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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?

#291

Post by PerfectDlite »

thriftwy wrote: post #50
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.

> That was true 20 years ago but no longer true today.

It is still true for _native_ Russians, not Russian-based immigrants from neighbouring states.

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

#292

Post by usrusr »

stiGGG wrote: post #46
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 packagi…

> The younger daughter can not wear clothes from is older brother because they are not pink

From the industry point of view, hand-me-down is a bug that has since been fixed, at least 50% of it. Business cannot uphold ideas when they are at odds with profit (single companies can, as long as they are not public, but business as a whole can't).

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

#293

Post by moopling »

Chris2048 wrote: post #160
moopling wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Flip this same argument around, and you get accused of derailing/silencing: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Misdirected_feminism

Hmmmmm, that's a really good point. I suppose I agree that in general an argument that there is worse shit in the world is probably a bad reason to ignore other problems. In this case however it'd be difficult to do anything about biases against men without exacerbating sexism further.

If you can think of a way of making things fairer for men, without making things worse for women at the same time I'm all for it.

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

#295

Post by true_religion »

tptacek wrote: post #166
Neliquat wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have any facts to back up that strong assertion, I am sure people are interested. Otherwise, a blanket accusal of 'misogyny' is asinine and nonproductive.

Here you go: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=+Numquam+ponenda+est...

My personal rule is that anyone who deigns to use latin in their arguments also has to use all English words in their dictionary form, and not their colloquial expression.

As per that, your use of misogyny to mean something apart from ingrained dislike or contempt for women is wrong.

You're using misogyny as if its a synonym for any expression of differing attitudes to men and women, regardless of if the outcome is good or bad, and if the participants feel happy or poorly about the situation.

That colloquial usage is utterly disqualified if you want to turn this into a formal argument.

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

#296

Post by dang »

korzun wrote: post #215

Are you telling me the countries that could care less about spamming elegant PR pieces every other day about women in technology, have more women engineers? Can we brainwash them with a Chinese version of Kardashians or something?

Please don't. These threads are problematic enough without it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164831 and marked it off-topic.

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

#297

Post by true_religion »

simonh wrote: post #204
nnfy wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the inane assumption, which is now taken as a fact (without rigorous substantiation) that any male heavy gender ratio is a result of bias by white men (not even necessarily the majority, mind you, we simply ignore fields where women are over represented). Not to mention the conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of achievement. In our society it has become a taboo to even consider that str…

Did you read the article? If it were just an assumption and no effort had been put into investigating the reasons for it and if/how those reasons can be addressed you would be right. From the article: "A new study from Microsoft sheds some light...gender stereotypes, few female role models, peer pressure and a lack of encouragement from parents and teachers largely to blame." So no assumptions are being made, this ha…

Would it be plausible that young girls are encouraged to see happiness, and personally fulfilling careers, whilst young boys are encouraged to seek money or a specific career choice?

If this were the case, then the participation of women currently entering the workplace would represent the baseline distribution of inclination, whereas men represent a modified distribution caused by hostile attitudes (e.g. men are classically discouraged from becoming nurses, or teachers to young children).

There's often a view that whatever condition men have is the correct one, and ought to be emulated in the female population. For somethings maybe this is true (yes, suffrage is pretty good), but for things like work-life balance and professional-inclinations, I am not so sure.

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

#298

Post by therpe1 »

cat199 wrote: post #274
mynegation wrote: post #57

As a Russian who got university education in Russia and worked in both Russia and Canada, I can confirm that the reasons are both cultural and economic. First, for the big part Soviet Russia did not have a sizeable percentage of stay-at-home mothers: women were _expected_ to work, childcare was absolutely free, tight living conditions made multi-generational families, when retired grand-parents took care of children,…

Not actually been - so clearly you have more experience - but from observations of Russians I've seen I'd also say that: a) Intelligence is strongly valued in general, with women being no exception. There is no native faux-ironic 'im a math geek nurrrg so i have to be awkward because noone understands me' or 'look at the nerd what a dork' culture.. b) Russian women aren't afraid of being strong willed, and this is al…

You seem to have a very rosy idea of Russian society which is no doubt colored by your opinions of Western culture. At least the Russians I know would laugh at the idea of "calling out BS" or even "service to community."

My own experience is simply that it's a culture where everybody is expected to work. Concepts like "house wife," "stay at home parent", "work-life balance", "trust-fund kid", "socialite" and "sabbatical" were completely alien until very, very recently. Everybody works. And while not everybody works hard, those that do, do it expecting a payoff.

It's also important to understand that women were never not part of the workforce in Russia. It's hard to say for sure because the numbers were fudged but there are estimates that even in the 60s as many as 80% of women in the USSR were gainfully employed. (See this interesting CIA report for one estimate [1].) In the US, during the 60s, you had a female labor force participation rate of about 40%. It's not like Russian girls grow up being told they have to "lean in" -- it's literally laughable, like somebody telling you that you have to breathe.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000380594....

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

#299

Post by usrusr »

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.

The sad part is that all cultures with industrial-level populations could easily sustain many generations of sub-replacement reproduction rates without any risk of disappearing, if it wasn't for outside breeding pressure. It would be a shame if we ruined our planet only due to an unconstrained outbreeding race. Should we maybe accept borders (like the ones Japan naturally enjoys) for environmental reasons, to make it easier for cultures to abstain from participating in that destructive race?

And another thing: would shrinkage really be that bad, in the long term? In any case it could never be very difficult to ramp up reproduction again when needed: all future generations, no matter how low the reproduction rate of the ones before, will be descendants of a direct line of ancestors who all did reproduce, against the odds. An environment that makes it easier to resist the reproduction drive could only make that drive stronger in the next generations, due to selection.

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

#300

Post by syrrim »

simonsarris wrote: post #12
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.

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

But the majority of the world that is overpopulated does not have the standards of nutrition and schooling of the west. If those are the reason behind the Flynn effect, then when those countries become more developed, their intelligence should come up to parity. I you don't acknowledge this, then it sounds like you believe those in the west are genetically superior to those elsewhere.
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