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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?

#101

Post by DarkKomunalec »

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?

Why not? Aren't they worth preserving?

A better question would be why no concern for China and Japan. In case of China, it's because they consider themselves overpopulated. In case of Japan, I simply neglected to include them on the list - it was not meant to be comprehensive, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d... for that.

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

#102

Post by RodericDay »

milquetoastaf wrote: post #86
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.

The fact that this is the top comment is very related to the actual issue.

I came from mech eng, and the cluelessness and defensiveness techies display when their field's hostility towards women is discussed is incredibly messed up.

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

#103

Post by pottersbasilisk »

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…

I wonder how many men are also choosing tech for the money.

I know I did, I wanted to study sociology but that doesnt pay the bills.

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

#104

Post by rimliu »

milquetoastaf wrote: post #86
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.

The comment mentions two other countries.

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

#105

Post by rimliu »

RodericDay wrote: post #102
milquetoastaf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The fact that this is the top comment is very related to the actual issue. I came from mech eng, and the cluelessness and defensiveness techies display when their field's hostility towards women is discussed is incredibly messed up.

Maybe because there is no hostility towards women? Have you seen a bunch of programmers who were not happy about prospect of getting some girls among coworkers?

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

#106

Post by pottersbasilisk »

ra1n85 wrote: post #18
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.

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.

Yes I can confirm this too. From our brief conversations, most of them didnt enjoy it but do it for the money (like me).

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

#107

Post by bigtimeidiot »

tptacek wrote: post #62
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?

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.

>shove it up their ass.

So edgy. What about nursing? Should we shove that up our ass too?

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/human-capital-and-risk/...

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

#108

Post by rimliu »

rntz wrote: post #58
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…

If this were true - if needing a good job for a good life predicted going into STEM among women - you'd expect poor women in western countries to flock to STEM training as well. Do they?

Do they flock to ANY kind of education?

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

#109

Post by tptacek »

stagbeetle wrote: post #97
tptacek wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about registered nurses? It's a 91/9 spit.

This rebuttal is so tired that it's actually (search for it in Dan and Scott's comments) banned from the site, but I think that's a mistake, because it is in fact a huge problem that there is a 91/9 split in nursing. A bigger problem than tech's disparity. The status-shifting we've done with "nursing" has resulted in scarce and expensive medical doctors being (almost always pointlessly) our first line of health care in the US. We should rename "nurse practitioners" to "associate physicians", discarding the gender-inflected term "nurse".

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

#110

Post by douche »

htns wrote: post #89
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…

"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…

> what are the girls choosing to do instead?

https://nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsb20161/uploads/1/6/at03-12...

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