By contrast, societies where women were only somewhat free, the number of women in STEM exploded (although I don't recall if it was quite 50/50). Without considering other factors, it almost seemed like some degree of social pressure to stay out of STEM was necessary to get the most women to be interested in it.
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A couple plausible alternative explanations that quickly come to mind are greater reliance on aptitude testing and having more motivation to get a job that granted more freedoms.
(I don't have any idea if those are true, it just seems that there could be lots of things that would explain the difference)
When a very egalitarian, gender neutral society like Norway exhibits more "traditional" gender distribution in the workforce than a less egalitarian one, the Norwegian social scientists thought this must be because of institutional sexism, or cultural brainwashing reinforcing gender roles, or whatever other excuse you've heard a million times. The documentary instead posits the idea that in a society where you are truly free to do what makes you happy, maybe it's normal that less women than men would want to be engineers and less men than women would want to be teachers or nurses.
Whereas in "somewhat free" societies that have higher numbers of women in "male" jobs, these societies are usually much less affluent than, say, Norway. So of course people will end up doing jobs that they may not particularly enjoy, they have to to survive. It's not mild social pressure "daring" women to go against the grain or anything that could be imported, it's economic pressure forcing people to take whatever jobs are available (or indeed, having jobs assigned to them by a planning committee).
Humans are adaptable, of course. When an intelligent person is forced (directly or indirectly) into a role that they may not have chosen themself, they will most likely learn to be competent. And both intellectual outliers and people (as mentioned above) with prenatal hormone mismatch can account for people that do exceptionally well in a role dominated by the other gender. But the question is, are you really making society better if you are forcing average people into certain roles to fulfill your political goals? Or are you increasing the amount of unhappiness in the world and perhaps even driving down the average competency in that field?
Note: I am not saying girls shouldn't code, quite on the contrary I'd hope that all kids, regardless of gender, get more practical subjects earlier in school: coding, woodworking, low-voltage electronics, mechanics, cooking & housework etc etc.
Humans are adaptable.... look at all those women who were competent teachers or nurses even though they'd far prefer something else, forced by economic pressure to take the only jobs allowed...
We're celebrating a narrowing gender gap, but American women seem to be largely left out.
But in countries with less economic insecurity this motivation to work in a field without an inherent interest simply isn't there. Perhaps this motivation is different across genders in wealthier countries (men are more likely to go into fields they don't like), or men simply like technical fields at higher rates.
Advertising, makeup, dolls, television, films play a bigger part than the so called sexism that exists in engineering cultures
More importantly, you're right though, I have zero evidence backing this up, or going against it. I just don't feel like it's very right.
There are pink hammers, pink calculators, and plenty of other pink tools that would otherwise not be gendered. A black handled hammer isn't masculine, it's gender neutral, it's functional.
You can't simply be a woman, who is in the tech industry, you have to be a "woman in tech"
In some countries programming is seen as a good job for women because it's an indoor job, maybe you can be in a predominantly female environment, it involves typing, it's not that prestigious so you're not fighting to climb a career ladder. It's a commodity job so you can enter and leave the workforce as necessary to deal with family issues.
None of these things is really about the work that needs to be done, unless we're talking about work that absolutely requires upper body strength. It's all just framing, perception, almost marketing. That's why I find the gender essentialist stuff nonsense. Why is being a top chef a male job and a home cook a female job? Because one requires bluster? You will often find that in countries with fabulously successful women programmers, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, these jobs are just considered jobs rather than Magical Jobs for Extraordinarily Smart Ninja Rockstars.
EDIT. NPR had an interesting perspective on this, thought I'd share: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...