
Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads - daenz
http://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-girls-3848156-Feb2018/
======
rayiner
How do you define which countries have “more gender equality?” It seems like
begging the question.

My family immigrated from Bangladesh to America. In most ways, obviously,
America is a lot more equal. But my mom and her sisters have STEM degrees, and
that wasn’t all that unusual for a wealthy Bangladeshi family at the time.
Bangladeshis perceive STEM as important, and encourage both girls and boys to
pursue it (even if they don’t expect girls to stay in the work force after
they get married).

Raising a daughter in the US, my perception is that girls in America are
taught about “princesses and fairies.” We impress upon boys the need to get
practical education so they can support families but are more indulgent with
girls. Last summer, I signed my then four-year old up for summer camp classes.
There literally was classes for “princesses and fairies.” Of course I signed
her up for “little engineers.” My daughter was quite upset to be the only girl
in the class. That’s not innate. It’s somehing we’re choosing to do to our
kids.

~~~
redwood
In developing countries where women (and men frankly) study STEM in higher
numbers it's likely that those women come from elite families (considering the
vast majority of population in these countries do not have a chance to pursue
higher ed). As a result we're looking at a an elite microcosm that is, by
virtue of its own access to education and enthusiasm for remaining
(recognizing fierce competition) in the elite tier of an otherwise incredibly
gendered society.

~~~
rayiner
Yes, obviously, Bangladesh as a whole is a much more gendered society than the
U.S. But it's still an interesting microcosm to look at because it's one where
both boys and girls are intensely encouraged to pursue STEM. And in India, we
see much higher rates of women participating in STEM (despite India being a
much more gendered society overall):
[http://www.hcixb.org/papers_2017/hcixb17-final-37.pdf](http://www.hcixb.org/papers_2017/hcixb17-final-37.pdf)
(45% women with CS degrees, versus 21% in the U.S.).

And even though these folks are elite relative to their own societies, in
absolute terms, even a rich Bangladeshi has a similar level of material wealth
as a middle class or upper middle class American. It's a microcosm that's
still in a mode of striving to protect and enhance their material prosperity,
and may be less able to indulge in the "benign" sexism of having lower
expectations for girls. (Specifically, having lower expectations for them to
go into fields like STEM necessary for both their own economic prosperity and
the nation's) than for boys.

------
overcast
I'll probably face wrath, and hell's fury for this, but maybe, men and women
are different. Has forcing STEM upon the female population, driven any more of
them towards the discipline? Taking the sampling size of every woman I've ever
went on a date with in my 37 years, none of them were interested in anything
related. The vast majority were teachers, psychologists, and nurses.
Occupations based around nurturing others. One, was a designer/artist. None of
the women in my huge family, sister, mother, none of them care about
technology fields. My father, and male cousins on the other hand, are in
various fields of tech and engineering.

~~~
kyleschiller
Is it possible that your dating pool is subject to sampling bias?

Empirically speaking, about 1/4 of people in STEM are women, so if you've met
0 women interested in STEM, it seems like your experience simply aren't an
accurate reflection of reality. [0]

I think it's incredibly ironic that you're highlighting your own relative
interest in STEM while failing to apply any degree of scientific rigor to your
own thinking.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-
more...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-
equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/)

~~~
overcast
Oh brother, there's always that one guy on HN. None of this was supposed to
"scientific", so relax. I'm giving you my 37 years of experience dating at
least a couple hundred women, that's it.

~~~
malteof
That's fine as long as you don't try to draw any conclusions from your
anecdote :-)

------
tptacek
This is on the front page of Hacker News because people here believe it
bolsters arguments about the underlying fairness of our field, in which women
make up something like 20% of the workforce.

The article does not accomplish that. Despite an overall trend in STEM
throughout the western world for greater male participation than female,
computer science is _uniquely low_ ; it is rivaled only by physics and MechE
for gender disparity.

Throughout the rest of STEM, including hard fields like chemistry and
mathematics, we see significantly improved participation among women. There
are a bunch of STEM fields that have near parity, and a few (molecular
biology, for instance) in which there are slightly more women. These are PhD
numbers, not premed stats.

Besides better gender parity, something all these fields have in common at the
graduate level is that they are significantly more demanding than commercial
computer science. We kid ourselves that our day-to-day work is so rarefied
that we need the top of the intelligence curve, so much so that the supposed
variance in intelligence between men and women might explain our staffing.
That's ridiculous. We do a bog-standard symbol manipulation job, and, even at
the elite level, we tend to do it slap-dash and ad-hoc.

Whatever is keeping women to 20% of our field is artificial, and a travesty.

 _It 's also on the front page, I believe, because it's a cite followed from
an article posted earlier this week making some of the same arguments. That
post had a huge discussion, making this a needless duplicate. We don't need to
keep re-litigating this on the front page of the site. I flagged it._

~~~
naasking
> This is on the front page of Hacker News because people here believe it
> bolsters arguments about the underlying fairness of our field, in which
> women make up something like 20% of the workforce.

