern Europe, which is pretty crazy.

But India and Eastern Europe still see low rates of women in technology. In fact, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic see the same or lower rates of women in technology than in the United States.

You're pointing out these differences, and these differences do not yield higher rates of women in technology. So why do you seem to think that these differences are significantly affecting rates of women in technology.

> And my point is your cultural expectation do not translate to other cultures. There might be a specific gender inequality that stops women from entering STEM. That may or may not exist in a society, independent on what gender inequality is overall. Vastly different societies like India and Eastern Europe have similar participation rates, despite the fact that Eastern Europe is much wealthier. If what you said is true, you'd expect Eastern Europe to have lower participation rate than India, but that's not the case. Correlation broken.

Eastern Europe does have lower rates of women in technology than India. India has ~30% women in STEM [2]. Whereas the Eastern European countries have representation mostly in the range of 20-25%.

> That just means the problem is beyond just STEM, not an explanation.

Correct. The "problem" is that men and women have difference interests, and this difference is largely universal across different societies.

Does social influence have some effect? Probably. We observe that countries with less rights and opportunities for women do have higher rates of women in technology than more egalitarian countries. But this influence only shifts the representation of women in tech by 10-15%.

1. https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/female_labor_force...

2. https://research.swe.org/2018/07/india-undergraduate-educati...

> We would expect to see even lower rates of women in STEM. The data shows an inverse relationship between women gaining more rights and resources and women's representation in STEM

That's just disingenuous, we literally don't have that data to make any claims on it. You're the one which said you'd expect women participation rates to be randomised, as in some countries to have more women in STEM than men. I simply counterpointed with the fact that societies aren't randomised, they are all patriarchal on some level, that's why you never see more women in tech in any country.

> In fact, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic see the same or lower rates of women in technology than in the United States.

Oh, so your correlation that stricter gender roles and women getting into STEM is not true? Did you just prove yourself wrong?!

Also, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia have higher participation rates than the US...

It's almost like your alleged correlation is BS and random, even within similar countries and cultures.

> The "problem" is that men and women have difference interests, and this difference is largely universal across different societies.

You're literally reading an article claiming the opposite (with sources) mate. Did you read it?!

> But this influence only shifts the representation of women in tech by 10-15%.

That's like gigantic. It's almost parity in the workplace. How can you dismiss it?!

The small difference is explained by the difference in labour participation rates.

We already talked about this but it's like you didn't read my comment.

> That's just disingenuous, we literally don't have that data to make any claims on it. You're the one which said you'd expect women participation rates to be randomised, as in some countries to have more women in STEM than men. I simply counterpointed with the fact that societies aren't randomised, they are all patriarchal on some level, that's why you never see more women in tech in any country.

The core thesis of the article posted is that societies that are more egalitarian - closer to "matriarchy" - on average have less female representation in tech. The more countries drift away from "patriarchy" and towards "matriarchy" the fewer women go into tech.

> Oh, so your correlation that stricter gender roles and women getting into STEM is not true? Did you just prove yourself wrong?!

Many of these countries are more egalitarian than the US as per the data in the original post. Perhaps you should not have assumed that all Eastern European countries are less egalitarian than the US.

> Also, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia have higher participation rates than the US... It's almost like your alleged correlation is BS and random, even within similar countries and cultures.

The correlation is between gender equality and women's representation in tech. Yes, the rates of women in tech in Eastern European countries varies because different Eastern European countries have different levels of gender equality.

You're the one who erroneously claimed that "Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies" when in fact Eastern European countries have a variety of rates of women in tech, many of which are lower than the United States' 25% let alone India's 30%. I agree, the alleged correlation between Eastern Europe and rates of female representation in tech is BS and random - but that was your alleged correlation...

But what doesn't vary? The fact that these rates are overwhelmingly in a relatively narrow band between 20-35%.

> You're literally reading an article claiming the opposite (with sources) mate. Did you read it?!

If this is your takeaway from the article, I would suggest re-reading it. There is some variation across societies - but not much. The overwhelming majority of countries studied had female representation in tech between 15-30%. This is indeed a fairly consistent rate.

The slight variation that does exist demonstrates an inverse correlation between women gaining more rights and authority and female representation in tech.

> That's like gigantic. It's almost parity in the workplace. How can you dismiss it?!

