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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?

#61

Post by belorn »

macspoofing wrote: post #4

I'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.

Large part of the paradox can likely be explained by the small preferences thats derived from gender identity, and the correlation to the number of opportunities available to the individual.

For example, if a person choose from two similar professions with similar pay but where one is dominated by ones own gender and the other isn't, then I predict that a above 50% will chose the one which employ a majority of ones own gender. However if there is only a few professions that is high paying and a lot of unemployment in other areas, and many people live in poverty, then gender will be less of a factor in the decision.

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

#62

Post by tptacek »

ohstopitu wrote: post #47
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Since molecular biology has something like a 54/46 distribution and tech has something like a 19/81 distribution I'd probably tell anyone who told me I should focus on the injustices of molecular biology to shove it up their ass.

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

#63

Post by sidek »

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…

Do you have a citation re:mathematics? As a person in mathematical physics, I would be /very/ surprised to hear that math is a more gender balanced field than physics.

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

#64

Post by sanswork »

DarkKomunalec wrote: post #43
sanswork wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then why the concern with America and Russia too?

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

#65

Post by sanswork »

coldtea wrote: post #42
sanswork wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That could explain one of the three.

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

#66

Post by moopling »

ohstopitu wrote: post #47
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Where are you going to expend your energy? The whole world is full of misogency, do you spend your time trying to fix that, or worry about the compartively small number of times men face unfairness?

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

#67

Post by nommm-nommm »

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…

>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.

No, it absolutely does not.

You suggest "overall society might affect individual choices" and then from that premise reach the conclusion "overall society definitely does not affect individual choices."

>[Women get into] tech [in Russia] 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.

Consider hypothetical societal differences [that may be patriarchal] that may make "a good life" to a Russian woman a totally different thing than "a good life" to an American women. Consider, even if definitions were identical, societal differences [that may be patriarchal] that may make make pursuing a good life much harder (or even downright impossible, see Saudi Arabia) in one country vs another.

I could go on.

For one example, after Title IX of the Higher Education Act was passed in 1972 female enrollment in medical school went from around 10% to over 20% in just 2 years. It's now around 50%.

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

#68

Post by sanswork »

coldtea wrote: post #51
sanswork wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, he is saying that they have worse "nutrition" and less "butts in school", which increased the population's IQ in the past century. So if they predominate (and developed countries diminish) the general IQ might go down too.

Isnt malnutrition a pretty huge problem in Russia?

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

#69

Post by tptacek »

sidek wrote: post #63
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have a citation re:mathematics? As a person in mathematical physics, I would be /very/ surprised to hear that math is a more gender balanced field than physics.

I do somewhere; I'll track it down and relay the numbers. But also I'll say that this matches my own personal experience: go to an academic cryptography conference sometime and note how many more women you see than in a generic CS conference. There are more women mathematicians than computer scientists and physicists.

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

#70

Post by Cpoll »

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…

> 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.

I don't understand your logic here. Isn't the more natural conclusion that the desire to get a good life is stronger than the conditioning?

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