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This is because of " boys are prince, girls are princesses" and "blue is for boys and pink (or red) is for girls" propaganda. I went to faculty in an eastern europe country and we did not had such crap shaming of jobs based on gender.

I think it's more rich countries where women have options, many decide to do what they enjoy instead.

edit: Did you actually have noteworthy ratio in computer engineering?

Unless you do something about the attractiveness of Psychology and Medicine, there will always be fields with a lack of female students. Computer Engineering being on the lower end of the list. Its a zero sum game, you wont get quota in waste disposal management without an upper limit in every profession that has more then the male/female ratio of the workforce.

You opinion also assumes that socialization is everything. I would argue that there is ample evidence that women are more drawn into professions that help people vs building something alone in their basement. So unless you want to engineer a new women with less compassion and more obsession on tinkering i dont know what to tell you.

Add on top of that the big bias of large parts of a given years computer engineering alumni being on the spectrum.

The question is complicated. On the one hand you claim that in the west certain people are pushed away from certain fields, whereas others have claimed that in more egalitarian countries people are actually pushed into certain fields against their will. In my opinion, as someone that has seen both eastern europe and the west, I tend to agree with the latter idea, as I have personally witnessed large social pushes towards equality in the west, alongside a highly capable female demographic that achieve well in schools, it dosen't add up to me that women in the west are being pushed out of these programs, they simply prefer others. In comparison I see the same high capability and well achieving demographic in the east, with no positive or negative societal pressure on them, with a much more egalitarian professors/students ratio. Clearly there is something else besides capability and social pressure, and as others have pointed out, that is freedom of choice.

> People might be shocked to hear this, but not many little girls dream about becoming computer engineers.

In my experience the majority of new high school grads do not choose their uni program based on a deep passion. Usually, they don't even have one or don't know what it is.

I studied CS in Germany at 2 different faculties, and there was a large discrepancy between the first (~15% non-male), and the second (~35% non-male). The second faculty had a lot more female professors, I also suspect that having a more equal gender ratio benefits an even more equal gender ratio: The idea of being a small minority in your degree is just not very appealing, and the negative stereotypes on male CS students are pretty off-putting to women. These do also seem to hold true for a sad subset of the student body.

I dont think you can compare the two faculties out of context. One driver for the especially abysmal ratio in my case was there being a competing degree. A more media focused computer science degree gutting out the low level stuff. There the ratio was great, but that was due to poaching of design students. Same with a data science masters degree poaching of the mathematics department.

While there has been a great example to the contrary of the Arab world (which requires more consideration), it seems that the more choice you give female students to get around some stuff the more likely they will do. That would boil down to some stuff being less attractive. So the question is do you trick/nudge/force people to do it either way?

> not many little girls dream about becoming computer engineers

This simply isn't true in many cultures. So why is it the case in the West?

Please source this.

Why? Did you provide a source for your claim? No.

The poster i responded to didnt claim what i said was untrue in the West. But there being an exception in other cultures. So which ones? Sorry if that sounded confrontational.

edit: Best i could come up with is Russia and they have heavily biased gender ratios as well https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240183/university-cours...

china: https://image5.sixthtone.com/image/5/9/809.jpg

India has an equal ratio in CS, still looking for CE. The ratio is explained as follow >Limited Career Choice in India: Among families who send their children to university in India, engineering or medicine is the default expectation (both for men and women). Parents place great pressure on their children to study specific subjects for reasons of socio-economic prospects –career and marriage partners are a prime concern. For the most part, children feel they must comply. http://www.hcixb.org/papers_2017/hcixb17-final-37.pdf

That seems to be a general trend, the less pressure, the worse the ratios. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

Thanks for that response. I did take it as confrontational. I apologize.

Don't forget to look back in time to 1980s USA.

Graph: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/cs.png?x91208

Can anyone link/provide a good analysis on this?

I don't have time, but just wanted to comment that I appreciate that you're actually looking into this rather than just handwaving objections away.

Generally prefer being right over feeling right. Since i am an idiot that includes a lot of searching for overlooked facts and perspectives. Appreciate the heads up.

It is an obvious pattern known to anyone who visited or attended Eastern European or Middle Eastern universities.

Here is an example I saw recently: Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi is a STEM research-focused university and close to 60% of their students are female. They have no "soft" majors and most students have to achieve and maintain high performance to stay enrolled and get scholarships that cover their tuition or even give them stipends if they are in the top of their class. I saw female students happily working on robotics, FPGA designs, security CTFs, etc. They would be shocked to see how common it is to be the single woman in a classroom in other countries.

Edit: sentence clarity.

Thank you! Its a great example with Abu Dhabi being less likely to be formed by the economic pressure prevalent in countries like India.

I don't have the study at hand, but almost all parts of the Muslim world that do not restrict women from study have a lot of female STEM interest. I think it was Egypt that had a significant amount of women in IT, too, but I don't recall the finer details.

i'd say it's the same reason not so many little boys dream of becoming a nurse.

And i also think that there's no reason to have such quotas for professions. What needs to be done is giving young people exposure to as much as possible as early as possible.