It is nowhere near parity in the workplace. The countries with the greatest gender equality like Finland and Norway have 20% female representation in tech. Countries on the other end of the spectrum like Turkey and Indonesia have 35%. This is still barely over 1/3rd.

> The small difference is explained by the difference in labour participation rates.

> We already talked about this but it's like you didn't read my comment.

I did read your comment, and provided data that demonstrated that differences in labor participation does not hold true. This is factually incorrect. These countries with less gender equality have female labor participation rates that are often the same or higher than the US and other western countries. For example, Indonesia has a female labor participation rate of 52% as compared to the United States' 56%. Vietnam has a female labor participation rate of 76%. It we adjusted its female representation in tech to account for differences in labor participation, the percent of women in tech would go down.

Adjusting for this does not explain the difference in representation in tech. Furthermore, even if it were you are erroneously assuming that if more women entered the workforce those women would.

Editing doesn't work.

> You're supposed to compare between women and men in the same country. Women's labour participation rate in the US has less than nothing to do with Vietnam.

> The more countries drift away from "patriarchy" and towards "matriarchy" the fewer women go into tech.

We literally don't have matriarchies, there's no data about it. And I also don't know why you put that in quotes, it's an actual word.

> Many of these countries are more egalitarian than the US as per the data in the original post. Perhaps you should not have assumed that all Eastern European countries are less egalitarian than the US.

Of really? Which ones? Because Hungary certainly isn't.

You just proved yourself wrong and you're not addressing what the core of the argument of what I said.

> The fact that these rates are overwhelmingly in a relatively narrow band between 20-35%.

> The overwhelming majority of countries studied had female representation in tech between 15-30%. This is indeed a fairly consistent rate.

I'm ignoring the fact that you can't even keep your numbers straight within the same comment...

It's not consistent at all, it's almost the entire range!

And given that close to 0% or 50% is unlikely to happen in any country, that's pretty much where you expect the probability distribution to land anyway. It says nothing.

It's like saying unemployment falls between 5-40% in the majority of countries. Well d'oh, it's expected. It says nothing about the health of the countries in questiom.

> I agree, the alleged correlation between Eastern Europe and rates of female representation in tech is BS and random - but that was your alleged correlation...

Wait, what exactly is your allegation then, if not that?

> Countries on the other end of the spectrum like Turkey and Indonesia have 35%. This is still barely over 1/3rd.

You're still not addressing the labour participation rates between women and men. You don't get it.

> For example, Indonesia has a female labor participation rate of 52% as compared to the United States' 56%. Vietnam has a female labor participation rate of 76%.

You're suppressed to compare bergen women and men in the same country. Women's labour participation rate has less than nothing to do with Vietnam.

You don't get it.

> Adjusting for this does not explain the difference in representation in tech.

Yes it would, you just don't know how to adjust for it.

> Furthermore, even if it were you are erroneously assuming that if more women entered the workforce those women would.

It doesn't matter if they would or not, it won't affect the statistics, you still need to adjust for it.

> We literally don't have matriarchies, there's no data about it. And I also don't know why you put that in quotes, it's an actual word.

We may or may not have matriarchies - a couple countries like Spain do have more women in parliament than men so maybe they fit your definition of a matriarchy. But we do have data on how the female representation in tech varies with respect to increases in women's rights and resources, and the data shows that the more rights and resources women have the less they go into technology. This would indicate that a matriarchy would have among the lowest rates of women in technology.

> Of really? Which ones? Because Hungary certainly isn't. You just proved yourself wrong and you're not addressing what the core of the argument of what I said.

I did indeed address this. In this comment [1] You had claimed that Eastern Europe has similar shares of women in STEM fields as India, and that this is due to cultural factors. I pointed out that Eastern Europe does not, in fact, have similar rates of women in tech as India - only Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia do. Eastern European countries with lower rates of women in tech as compared to India include: Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Moldova, Poland, Slovakia, and Croatia (if you consider it Eastern European).

Furthermore, your comment rested on the assumption that gender roles in Eastern European countries are monolithic. This is not the case. Hungary, as you pointed out has very low gender equality as does Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Slovenia, on the other hand, is the 5th highest on this list. Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Moldova, and Lithuania have the same or higher ratings for gender equality as the United States.

So to recap:

1. Eastern Europe does not similar rates of women in tech than India's 30%, most have lower rates of women in tech than the United States' 25%.

