[koonsolo]

> The reason I am a sceptic is because as a Scandinavian I notice easily how much more macho men are in less gender equal societies and how much more feminine the women are.

I think it depends on what you're looking at. It is indeed true what you say. But if you look at % of women in tech, less gender equal societies will have relative more female programmers.

This is from my own experience as a Belgian married to a Slovakian, and working in tech with externals in Ukraine and other countries.

It is true that middle and eastern Europe have a more traditional gender division, and I found this article that shows my point: http://blog.honeypot.io/women-in-tech-germany/. Netherlands has the least % of women in tech, but I can tell you they don't have a traditional gender role division (just as in Belgium).

So to get back to your first point, I think feminine women don't necessarily avoid working in tech, while more emancipated women do. It seems counter intuitive, but it definitely points in that direction.

[jernfrost]

I don’t necessarily reject that possibility. But I feel it does not capture the full extent of differences or similarities between genders. Can you really say genders are more similar because they have more similar jobs?

Also I would caution agains making conclusions from Eastern European countries. Communism was very much into gender equality in some regards. Very high percentage of communist women worked.

You see this in communist guriellia which often have a lot of women. The Kurdish women’s fighters were a result of various socialist ideologies which is quite feminist.

I just don’t think this issue can be represented on one axis alone. There are more similarities son some axis and less on others it seems in more gender equal places.

Gender equality itself isn’t a number on a single axis either.

[koonsolo]

> But I feel it does not capture the full extent of differences or similarities between genders.

The article indeed puts it into a really broad sense, and I agree that it should then look at it from more than 1 angle.

My experience with eastern Europe is that they are more traditional in their gender roles. Women get to stay at home with their kids for 3 years, and they actually prefer it that way. They also expect the man to do all the manly stuff. Quite different from what you see in Belgium and our neighboring countries.