Singapore is 48.25% women in STEM vs 28% globally. https://www.ntu.edu.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-... However that number drops after graduation until it reaches a low 13.1 percent in management. The fact of the matter is that it isn't the lack of jobs or role models etc that's causing the issue, its the fact that females are worse at handling acute stress which is associated with STEM related jobs. Wome…
I would have expected it to be because roughly 80% start making babies after graduation.
Singapore is 48.25% women in STEM vs 28% globally. https://www.ntu.edu.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-... However that number drops after graduation until it reaches a low 13.1 percent in management. The fact of the matter is that it isn't the lack of jobs or role models etc that's causing the issue, its the fact that females are worse at handling acute stress which is associated with STEM related jobs. Wome…
> females are worse at handling acute stress Every time this kind of issue comes up on HN there's someone who comes along to mansplain why women are inherently less able to do tech jobs. It's not a good look for our profession and we really should be above this by now.
This is a thorny discussion, but it appears that IQ is unevenly distributed and the differences in variance are even stronger. And the end result seems to be that if you select for IQ > 150 people, then you expect to see 80% men 20% women purely due to biological causes. Whether or not we (the society) should accept that outcome is a completely different thing. But if you average over enough people, there are very real development differences between genders and some of them are related to brain energy supply and/or brain volume. And I believe the GP was right, stress response is also heavily biologically modulated. It kind of makes sense that the average 1.6m women would respond differently to a hungry tiger than a 1.9m bodybuilder... right?
Singapore is 48.25% women in STEM vs 28% globally. https://www.ntu.edu.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-... However that number drops after graduation until it reaches a low 13.1 percent in management. The fact of the matter is that it isn't the lack of jobs or role models etc that's causing the issue, its the fact that females are worse at handling acute stress which is associated with STEM related jobs. Wome…
I would have expected it to be because roughly 80% start making babies after graduation.
Not Singaporeans no. I'm pretty sure their birth rate is below replacement.
Because science and technology is low status grunt work for peasants who are clever. Finance, law, medicine, etc are higher status middle class roles and that's where the aspirational end up.
Modern finance is literally indistinguishable from maths and tech.
Law isn't a guaranteed way to a high status career anymore, far from it.
Medicine sure. But the initial investment is multiple times that of a tech career, for fairly marginal gains in quality of life (when it isn't actually worse).
> the fact that females are worse at handling acute stress Or, maybe, they just know better that enduring acute stress is a bad career choice.
People who are female, smart, unhindered by their society and sufficiency wealthy to have agency can choose what they want to do. Why choose software development when medicine, finance and science are open? Yeah, some are introverted and are into programming but even for those, there’s way easier money owning the developers than being one. Far too many “fail” the last two criteria.
Because science and technology is low status grunt work for peasants who are clever. Finance, law, medicine, etc are higher status middle class roles and that's where the aspirational end up.
Yeah, technology still isn’t a socially respected job.
“On the other hand, we need girls in STEM in order to stay economically competitive.
...
There's the meat of why they are pushing this so hard, they want to drive down wages and seem to think there's an undertapped portion of the peasantry.
People who are female, smart, unhindered by their society and sufficiency wealthy to have agency can choose what they want to do. Why choose software development when medicine, finance and science are open? Yeah, some are introverted and are into programming but even for those, there’s way easier money owning the developers than being one. Far too many “fail” the last two criteria.
> I believe there is a much higher proportion of female engineers in India for example I worked in delivery centres in India and the Philippines and can verify your hypothesis. I asked women colleagues there about their career motivation which was: state-sponsored IT studies, good earning perspective, safe working environment. None quoted interesting topics/career satisfaction as a top reason.
I can't find the research piece, but there was also a factor of material benefit - basically, in poorer countries EVERYONE is motivated to gravitate to the highest compensation, whereas in richer countries, there is less of an incentive
The topic is called the STEM gender equality paradox. It was started by paper in 2018 [1] which only really reported on the correlation. I think there is still quite a bit of debate as to the reasons, why this is true.