2. Eastern European countries are diverse and have varied degrees of gender equality, they are not a monolith so talking about gender roles in "eastern europe" rests on the false understanding that these countries have the same culture with respect to gender.

I pointed out that your argument with respect to Eastern Europe is contradicted by the data we have, and is based on the false notion that women in Eastern Europe have a similar experience with respect to gender equality. This seems like this thoroughly addresses your point, care to explain what you feel is missing?

> I'm ignoring the fact that you can't even keep your numbers straight within the same comment. It's not consistent at all, it's almost the entire range!

Can you please read the article before posting comments like this? Every country including outliers falls between 15% (Chile) and 41% (Algeria). That's 36%. That's barely over half of the range, let alone "almost the entire range".

> And given that close to 0% or 50% is unlikely to happen in any country, that's pretty much where you expect the probability distribution to land anyway. It says nothing.

Why? Why wouldn't we expect countries to be 60% women in tech, or 70%, or 80% women in technology? Why do you take it for granted that there won't be any countries with majority women in technology?

> Wait, what exactly is your allegation then, if not that?

You're the one that originally brought up Eastern Europe and India. You falsely claimed that Eastern Europe has similar rates of women in tech as India, and I pointed out that this is factually incorrect - most Eastern European countries have lower rates of women in technology than India.

> You're still not addressing the labour participation rates between women and men. You don't get it. You're suppressed to compare bergen women and men in the same country. Women's labour participation rate has less than nothing to do with Vietnam. You don't get it.

What do you mean by adjusting for women's labor participation rate. You say that I'm not doing this correctly, but you neglect to explain what you mean by this. If a country that has 100% female labor participation had 30% women in technology, and another country has 50% labor participation and 15% women in tech then the latter's rate of women in tech is actually the same if you account for labor participation rates.

If you insist that the better way is to compare the ratio of men to women in the labor force, here's that data [2]. It does not significantly alter the results. The United States has a ratio of 0.82 female to male. Norway has 0.885 - so its share of women in tech would actually go down even further if we adjust it to match the US. Viet Nam has 0.889.

There are some that do have significantly different participation rates. Chile has 0.657, so its share of women in tech would rise by ~20% from 15% to 18% if we made its labor participation ratio the same as the US. Qatar has 0.531 so its ~23% women in tech would rise to 35%. But notice that these adjustments move these countries closer towards the trend line. In other words, adjusting for the differences in labor participation rates makes the inverse relationship between gender equality and women's participation in STEM even stronger.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21786037

2. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/labour-force-participation-ra...

> We may or may not have matriarchies

We don't.

> Furthermore, your comment rested on the assumption that gender roles in Eastern European countries are monolithic.

Neither is India but I feel this is splitting hairs.

> I pointed out that your argument with respect to Eastern Europe is contradicted by the data we have, and is based on the false notion that women in Eastern Europe have a similar experience with respect to gender equality.

Ok... but that's true in India, the US... they are all varied cultures. You're just pointing holes in you argument really.

I always said women equality and women participation in STEM is pretty random.

Once again, you're really arguing against yourself. There is no correlation between women in STEM and women's rights.

> Why? Why wouldn't we expect countries to be 60% women in tech, or 70%, or 80% women in technology? Why do you take it for granted that there won't be any countries with majority women in technology?

Again. Because we don't have matriarchies. You really don't seem to grasp the concept. Please take a minute to think about it.

> You're the one that originally brought up Eastern Europe and India. You falsely claimed that Eastern Europe has similar rates of women in tech as India, and I pointed out that this is factually incorrect - most Eastern European countries have lower rates of women in technology than India.

Oh ok, I should clarify then. Some countries in Eastern Europe have similar rates as India. It does not change my argument one bit, except you win some semantic nonsense.

I can rephrase my argument from before with "some Eastern European countries" instead. Will that change your mind?

> What do you mean by adjusting for women's labor participation rate. You say that I'm not doing this correctly, but you neglect to explain what you mean by this. If a country that has 100% female labor participation had 30% women in technology, and another country has 50% labor participation and 15% women in tech then the latter's rate of women in tech is actually the same if you account for labor participation rates.

Than why are you comparing these countries with the US's women participation rate in the workforce?! What does the US have to do with this?

