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Comment by lambdasquirrel | Hacker News Reader

Not just Muslim countries but Asia’s numbers are more even too. Not sure what happened but the West got leapfrogged by a lot of the rest of the world in this regard. We like to think we’re the shining light of progressivism but the reality may be more complicated than that.

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There's a study showing more progressive countries have fewer women in tech. Because when people don't have to worry about putting a roof over their head, affording food and medical bills, they're more likely to pick the career that interests them. And fewer women are interested in STEM. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... In Asia and the middle east people are generally poorer and with fewer opportunities (and there's much less social welfare there), so they need to prioritise economics over interest when choosing a career.

I can only speak of my country (still a Muslim country though more liberal than your average). The reason woman study super-hard is that it gives them freedom. It's not accepted, socially, for a woman, for example, to take a trip to another city and stay alone in a hotel. However, it's totally okay if she is a medical doctor or an engineer in a mission. The same for travelling outside of the country.

These might be strong incentives for woman to pursue STEM degrees. These same incentives don't exist for Western woman since they already have their freedoms unquestioned. Also, a little note: This is just a speculation from me (less than an opinion) might be completely wrong.

Asian countries developed much later. That is why some countries also have mobile payments instead of credit cards. Because credit cards never became the incumbent in the first place. Many western countries have a relatively unbroken history from early industrialism to post-WWII development to home computers in the 80s to early Internet startups. Japan, which developed earlier than India or China, doesn't have a high percentage of women in STEM. The US used to have a higher percentage of women in computer science in the 80s when it was a less popular field. If you instead look at gender distribution in something older like politics or the military western countries often do a lot better than the rest of the world.

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