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Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

all your examples are from repressive regimes (either economically, or politically). You see very low participation rates on hard STEM among women on countries where women have both large degree of economic and political freedom. Basically, when women have choices, they choose against hard STEM. It is not just the US, but other countries with even better gender relations (Norwawy, Sweden, Denmark), it seems women just don't want to study computer science/engineering or physics.

In communist countries people were assigned jobs and often it was not their choice where they ended up. If the country had X % has to be women, then so be it. But, we all know his forced centralized planning is a failure on the long term.

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> all your examples are from repressive regimes (either economically, or politically).

So socialization doesn't affect peoples' preferences, except in societies where socialization does affect peoples' preferences. Got it.

> Basically, when women have choices, they choose against hard STEM.

1) This presupposes, without evidence, that girls in the U.S., Denmark, etc., aren't socialized differently than boys, even if they are not actively discriminated against in terms of careers.

2) This uses "hard STEM" as a wiggle word. Under any rational definition, math is "harder STEM" than computer science. (And frankly, I'd argue that so is chemistry and biology.) Yet, the representation of women in math and physical sciences majors is twice as high as in CS: https://higheredtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/nsc-bs-....

May that be because tech is perceived as more competitive or stressful? Lots of people make fortunes these days doing technology and the pace is tremendous, unlike in sciences. Anyway, I think the theory that it's probably just parents telling their girls it's a man's sport most of the time appeals to me a tiny bit more. I don't however see any reason to straight out presume biology has no effect whatsoever, it's probably a complex mixture of factors.

Here's a graphic: https://erzaehlmirnix.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/unterschie...

There was also a BBC article on this: "Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?"

Quote:

"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."

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321

Also: https://gendertrap.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/the-gender-equal...

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