> The United States has a ratio of 0.82 female to male. Norway has 0.885 - so its share of women in tech would actually go down even further if we adjust it to match the US.

> Chile has 0.657, so its share of women in tech would rise by ~20% from 15% to 18% if we made its labor participation ratio the same as the US.

Can you stop comparing things to the US? What's wrong with you? You're supposed to compare with men's labour participation rates, in the same country.

I already told you this.

0.657 means only 65 of women work for every 100 men.

How are you not getting this?

Qatar has 0.531 so its ~23% women in tech would rise to 35%. But notice that these adjustments move these countries closer towards the trend line. In other words, adjusting for the differences in labor participation rates makes the inverse relationship between gender equality and women's participation in STEM even stronger.

> We don't [have matriarchies].

This hinges on how you define a matriarchy. Spain, as I pointed out earlier, has a majority female national leadership. If it isn't a matriarchy, one could still argue that's closer to a matriarchy than a patriarchy.

You insist that we don't have any matriarchies, yet my request for you to explain how you're choosing to define matriarchy remains unfulfilled.

> Ok... but that's true in India, the US... they are all varied cultures. You're just pointing holes in you argument really. I always said women equality and women participation in STEM is pretty random. Once again, you're really arguing against yourself. There is no correlation between women in STEM and women's rights.

The correlation between gender equality (of which women's rights is a component) is the core thesis of the article posted by OP: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

> Again. Because we don't have matriarchies. You really don't seem to grasp the concept. Please take a minute to think about it.

And why would we think that a matriarchy would have over 50% women in technology? As countries move away from patriarchy and towards gender equality the percentage of tech worker that are women go down. Why would one conclude from this that a matriarchy would see a majority of women in technology?

> Oh ok, I should clarify then. Some countries in Eastern Europe have similar rates as India. It does not change my argument one bit, except you win some semantic nonsense. I can rephrase my argument from before with "some Eastern European countries" instead. Will that change your mind?

Sure, some Eastern European countries have similar rates as India. And most do not.

Regardless, rather than examining individual regions how about we look at the world as a whole: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2018/02/S...

> Than why are you comparing these countries with the US's women participation rate in the workforce?! What does the US have to do with this?

You adjust for labor participation by selecting a baseline, and adjusting the other countries to match this baseline. Sure, I could have used any country for the baseline.

> Can you stop comparing things to the US? What's wrong with you? You're supposed to compare with men's labour participation rates, in the same country. I already told you this.

I am very confused as to what you're saying here. I am comparing women's labor participation rates with men's labor participation rates, in the same country. When I say that Chile has a female/male labor participation ratio of 0.657 it means 66 women work for every 100 men. By comparison the US has 82 women in the workforce for every 100 men.

So if Chile has 15% women in tech, and we want to know what this percentage would be if its female/male labor participation ratio was the same as the US we adjust for that: 15% * (.82 / .657) = 18.2%.

Why do you think that I'm not comparing women's labor participation rates with men? You do realize that the ratio of female to male labor participation is, fundamentally, comparing women and men's labor participation rates?

> 0.657 means only 65 of women work for every 100 men. How are you not getting this?

Again, what am I not getting?

> This hinges on how you define a matriarchy.

Dictionary definition. There's no opinion about it.

> Spain, as I pointed out earlier, has a majority female national leadership.

Not what defined a matriarchy.

> If it isn't a matriarchy, one could still argue that's closer to a matriarchy than a patriarchy.

Not how it works. It's a gradient, yes. Spain being a matriarchy? No.

> You insist that we don't have any matriarchies, yet my request for you to explain how you're choosing to define matriarchy remains unfulfilled.

I gave several examples...

Like, have any modern countries denied men to vote before women? No.

> And why would we think that a matriarchy would have over 50% women in technology?

You. You f-ing asked that. You expected some countries to have over 50% representation, which is stupid since every country is patriarchal on some level.

We don't have matriarchies. I can't stress this enough.

You can't make claims on what we can't observe.

> As countries move away from patriarchy and towards gender equality the percentage of tech worker that are women go down.

You yourself told me of several countries where that's not true. How are you not getting this?!

> Why would one conclude from this that a matriarchy would see a majority of women in technology?

I don't, matriarchies don't exist.

> Sure, some Eastern European countries have similar rates as India. And most do not.

Population wise, they do.

>> Than why are you comparing these countries with the US's women participation rate in the workforce?! What does the US have to do with this?

