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Comment by vixen99 | Hacker News Reader

Bit of a mystery this. How do we explain the 'Gender equality paradox' as described in https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-gir...?

"COUNTRIES WITH GREATER gender equality see a smaller proportion of women taking degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), a new study has found. Dubbed the “gender equality paradox”, the research found that countries such as Albania and Algeria have a greater percentage of women amongst their STEM graduates than countries lauded for their high levels of gender equality, such as Finland, Norway and Sweden."

Of course stereotypes exist and play a role to some degree (who knows how much?) in people's perceptions of themselves but the article in the theconversation makes zero mention of natural proclivities. The author has an agenda and is uninterested in getting to the truth of the matter.

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Not to counter your point, but natural proclivities and stereotypes are often fighting each other. If a man likes horse-riding, he may not pursue it because in their country that's seen as a girly thing (I'm looking at you, Sweden). If a girl likes horse-riding, she may not do it because in her country that's considered a manly thing (personal experience, different country).

So, all the more reason to fight stereotypes at every step.

If you view "Brainwash: The Gender Equality Paradox" on YouTube, you will find interesting answers. https://youtu.be/tiJVJ5QRRUE

In a scientific experiment, from the age of nine months, boys choose masculine toys, while girls choose femmine toys. Boys are more attract from inanimate systems, while girls from social interactions.

Obviously culture has an effect, every person is unique, etc., etc. So there cannot be limitation on what a person want and can do. It is only unrealistic pretending that 50% of boys and 50% of girls will have the same interests in work and life, because they are different.

I'm not sure if that's a paradox. I think the goal of gender equality is not to have 50/50 men/women everywhere. It's to have no one that is blocked from doing something because of their gender, either by others or by themselves. This is usually referred as "equality of opportunities, not equality of outcomes". This is also hard to measure, and could be influenced by society.

Some people say that this would naturally lead to having 50/50 men/women everywhere. I'm not sure that's true. If societal pressure disappears, biology will be one of the remaining influences. And since societal pressure will be gone, biology will play a stronger role in the overall distribution. But that's just my opinion/theory about this.

I feel like a world where women are blocked from or forced into STEM to maintain a 50/50 parity would be not great, but again, maybe some people disagree for reasons I hadn't considered, or we disagree on fundamental points.

I think this is sort of like how male nurses are (I think) more common in India than the US. When the availability of high paying jobs is limited, then the desire for a high paying job trumps both nature and nurture and people pursue it. When there is the possibility of high paying jobs in a variety of fields, then people act more on preferences which are grounded both in nature and nurture to varying degrees.

In fact India now has so many male nurses that they enforce an 80% female quota to "protect" female nurses' jobs! https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/male-nurs...

This is equivalent to enforcing an 80% male software engineering quota.

The men's rights movement in India really has its work cut out...

Speculation: in these countries it's more common to segregate educational programs by gender. So there will be dedicated institutions for women, including institutions or departments that focus on computer science. In this context, it's more natural for women to consider computer science as something that women do. This seems compatible with the original article's hypothesis in the general case.

Natural proclivities is a post hoc rationalization using the sociological process of reification. The process of gaining knowledge assuming a social construct will always suffer from a tautological fallacy. Any attempt to break the cycle is a epistemological illusion.

> Natural proclivities is a post hoc rationalization using the sociological process of reification.

Meaning:

Step 1: Create social incentives that maintain differences.

Step 2: Measure differences.

Step 3: Say those differences are real and natural, since you now have measured them.

> The process of gaining knowledge assuming a social construct will always suffer from a tautological fallacy.

Meaning:

If you want to know whether, say, men and women are different, and you try to collect measurements about those differences, those measurements will always be affected by the underlying assumption that men and women are different.

> Any attempt to break the cycle is a epistemological illusion.

Meaning: Your measurements of peoples' behavior will always be polluted by whatever beliefs are widespread, including those to do with whatever you're measuring.

That about right?

I disagree.

You can measure, for example, the behavior of male and female orangutans. It will not be affected by human society. The only assumption you are making is that orangutans and humans are similar -- that the former is a good model for the latter.

I also have a larger problem with the worldview you are advancing. While it raises useful awareness about certain mistakes that can be made, it is itself unfalsifiable when taken too far. It asserts that everything is socially constructed and that no measurement can demonstrate otherwise.

For most of those countries, women make way, way more money in STEM fields. That's definitely why.

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