They had female fighter pilots in world war 2 and the first female astronauts. That was long before anybody in the west could even think of that possibility. Not sure if it's a Russian thing or communism. East Germany also had more female engineers and scientists.
Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
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Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
#12Good for them. Hopefully after we reduce the gender tech gap, we can focus on fixing the far below-replacement-level fertility in Europe, North America, and Russia. Personally I find it to be more pressing, but it gets barely any press...
Why? It's not like we are in risk of running out of humans on the planet.
IQ is highly heritable[1], and if smart people are having zero or one children, that should be of concern to everyone.
It's possible that nutrition + butts in school seats created the Flynn effect, where the population's IQ rose. The next century might see the reverse.
[1] Per gwern: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13729085
Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
#13It's because Russia isn't a particularly nice place to live. From the article:
> Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects.
They do tech because it provides a way of getting a good life. In the West, where conditions are less harsh, women don't feel the need to go into tech to get a good life.
Similar considerations explain why female university students are more likely to do STEM subjects in Iran than in Sweden.
This, incidentally, blows out of the water the argument made by some feminists that women don't do STEM because of conditioning in nasty patriarchal societies.
Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
#14because there are fewer stereotypes. Maybe well be a leftover from communism as well, when individualism was strongly discouraged and the only way you could stand out is by doing your job well. Individualism I mean in all aspects of current society - choice and variety of this. I suspect there is a similar trend in China as well.
If that was the case, then I would expect the exact opposite forces to work. My ex used to study mechanical engineering at one of the top universities of poland and the older professors who must have tenured during communism would frequently either openly ask "what is a girl doing in this class" or one straight up said to her that he doesn't believe women can be engineers. She complained to university only to be told that the professor was joking and nothing happened.
Communism might have been promoting individualism, but certainly engineering professions were men-only affairs.
Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
#15Maybe because like men all over the world, Russian women aren't specially "encouraged" to go into tech? Maybe nobody has to tell them or tell anyone to 'like science'. People just do.
The same argument goes for women in science. Albert Einstein was told he wouldn't amount to much. Doesn't mean he 'got discouraged' and quit physics. That's not why we do science - for public appreciation - we do it because we love it no matter what anyone else says. This is the point that the girls in tech people miss I think.
Instead of buying your daughters lego sets with women wearing fancy lab coats and looking into telescopes, buy them gyroscopes, or electronics kits, or lego's own DIY robot? None of the toys mentioned above feature gender and actually give a sense of what science is about.
I'm open to hear your thoughts, especially from women.
Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
#16It's the wrong question.
Which is ironic, since the inability to ask to right question (about the US) is indicative of the problem (here). The question tech here should be asking is: If our "party" is so great (and being the self-absorbed Kool Aid drinkers that we are, we're 100% certain it is), how come so few outside our immediate circle wants to come to our party? Maybe it's not them? Maybe it's us? Could it be us? No!!! Never!!! It can't be us.
THAT is what should be the mindset of trying to understand to problem. It's not. Funny tho'. Tech is willing to solve all the rest of the world's problems. But it's unwilling - and unable? - to solve its own.
Yeah I know. Let the down votes begin. Please feel free, cause that only proves my point.
Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
#17Russia has a very low birth rate for native Russians. Here in the US, having kids and working in engineering is difficult. My wife took 5 years off and it has definitely affected her pay and advancement. Low pay and little vacation maybe have something to do with it too. Both the wife and I are engineers. Our daughter shows no interest in tech. She does like to mix stuff, so maybe Chem E. Though I'm not going to prod…
>STEM just does not pay over the long term.
Whaa? What's your definition of pay? Anyway, IMO no prodding needed - expose the child to a wide variety of things, and then help them find and nurture their passion.
Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
#18I've seen it argued that, paradoxically, the richer and more egalitarian a society is, the more the differences are magnified in the kinds choices individuals of both genders make. So Russia being a poorer nation with less paths to success would lead more women to make career choices based around economics, while in Sweden, a richer welfare state, economic factors may be a lower driver.
Lots of this.
It's not only Russia, either, which I find to be a bizarre point of focus here. I find female colleagues are far more likely to be from India, China, or Taiwan than any western nation.
Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
#19I've seen it argued that, paradoxically, the richer and more egalitarian a society is, the more the differences are magnified in the kinds choices individuals of both genders make. So Russia being a poorer nation with less paths to success would lead more women to make career choices based around economics, while in Sweden, a richer welfare state, economic factors may be a lower driver.
There's also a pattern where differences in average personality are larger in more gender-egalitarian societies which might be an alternate explanation.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijop.12265/abstra...
Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
#20I've seen it argued that, paradoxically, the richer and more egalitarian a society is, the more the differences are magnified in the kinds choices individuals of both genders make. So Russia being a poorer nation with less paths to success would lead more women to make career choices based around economics, while in Sweden, a richer welfare state, economic factors may be a lower driver.
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