You're being uncharitable again. What it does establish is that the most
common narrative for gender disparity in our field doesn't cleanly explain all
of the data, unless you simultaneously push for the belief that programmers
are _more sexist than every other previously male dominated field_ that has
since achieved better gender ratios, _and_ that this bias exists across
different cultures thus yielding the same disparities in all of these
different cultures, _and_ that this systemic sexism is what's driving women
away (despite not keeping women away from other fields in which they achieved
parity).

Of course, there's another explanation, which is that women have inherently
less interest in some subjects for some reason, and there's considerable
evidence for this possibility. To ignore it is dishonest.

Which isn't to say that there isn't sexism, but you're making a positive claim
that the sexism is so much worse than everywhere else.

As for why some STEM fields have improved, there can be plenty of reasons, and
those are all worth studying. To simply declare it's because they've made
inroads against sexism is assuming the conclusion.

> Whatever is keeping women to 20% of our field is artificial, and a travesty.

You keep saying this, but you cite no evidence of artificiality. There's
actually plenty of evidence that it's not.

~~~
pvg
_There 's actually plenty of evidence that it's not._

What is the evidence? Even if you accept essentially any and all finding,
however iffy, about gender-based cognitive differences, there is a huge leap
from that to 'women are simply unsuitable for your typical programming job, to
an 80/20 ratio'. I can't think of any actual scientists that make that
argument, again, on the basis of _any_ finding. It's not at all obvious how
such a question could even be answered scientifically.

~~~
naasking
> Even if you accept essentially any and all finding, however iffy, about
> gender-based cognitive differences, there is a huge leap from that to 'women
> are simply unsuitable for your typical programming job, to an 80/20 ratio

Who said anything about unsuitability? I said the difference isn't necessarily
artificial like the OP claimed, and you jump somehow to it being a matter of
ability or temperament? You're putting words in my mouth.

The things vs. people hypothesis much better explains the gender ratios, and
explains why it's seen across cultures, which doesn't fit well with the
oppression hypothesis.

This is the latest metanalysis I'm currently reading, but there's a slew of
studies confirming this gendered difference in preferences:

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00189/full)

Certainly some such inclinations might be socially conditioned, but as
discussed in the above, they show up as young as grade 3.

Regardless, even if it were all conditioned, hiring quotas and marketing
programs directed even at high schoolers would already be too late and thus
largely ineffective given these facts.

~~~
pvg
_I said the difference isn 't necessarily artificial like the OP claimed_

How do you connect any things/people preference to performance or disparity
thereof in a generic programming job? It explains the disparity only if you
make a substantial assumption not in evidence.

~~~
naasking
Did you even read what I wrote? Who's talking about performance?

~~~
therealdrag0
Aside: I feel for you here `naasking`. It's amazing how hard it is to have a
conversation on these types of topics without people jumping to the
conclusions about the position you're trying to illuminate.

~~~
pvg
'Did you even read that' being the typical polite invitation to reasoned
conversation.

------
geofft
For those of you who have some form of access, this appears to be the actual
research paper:

[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719)

> _The underrepresentation of girls and women in science, technology,
> engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a continual concern for social
> scientists and policymakers. Using an international database on adolescent
> achievement in science, mathematics, and reading (N = 472,242), we showed
> that girls performed similarly to or better than boys in science in two of
> every three countries, and in nearly all countries, more girls appeared
> capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled. Paradoxically, the
> sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit
> of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality. The gap
> between boys’ science achievement and girls’ reading achievement relative to
> their mean academic performance was near universal. These sex differences in
> academic strengths and attitudes toward science correlated with the STEM
> graduation gap. A mediation analysis suggested that life-quality pressures
> in less gender-equal countries promote girls’ and women’s engagement with
> STEM subjects._

Their definition of "gender equality" is this:

> _The World Economic Forum publishes The Global Gender Gap Report annually.
> We used the 2015 data (World Economic Forum, 2015). For each nation, the
> Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) assesses the degree to which girls and women
> fall behind boys and men on 14 key indicators (e.g., earnings, tertiary
> enrollment ratio, life expectancy, seats in parliament) on a 0.0 to 1.0
> scale, with 1.0 representing complete parity (or men falling behind). For
> the countries participating in the 2015 PISA, GGGI scores ranged from 0.593
> for the United Arab Emirates to 0.881 for Iceland._

(One of the things I'd be curious about is whether that's just a proxy for
Western cultural norms; the more commonly cited reasons for a gender gap in
STEM fields in the US are things like harassment and misogyny, and it's
certainly possible that those are correlated more strongly with Western
culture than with cross-cultural structural inequality.)

