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Comment by unknownsky | Hacker News Reader

> gender differences appear to be greater in societies with greater gender equality and in which people have greater economic resources

I don't think this is a paradox at all. Discouraging 50% of the workforce talent pool is a wasteful luxury that only countries with abundant resources can afford.

I experienced this first hand when I moved to Sweden. I had never been made to feel like a freak for being a programmer until I moved to Sweden. I had never experienced being constantly excluded, discouraged and pushed away from technical activities in order to "rescue" me from things I'm being told me I'm not interested in.

I have a legal right to parental leave and I can get an IUD for free, so it's considered a paradox that there are so few female programmers in such an equal country. I don't see how there is a paradox.

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I do not know how different Norway from Sweden, but among family lawyers in Norway women are like over 75% with quite a few remaining man are immigrants. And a family lawyer can earn more than a programmer. 50 years ago lawyers were almost exclusively male, the same as in IT. Yet in IT it became even worse.

Then look at pilots. As 50 years ago they are almost exclusively man. And this is in a strongly unionized field with a lot of scrutiny so it is much less likely that harassments will be undetected compared with IT.

> I had never been made to feel like a freak for being a programmer until I moved to Sweden.

Are you saying that Sweden is a sexist society? Do you mind me asking where have you been before?

I have lived in a handful of different countries. I'm criticizing the idea that it's so simple to say one country is more sexist or more equal than another because there are so many metrics you can use to measure equality.

Sweden beats a lot of countries when it comes to a strongly protected right to parental leave for both men and women. But Sweden is behind many other countries when it comes to stereotypes and assumptions about what jobs men or women should be doing.

So it's meaningless to make a blanket statement that one country is more equal than another.

This Swedish website actually claims that tech is a problem area for Sweden:

https://sweden.se/life/equality/gender-equality

There's a link to this report: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5501a836e4b0472e6124f...

"Every third woman who responded to the survey, sent out by Allbright to employees at the tech companies, reports that she has been discriminated against"

> "Every third woman who responded to the survey, sent out by Allbright to employees at the tech companies, reports that she has been discriminated against"

Which - putting my boring hat on - doesn't mean she was discriminated against.

So.. some person on an Internet forum is better equipped to determine if it is discrimination than the person who experienced it? Good luck.

> Are you saying that Sweden is a sexist society?

Sweden is such an interesting paradox: womens’ rights to work in different fields and (mostly) on an equal footing are protected in law, and (in my experience) in practice. And yet in many ways I find it generally the most gender-divided country I’ve experienced, and I’ve even lived in countries that most people would consider very sexist, like the UK and Spain.

There are strong traditions of socializing mostly as a group of women or a group of men, inviting all your girlfriends or male friends for dinner (“tjej/herrmiddag”), meeting friends at certain cafés or restaurants that are almost 100% gendered (this can have a comical effect of being the only male in a café filled with 50 females).

Away from the larger towns there is still a strong macho culture, with cars and hunting being as popular as any redneck county in the States, and with all the usual horror-stories of growing-up gay or a misfit, before moving to Stockholm or Gothenburg.

It’s fascinating to me to read outsider’s perspectives of Sweden, as I shared that impression before coming here.

Otoh it always gladdens my heart to see a female roadworker, digging a hole alongside her male colleagues without it seeming odd or misplaced.

> it always gladdens my heart to see a female roadworker

Sure, but a female coalminer?

Please tell me how many men willingly (having had other choice) would go doing road works :)

Or working at a coal mine on thaf matter.

I have helped defend claims brought by coal miners against their employers, and, while I obviously am restrained from giving specifics, a number of the miners were not without skills that would permit them to work in mines, yet they persisted in working in mines.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that people with skills that would permit them to work in mines, work in mines.

? Ok. See the post to which I was replying.

> a number of the miners were not without skills that would permit them to work in mines, yet they persisted in working in mines.

Do you perhaps mean that the miners were not without skills that would permit them to work other than in mines, but persisted in working in mines?

Yeah, haha, thanks for correcting.

E.g. some ppl are electricians, but opt to work in mines (presumably for higher pay, but IDK)

Oh, sorry, other poster pointed out my error, lol

Was typing on phone

Are you saying there aren't female coal miners? What do you think coal miners do?

> > > it always gladdens my heart to see a female roadworker

> > Sure, but a female coalminer?

> Are you saying there aren't female coal miners?