> You adjust for labor participation by selecting a baseline, and adjusting the other countries to match this baseline. Sure, I could have used any country for the baseline.

No... My point was about how many women were in that country's workforce... Do you not get maths?

> I am very confused as to what you're saying here.

Yes, you clearly are.

> By comparison the US has 82 women in the workforce for every 100 men.

Nobody cares. It does not matter.

> Why do you think that I'm not comparing women's labor participation rates with men?

Because you're not? You keep bringing up the US for some reason.

> You do realize that the ratio of female to male labor participation is, fundamentally, comparing women and men's labor participation rates?

Yeah, I told you that. Yet, still, you bring up the US. Why, ffs, why?

> 0.657 means only 65 of women work for every 100 men. How are you not getting this?

I told you that, thanks.

> Dictionary definition. There's no opinion about it.

There are a variety of dictionaries with different definitions. Some of them define it as a country where the majority of political rulers are women. As explained above, some countries can fit that definition.

> You. You f-ing asked that. You expected some countries to have over 50% representation, which is stupid since every country is patriarchal on some level. We don't have matriarchies. I can't stress this enough. You can't make claims on what we can't observe.

In a previous comment I wrote, "Why wouldn't we expect countries to be 60% women in tech, or 70%, or 80% women in technology? Why do you take it for granted that there won't be any countries with majority women in technology?" To which you responded, "Again. Because we don't have matriarchies. You really don't seem to grasp the concept. Please take a minute to think about it."

I asked why we wouldn't expect some countries to have majority women in tech and your response was that this was because there are no matriarchies. This definitely seems to indicate that you believe matriarchies would have majority women in tech. If not, then this response doesn't make sense.

If one does not suspect that matriarchies would have majority women in tech, then what does the absence of matriarchies justify your claim that it's unreasonable to expect any country to have over 50% women in technology?

I agree that such an expectation is unreasonable - but not because of the absence of any matriarchies. Quite the opposite, when look at the women's representation in technology patriarchal societies that are repressive towards women have the highest representation of women in tech and egalitarian countries have the least. The world, overall, is trending towards gender equality (though some regions are progressing considerably slower than others).

> > As countries move away from patriarchy and towards gender equality the percentage of tech worker that are women go down.

> You yourself told me of several countries where that's not true. How are you not getting this?!

I have re-read my comments and have not found any instance where I wrote such a thing. I believe I have been consistent in my two core claims: 1) The overall distribution of women's representation in technology is fairly narrow, occupying a total range of 15-41% and with 20-30% accounting for the majority of countries. 20-35% accounts for effectively all save for some outliers on either end. 2) What variation does exist shows that women's representation in technology is inversely associated with gender equality. The more equal countries are, the lower the representation of women in technology on average.

Your rest of your comments about my failure to compare men's labor participation and women's labor participation seem to reveal fundamental misunderstandings of what a ratio is.

A female/male ratio of X means that for every man there are X women in the workforce. So when I say that the US has a female to male labor participation ratio of 0.82 it means that there are .82 women in the workforce for every man. Or 82 women for every 100 men. Comparing ratios is comparing the women's labor participation rates to men's labor participation rates. Let me use a an example to put this in practice:

If one country has a female/male labor participation ratio of 0.75 and has 30% tech workers that are women, and another country has a female/male labor participation ratio of 0.5 and 20% of its tech workers are women then one could argue that these countries actually have the same rate of women going into tech. Although women's share in the latter is smaller, the labor participation rate is lower. If we used the former as the baseline, and adjusted the latter's female/male labor participation ratio to match it then the latter country would see it's representation of women in tech go up by 50%, rising from 20% to 30%.

You seem to be fixated on the choice of the US as the baseline. But the choice of baseline does not matter. I could have gone about it in the opposite direction in the above example. I could have taken the first country with a female/male labor participation ratio of 0.75 and adjusted it down to have a female/male labor ratio of 0.5 and its female representation in tech would have dropped to 20%. The conclusion is the same: when adjusted for female/male labor participation the two countries have identical rates of women in tech. So the fact that you're pointing towards choice of the US as the baseline and erroneously saying that I'm not comparing men's and women's labor participation rates reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how this normalization works.

I am indeed comparing the men and women's labor participation rates. To say otherwise is factually incorrect.

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