"women in countries with higher gender inequality are simply seeking the clearest possible path to financial freedom. And typically, that path leads through STEM professions."
I know plenty of American women who would be outraged at the suggestions that the reason there's fewer women in high paying tech jobs is because they enjoy better gender equality! That's some twisted logic there.
Is it really? Plenty of women in computer science during it's early days weren't in it because it was their first choice. Other fields, like law and medicine overtly discriminated against women. Many med schools capped their female student representation at 10%. This displaced women into other fields, like CS. When those sexist policies were removed, those women got the chance to pick the field of their choice. The women that would have been in CS had these sexist policies still been in place aren't taking jobs at a corners store: they're entering other high-status fields.
Many fields that were once dominated by men are now either at parity, or even majority women. The fact that freedom from sexism stopped displacing women into CS doesn't seem like much of a bad thing.
> The fact that freedom from sexism stopped displacing women into CS doesn't seem like much of a bad thing.
Such a convenient explanation... CS is one of the highest paid professions, and women are taking advantage of lack-of-sexism and choosing to stay out of CS... because umm... they don't need the money? You should consider speaking at the Grace Hopper Conference, because there's lots of women there that haven't been told this truth.
It’s a well known fact (supported and replicated by research in multiple countries and societies) that women are less motivated by money than men. Women also prefer to work with people vs things (also well replicated result).
Obviously if a choice is starving vs CS, most women would prefer CS. That’s the choice for many women in Iran (most equal country in CS) or India. That’s not choice for most women in US or Europe. We are talking averages here - obviously there are a lot of women much more motivated by money than average men.
> women are taking advantage of lack-of-sexism and choosing to stay out of CS... because umm... they don't need the money?
As I stated in my previous comment, it's because other high paying industries stopped being sexist against women, and then the women that would have been pushed out of those industries and into CS can now study and work in the field of their choice. Nowhere did I write that "they don't need the money", and I even said that they were choosing other high paying fields once medicine, law, etc. stopped enforcing overtly sexist policies against women. Discussions are more productive when you engage with what other commenters are writing instead of your own inventions.
That’s quite clearly not what they were saying. If you want to argue with yourself, do it in a Word document and don’t involve the rest of us. I’d like to think that this community is above being intellectually dishonest in the name of starting internet fights. I have very very little time or respect for this mindset. What are you hoping to gain from this interaction?
I mean, the hard data is out there. Applicable not just to the US but also to other advanced countries like Scandinavian ones. I know that correlation is not causation and maybe there is some other common cause. But it is undeniable that better gender equality is correlated with fewer women in STEM.
> That's some twisted logic there.
I prefer the term "counterintuitive". And the world works in ways, many of which are counterintuitive. Another famous example - poverty trap, where people are incentivized to stay poor when you offer them means tested welfare. While each of the pillars of such programs (means testing, helping poor etc) sound good in isolation, they have a devastating impact in practice. Moynihan (a liberal, fwiw) was skewered when he suggested as such.
Software Development is competing with all the other possible fields out there for talented people. When we fail to address or mitigate sexism, our profession loses out to the professions that do.
And our evidence that software has more sexism than other fields is...? People tend to simply point to the lower than average female representation, but I don't find that convincing. 80/20 gender split is actually about average. Furthermore, studies measuring callbacks and recruiter interest show preference for women: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484
Honestly…I’m happy to operate under the assumption that tech has a sexism issue purely based on my personal experience with coworkers, superiors, peers online and at conferences, etc. I’ve never even worked in Big Tech! The stories I hear from friends that do, sound ridiculous. I’ve seldom seen a study that meets the standards of objective-ish academic rigour that I feel could even remotely capture all the nuanced ways in which women are (in my experience) screwed by our shitty culture.
If I applied the same line of thinking, I'd be operating on under the assumption that tech has a sexism issue against men based on my experience of being explicitly directed to discriminate against men, and being given gender quotas vastly different from industry representation - often demanding as much as 2x the representation of women. Most of my co-workers, men and women both, have similar stories . That's a lot more concrete to than a hand-wavy "it's nuanced" explanation.
But rather than listening to anecdotes, I'll listen to evidence, which also indicates that tech at best does not discriminate against women and likely discriminates in favor of them.
> 74% of women in software development have experienced gender discrimination
Wrong. 74% of women say they have experienced gender discrimination. This is not measuring discrimination, this is measuring perceptions of discrimination - which is a substantially different thing than actually measuring discrimination through things like anonymized applications, or sending identical applications with different genders. Imagine I had an orchestra. I poll them about gender discrimination, and loads more men say they experienced gender discrimination in hiring. But when we switch to blind auditions, men actually fared worse than women. Which is more compelling evidence?
Perceptions of discrimination could be caused by all sorts of things, like a media ecosystem fiercely promoting the idea that women are being discriminated against in tech - which doesn't always match reality. For instance, Google was constantly said to have been paying women less than men, until they actually studied their salary disparities and found men were underpaid: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...
However, you do raise a good point. The fact that so many women believe they are being discriminated against could very well be part of suppressed representation of women in STEM. The fact that perceptions of discrimination are so strong could dissuade women from entering the field, even though there's little evidence for actual discrimination in tech.
It is/was easier to become financially independent in the states without a STEM degree, although I think it is becoming harder as inflation demands $300k/year FAANG salaries.
"women in countries with higher gender inequality are simply seeking the clearest possible path to financial freedom. And typically, that path leads through STEM professions."