No, I'm not saying that. I'll be more verbose:

Sure, but does it gladden your heart to see a female coalminer?

> What do you think coal miners do?

I assume they mine coal.

>countries that most people would consider very sexist, like the UK and Spain.

For what it's worth -- I've visited both those countries, and neither struck me as particularly sexist. I just checked a couple gender inequality indices, and it seems like they both do OK globally speaking. E.g. the UN ranks them both as more gender-equal than the US: https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/thematic-composite-indices/... (And the US is ranked much more gender-equal than the world as a whole)

Have you considered the possibility that, when given true freedom and not being pressured into certain roles by society, that men and women strongly gravitate to different fields? It could be that the only reason we see more mixing in other societies is that those societies subtly (or not so subtly) pressure people into taking those roles.

> I’ve even lived in countries that most people would consider very sexist, like the UK and Spain.

You live in a massive bubble if you think those countries are above average in sexism.

>a wasteful luxury that only countries with abundant resources can afford.

Is there an important sense in which Sweden has more abundant resources than, say, the US?

The US outranks Sweden in both of these tables:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

"Free" education comes to mind, along with greater wealth distribution generally. Averages don't say much.

US handily outranks Sweden on median wage as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

These are not apples to apples comparisons though, for the very reasons mentioned upthread.

A median wage of $32K in Sweden might come with near zero expenses for health, education, additional security, daily transport, etc.

A median US wage of $47K might incure additional expenses for health, education, etc.

These are post tax "median disposable income per person" figures - and other countries get a great deal more direct benefit per citizen post tax than the US provides.

If this is after taxes then the numbers are indeed way different. I effectively pay 55% taxes on my income (some is nicely hidden behind an employers tax so that the population doesn't see how much they're actually paying). The employers tax isn't part of your income, but it's part of what companies pay for your time.

I'm not sure it's related to your question of "Is there an important sense in which Sweden has more abundant resources than, say, the US?".

The answer is yes, in some cases. Because wealth is distributed so that everyone can afford things like education, healthcare, daycare. If 1 out of a 100 has a superyacht and 99 live on foodstamps that's different in an important sense from if 0 people have a superyacht and everyone gets access to education and food.

You asked for an example about, I handed you one, it seems like you accidentally missed the example in a pursuit to prove the American superiority.

> Because wealth is distributed so that everyone can afford things like education, healthcare, daycare. If 1 out of a 100 has a superyacht and 99 live on foodstamps that's different in an important sense from if 0 people have a superyacht and everyone gets access to education and food.

From your username I’m going to assume you can read Swedish, in which case I’ll recommend Andreas Cervanka’s latest book on the redistribution of wealth in Sweden in recent decades, in favor of the richest in society:

https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/girig-sverige-sa-blev-folkhe...

Thanks for the tip, purchased!

Even before reading, yes it's indeed changed over the years, though I'm relatively young so I haven't experienced the shift myself.

The book arrived today, I'll get back to you :)

>If 1 out of a 100 has a superyacht and 99 live on foodstamps

In this hypothetical, the median income will be very low.

I'm not trying to be combative, I just try to correct misconceptions when I see them. It seems like some people have the misconception that the US is a place of a few superyachts and mostly foodstamps. That's not really the case.

Indeed, very over-exaggerated example. The point about distribution still stands. Sweden just uses taxes to do it rather than equal income.

Fun fact, there's no legal minimum wage in Sweden, it's handled by unions or individuals, not the government.

>Fun fact, there's no legal minimum wage in Sweden

Interesting!

> It seems like some people have the misconception that the US is a place of a few superyachts and mostly foodstamps. That's not really the case.

It's what i see on the news (not superyachts that much), on the "internet" (Reddit).

I understand reality is different, and that it's also different across states. But the stereotypes come from somewhere/something.

I'm sad that we don't have better workplace equality. We should take after NA in regulating resumes. We're allowed photos, names, gender, well anything we want to put on our resume we can. This could/does cause bias way too early in the selection process for jobs.

It doesn't explain why women, who on average perform better in school choose to pursue a career in Healthcare, which is "the worst" industry to work in over here. When there are so many other industries where they could make a great living with less stress, better schedules and more cash on hand.

Why would a company hire someone only to push them away from their area of expertise? That doesn't make sense to me. The only reason I would expect someone to be pushed away from their main activities is being bad at their job. If you want to be sexist, you can just not hire someone.

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