[manfredo]

The gender equality paradox is one strong example. Contrary to the narrative that women don't go into tech because of restrictive gender roles, the countries with the greatest amounts of gender equality, the highest male child rearing participation, the most generous parental leave, the smallest wage gap, etc. actually have the lowest rates of women in tech. By comparison the countries that have the most restrictive gender roles and worst gender inequality have some of the highest percentages of women in tech. The Scandinavian countries have 10-20% women in tech. Many gender- oppressive middle eastern and southeast Asian countries have a figure in the 30% or even 40% ballpark.

Edit, here's an article explaining this since judging by subsequent comments I may have done a poor job: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article...

[ajross]

Why is that "tech" and not just "time"?

Tech careers have only been spoken of as such for about a quarter century. Where were scandanavian female doctors as far as representation in the 1970s?

I mean, you're still sort of sidestepping the issue, but you brought up the analogy: what is it about tech that is fundamentally more gender-selective than medicine?

[manfredo]

I think you're missing the core point. It's not that industries are selective of gender. It's that people are selective of the industry they work in, and on average women select things other than tech. The agency is on the part of people.

So the less restrictions there are on gender roles, the more agency people have to select fields based on their own preferences.

[ajross]

No no, I get your point. I'm saying there's a much more obvious hypothesis for why "people are selective of the industry they work in", and you need to refute that instead of circularly insisting on its truth as the basis for your argument.

Basically, you're saying "chicks don't like tech", and I'm saying "prove it". And you won't. And then you try to tell me that I'm missing the point because I failed to note that chicks don't like tech.

[manfredo]

> I'm saying there's a much more obvious hypothesis for why "people are selective of the industry they work in", and you need to refute that instead of circularly insisting on its truth as the basis for your argument.

...no? It's your responsibility to provide evidence for your "much more obvious hypothesis". I provided evidence for my claim that women choose not to go into tech on their own volition. I provided global statistics that demonstrate that the more freedom and equality women have, the less they choose to go into tech. I did "prove it" as you insist I need to do, so I'm confused why you continue to say that I have not provided evidence . It's your turn to provide evidence in refutation of this claim.

The way you keep summarizing this as "chicks don't like tech" and insisting that I provide evidence of my claim while simultaneously calling your explanation "much more obvious" without providing evidence to back it up is not indicative of a good faith discussion.

[ajross]

> I provided evidence for my claim that women choose not to go into tech on their own volition.

Uh... no, you didn't? I don't see it. All I see is circular logic: you're citing the lack of women in tech as evidence that they don't want to be there in response to a thread that says the lack of women in tech is a problem.

My point is that there are dozens or hundreds of other career paths where women used to be excluded and are now at parity, so I don't see any reason (other than novelty -- tech is still new, comparatively) for things to be any different here.

And your logic doesn't speak to that at all.

[manfredo]

> All I see is circular logic: you're citing the lack of women in tech as evidence that they don't want to be there

If this is all you see then you did not get the underlying point I'm making. I provided evidence that there is the least representation of women in tech in countries with the most gender equality and gender freedom. The countries with the least gender equality and most restrictive gender roles have the most women in tech. The evidence lies in the inverse relationship between greater gender equality and more flexible gender roles with the percentage of women in tech. If all you took away from this was that women are underrepresented in tech worldwide, then you did not see the evidence I was actually referring to.

[yorwba]

The evidence is not the small proportion of women in tech, but that it gets smaller when you compare countries where women have little freedom to decide for themselves to countries where gender equality is enshrined into law and women earn as much as men. So individual freedom appears to lead to fewer women choosing a career in tech.

That doesn't necessarily mean that no discrimination is going on. For example, both medicine and tech could be discriminatory, but medicine slightly less so, and women choose the better one. But any possible explanation needs to take into account that women do have a choice and they choose differently from men.

Offering scholarships might be able to tease out the difference, although it would have to be applied at much larger scale. If every student of medicine were offered a scholarship to learn programming instead, how many would switch?

[kansface]

If women have surpassed parity in other (far more demanding), more prestigious and better paying fields, why do you think that at the same time, the trend went in the other direction in our field? Do you think the tech workers of Silicon Valley - probably the most left leaning white collar professionals in the most left leaning part of the country simultaneously put up barriers for women at the same time that doctors and lawyers were taking them down? Do you think that demographic became more sexist from the 70s to the 10s to the exclusion of women?

[belorn]

> I'm saying "prove it".

There is a rather obvious finding in a study quite a long time ago that simplistically said: individuals in a group who belonging to a minority feel less secure than those individuals belonging to a majority.

From there we can make a relative small jump to say that when everything else is equal, individuals like to feel safe over not feeling safe. In additional when faced with adversity, how safe a individual feel has a strong potential to effect the outcome.

Those points is actually from a gender study looking at gender segregation. It doesn't say anything about "chicks don't like tech" or that "dudes don't like teaching", nor is parent comment.

[PhasmaFelis]

> The Scandinavian countries have 10-20% women in tech.

Wait, 10%-20% of what? 20% of all women (or all men) involved in tech work seems like a lot.

[manfredo]

Female representation in tech. I meant that 10-20% of tech workers are women.