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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?

#81

Post by odiroot »

If they're anything like my country, Poland, and we were pretty similar before (together in Warsaw pact) there basically doesn't have to be any "encouraging women".

Your gender doesn't matter that much. Both men and women usually pursue most of the majors. And in physics and maths you usually substantial amounts of women.

In IT, being pretty fresh in this part of the world, men are majority but still not overwhelming.

Anecdata: from primary school to the end of my university I've only had male maths teachers for a year and a half.

I don't have an immediate source for this but I have an impression that post-Soviet societies are a lot more equal than Western ones.

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

#82

Post by bkkssnn »

77pt77 wrote: post #77
ohstopitu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> so would you say those fields that have >50% Notice what was written. It was not >50%. It was better than 50%

What is better than 50 % ?

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

#83

Post by beaconstudios »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #72
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.

Well, the argument comes from the fact that the most gender equal countries still have very high level of men and women assuming traditional gender roles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask And we are not sure what that is.

I think the more time goes on, the more the idea of gender roles being 100% socially constructed seems untenable. It would make sense in a world where human being are purely rational agents, but we still carry the baggage of evolution and having to survive in nature. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that some of the specialist selections (including psychological) that have evolved into men and women would persist in modern times.

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

#84

Post by gkya »

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.

Maybe it's just because most men don't want to do feminine jobs and most women don't want to do masculine jobs. We're all social human beings at the end of the day, and we want to be cool, attractive individuals, and most of us care about others' eyes on us.

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

#85

Post by treehau5 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #11

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.

Yep. They just expected women to be able to do the same thing as men. There weren't these half-hearted attempts to "boost diversity" that just never, ever feel genuine. There are Russian greats across the board both male and female -- even pre-soviet. But yes, female astronauts, engineers. Go back a couple centuries, and you had Catherine the Great -- one of the greatest and longest tenured Russian monarchs, a woman. The faith of the Russian people -- the Orthodox Faith -- venerates a woman as the "greatest Saint" and the "Queen of Heaven". It's just always been a part of the mindset. So women are everywhere and it just isn't treated as anything out of the ordinary, or as hitting some diversity figure. It needs to be natural.

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

#86

Post by milquetoastaf »

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.

Yep, that one anecdotal line from an article totally destroys the idea of any sort of patriarchy or sexism happening in the US.

Sheesh, this is the top comment? Give me a break.

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

#87

Post by thriftwy »

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.

There are a lot of female young (and not-so-young too!) scientists in Russia today.

The pay is not great and a lot of hoops to jump, but the hours are usually flexible. Maybe some women don't feel pressure to be breadwinners, so they can choose a career in science, but men feel that they have to make more money than science ever promises in Russia.

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

#88

Post by ralfd »

sanswork wrote: post #64
DarkKomunalec wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because America and Russia are part of western civilisation?

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

#89

Post by htns »

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…

"Tech people want to believe that the gender disparity in their field is shared among all the STEM fields"

It's convenient for both women's studies departments and tech recruiters to pretend other fields don't exist. It is taboo to talk about it, to the point that I haven't come across any serious piece of writing that dared to seriously contemplate the question of "what are the girls choosing to do instead?", but I don't think it has much to do with psychoanalytic undercurrents.

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

#90

Post by padthai »

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.

In Spain it is about 50-60%: http://www.rsme.es/comis/mujmat/estadisticas/facultades.htm

Note that the problem it is specific only to some degrees, in general women are advancing in most western countries: http://politikon.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/4.png

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