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Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#41

Post by keymone »

the reason there are many women in tech is simple: IT jobs pay ridiculously good compared to non-IT jobs and barrier of entry has been lowered enough for even non-techy women to realize they can train for few weeks and get a solid paying job as junior QA. and when they are smart and went for math/technical education - being software developer is a no brainer, it pays easily 10-100 times better than average job in any other sector.

same thing is happening in ukraine: https://s.dou.ua/files/lenta/salary-report-dec-2016/fem-titl...

full survey: https://dou.ua/lenta/articles/salary-report-dec-2016/?from=s...

compare to previous surveys: https://jobs.dou.ua/salaries/demography/dec2016/

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#42

Post by coldtea »

sanswork wrote: post #7
DarkKomunalec wrote: post #5

Good 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.

Because people also care about their particular culture not dying, a worry to which whether the planet has enough of other peoples is irrelevant.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#43

Post by DarkKomunalec »

sanswork wrote: post #7
DarkKomunalec wrote: post #5

Good 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.

Being from Europe myself, I suppose I'm biased to wanting to preserve Europeans, and am not satisfied with merely preserving humanity as a whole.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#44

Post by StavrosK »

sanswork wrote: post #23
simonsarris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you saying people in Europe, north America, and Russia are smarter than people in the rest of the world?

Smarter, better educated, the result is the same.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#45

Post by laughingman2 »

raducu wrote: post #35
SilverSlash wrote: post #15

Maybe 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 n…

Do you have any data on this? I'd be willing to bet women are nowhere near as interested in a pure science career in Russia as they are in IT. I think it has to do with psycho-evolutionary factors -- men have much more incentives to take risks, women much more so to play it safe.

Yeah right, and how did you arrive at your reasoning, any list of scientific studies?

This is good old sexist/racist talk "X is inferior in math because genes"

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#46

Post by stiGGG »

sartemis wrote: post #2

because 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.

>because there are fewer stereotypes. Maybe well be a leftover from communism as well

It think this is the main reason. Stereotypes are great for capitalism. I can speak only for germany, but in the 90es i felt, there was a movement to reduce this gender stereotypes stuff, but this got completly reverted in the last 15 years or so. Nowadays there exists a Kinder Surprise Girls Edition with pink flowers on the packaging and special potato chips flavors for men and women (WTF). I also recognise the effects frim this in my personal environment, with young parents going full into this stereotype things. The boy has to play football from day one he can walk. The younger daughter can not wear clothes from is older brother because they are not pink and she is put into ballett school ignoring that she obviously prefers football too. It's a real shame!

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#47

Post by ohstopitu »

tptacek wrote: post #32
cabalamat wrote: post #13

It'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, wh…

Without engaging in any of the rest of your comment, I'm going to call out again the attempt to shift goalposts from tech to STEM in general. Tech people want to believe that the gender disparity in their field is shared among all the STEM fields, but, of course, it is not: women are far better represented in other STEM fields. Computer science, physics, and engineering have similarly acute gender disparity. The rest…

so would you say those fields that have >50% women would need to work on their gender diversity to include more men?

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#48

Post by TorKlingberg »

tptacek wrote: post #32
cabalamat wrote: post #13

It'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, wh…

Without engaging in any of the rest of your comment, I'm going to call out again the attempt to shift goalposts from tech to STEM in general. Tech people want to believe that the gender disparity in their field is shared among all the STEM fields, but, of course, it is not: women are far better represented in other STEM fields. Computer science, physics, and engineering have similarly acute gender disparity. The rest…

I don't think you mean that >50% is better, but your general point is right. Other STEM fields are not as male dominated. Even physics is not as bad as CS. I had several women TAs in physics, but none in CS/programming.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#49

Post by rntz »

> According to Unesco, 29% of women worldwide are in science research, compared with 41% in Russia. In the UK, about 4% of inventors are women, whereas the figure is 15% in Russia.

These numbers seem ludicrously high regardless of gender. I'd be surprised to hear that 29% - almost 3 of 10 - men were scientists. Is what they're actually saying that 29% of scientists are women worldwide, but in russia it's 41%? That would make more sense.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#50

Post by thriftwy »

madengr wrote: post #9

Russia 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…

> Russia has a very low birth rate for native Russians

That was true 20 years ago but no longer true today. Russia is in a period of relative baby boom and fertility rate is now higher than in most European countries (except France, Sweden and Ireland I believe). It's already quite difficult to put kids in school!

Of course the effect is bound to peter out in a coming decade.

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