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Comment by lyaa | Hacker News Reader

As someone who has experience with the educational systems of the middle east, I find it amusing how you are misinterpreting the situation.

It's extremely hard for women in these countries to get good careers in any field other than teaching or medicine especially since they are often forced to marry and leave the work force (they can't work without their husbands' permission and they almost always handle all child care). It is the norm for women to marry right after graduating from college and not doing so is seen as abnormal.

The combination of this results in women going to college and studying what they actually _like_ in their final years of "freedom." They choose STEM because they like it.

In the west, women are probably as inherently interested in STEM as in these other countries, but they also know that they need to get a job and they often choose career paths that would give them less pain due to harassment or discrimination.

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So let me get this straight.

Your reasoning is that in brutally sexist societies women choose to study completely male-dominated fields because they don't have to make a living after it, whereas in the most egalitarian societies in the entire world sexism pushes them towards traditionally female fields to escape discrimination?

So, that makes you reach the following conclusion: "the more a society is egalitarian - say, Scandinavian countries, the more it forces women to do painting and arts".

Are you saying that "egalitarian" societies are in fact sexist, and that teaching schools/staff (largely populated by progressive left-wing women), are in fact preventing little girls from doing maths and learning C in their bedroom ?

A common hypothesis is that there are genetic and social/economic aspects that push people towards one field or another. If you make an effort to remove all social forces, and succeed, then the only forces left are the inborn ones- so their effects maximize. So, if there are any inborn differences in the distribution of interest in e.g. engineering between men and women, you would expect to see their effects most keenly in the most low-pressure countries. Inegalitarianism adds pressure that money is useful for dealing with.

The point is, in middle eastern societies, the realities of working in STEM don't impact the choices women make for their college majors as much. Most of them go to college before marriage with the expectation of not having a long term career in what they study (public colleges are almost always free there, btw). They decide what to do considering different sets of pressures in comparison to women in the west.

Women in more egalitarian societies make their choices under different pressures. They need more of a long-term plan for their career choice and they don't have as many children or marry or leave the workforce as early nor as often as women in the middle east.

Do note though that as more women get into STEM, the experienced and perceived discrimination levels drop dramatically and even more women make the switch. Also, I think it's useful to note that there has been a systemic reduction in what I call the level of "generational misogyny." I can confirm from my own experience that there is a huge difference in how older vs younger (<40yo) men interact with women.

Younger folks are way more egalitarian and some of them assume that they all get the same treatment from older folks but that is just not true. A 30 years old male researcher could have entirely pleasant and productive working relationships with both female researchers in his generation and male researchers in their 60s. He might not expect or understand the degree of hostility or discrimination his female colleagues face when dealing with these very same older researchers. I believe that as time passes and the egalitarian culture actually gets to the "top of the food chain," we will see a distribution that is more representative of male and female preferences without the added discriminatory pressure.

But time has already passed since greater sexism and males and females have already gravitated in two consistent directions - men working with things and women working with people, even when it defies traditional gender roles, such as computers and business. You expect that trend to change direction after some tipping point of sufficiently little sexism?

So: "women choose a career that would give them less pain".

You can flip it any way you want, you will always end up with the following conclusion which demolishes your feminists dogmas: that women and men have inherently different interests, which, big news, is not surprising, given that they are different.

?? It's entirely reasonable for two populations to make statistically different choices when they are under different pressures. It is exactly what is happening with what is being discussed in this thread: white men skipping college because they have face pressures to earn money, feel college is not for them, etc. Women face different levels of these pressures and also pressure to skip STEM and go into "feminine" majors.

The different pressures are sufficient to explain much of the different major choices, especially when considering the changing distribution in other countries with different sets of pressures.

There are indeed differences between men and women -- cis-men can't give birth, for instance. However, other than the statistical population differences, an average man and an average women with equitable socioeconomic settings are incredibly similar in many areas. Perhaps even in an ideal world there would be more female biologists and more male IT workers. That would be fine. What matters is that a human who is interested in something would have a fighting chance to get there.

Right now, cultural and societal factors are tipping different scales in different ways. For future generation, we would do well to reduce the imbalance -- encourage and support minorities, women, and, yes, white men. People face different battles and helping some does not mean others have to be ignored.

You speak like someone or something is forcefully preventing a girl from studying IT if she wants to. I like how feminists make it sound like they live under the Taliban. Give me one actual example of a girl that was prevented from doing what she wanted.... it's the opposite. Women are freer than ever to do whatever they want. Bad luck for feminist dogmas: it produces the opposite result of what they hoped for, and confirms the gender bias.

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