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Comment by aahortwwy | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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.

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.

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