------
nicolashahn
I wonder if it's possible that men and women, on average, have differing
criteria for choosing careers, and artificially forcing the distributions
towards the middle might do more harm than good.

~~~
aspaceman
As expected, this is the top comment on an article practically built for this
argument.

It may very well be that men and women have different criteria, but that is
completely irrelevant, and I find this line of argumentation very frustrating
as it completely ignores the actual complaints at hand.

Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel
uncomfortable in their positions. Many women feel they are disrespected,
unrightfully criticized, and scrutinized to a degree unlike their male
counterparts. _As a whole, they have recognized that this is not the fault of
individuals in their workplaces._ It's "natural" to be more critical of the
few women in your workplace because as a human, that's how your brain is built
to work. Correcting that requires conscious effort on your part, and most are
unwilling to correct themselves.

Instead, as a group women have decided that the best way to make themselves
more welcome in STEM - is to have more women in STEM. This will slowly correct
the negatives by causing more individuals to come into contact with women and
have to learn how to behave properly. But these same systemic issues prevent
many women who would otherwise enter STEM from doing so. No one is claiming
that a perfect 50/50 ratio is all we need and then "we're done, pack it up
folks". Simply that making efforts to get women into tech is actually _a good
idea_.

Women are interested. Women want to do the work. Many that do are forced out
for one reason or another, and this makes many not want to do it any longer.

Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem
should be ignored entirely completely misses the point.

~~~
lulmerchant
This data entirely negates that claim. In countries with the highest levels of
gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these
negative forces, they simply self-select not to participate in certain fields
(on average).

If you cannot participate in a field where not enough of the people look and
act like you, then perhaps you have the problem.

~~~
geofft
> _In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are
> least likely to experience any of these negative forces_

The data does not support correlating those two. "Gender equality" in this
report refers to the factors in Table 1 at [http://reports.weforum.org/global-
gender-gap-report-2016/mea...](http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-
report-2016/measuring-the-global-gender-gap/) , which is about things like
life expectancy and number of female politicians and salary - not about
disrespect, unrightful criticism, and scrutiny in technical fields on the
basis of sex.

~~~
lulmerchant
Of course it does. Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries.
The data overwhelmingly shows that when you give men and women equal
opportunities and the freedom to make their own choices, that men and women,
on average, make different choices.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Apart from those who buy into
the world view that the only two groups in any society are the oppressed and
their oppressors, which is clearly just toxic bullshit.

~~~
geofft
> _Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries._

Given that the leader of the free world has said that he's not a feminist, I'm
not sure I would say that it's ingrained into the culture. It's a recent
cultural phenomenon of these countries, sure. But Western civilization has a
_much_ deeper culture of patrilineal succession, of the priesthood being
restricted to men, of only men having political representation, of the father
being the head of the household, etc. That stuff doesn't evaporate from a
culture quickly, and even today many of those are strongly believed by huge
parts of Western civilization.

~~~
lulmerchant
I'll ignore the irrelevant marxist talking point and trump references, and
redirect you back to the data. The Nordic countries always lead in these
stats.

These are the countries that are the most egalitarian in the world, where 3rd
wave feminism forms a major part of social policy, where women have an equal
level of opportunity to men and the freedom to choose their own paths in life.
The data shows that under these conditions, this freedom has a negative
correlation to women choosing a career in STEM.

You can't say that this is a remnant of some patriarchal system of oppression,
because as women's freedom has increased in those countries, their
participation in STEM has decreased.

~~~
Aaron1011
> I'll ignore the irrelevant marxist talking point

Which part of the parent comment was a "marxist talking point"?

~~~
depressedpanda
Wow, good job focusing on minute details instead of addressing the overall
point your parent is making.

However, I'll indulge you and hazard a guess:

* The historically naive and somewhat incorrect generalization of some ill-defined "Western" culture (what time frame is he using?) * the negative portrayal of it * and the implicit assumption that any part of the portrayal is somehow unique to all Western countries, but not the rest of the world.

I will give you that this criticism of "Western culture" probably doesn't
really relate to traditional Marxism, which more or less worked within the
framework of Western culture.

I believe your parent might have had the concept of "cultural Marxism" in
mind.

------
rbehrends
I can't help but think that the article/paper are overstating a statistical
effect here by attempting to reduce a multicausal phenomenon to a monocausal
one.

If you look just at rich western countries, most of them occupy a fairly
narrow strip on the graph. There are outliers, but they can go either way;
Finland has a very low STEM graduation rate for women, Denmark a very high one
(Figure 3b in the paper). Austria and Germany have fairly different outcomes,
despite being culturally more similar than other countries that differ less.

This is sort of obscured by throwing in many countries that honestly have very
different cultures, very different academic systems, and different constraints
for people of different genders that seem to be difficult to reduce to just a
single number.

For a simple example, there are countries where nursing is primarily taught at
colleges and others where nursing is primarily taught through vocational
programs. Given the gender disparity in nursing, that would affect the gender
breakdown for STEM graduation rates (depending on whether you count nursing as
part of the "M" in STEM or not, one way or the other).

I'm honestly surprised that for most affluent western countries the numbers
are not more spread out. If I had to guess – and we really have too few data
points for that – I'd say we're simply looking at a normal distribution here,
especially as (with the exception of the UK) the larger countries tend to be
closer to the midpoint of the 20%-30% range and it's smaller countries that
are at the fringes of the range.

~~~
therealdrag0
Seems like a valid consideration. You should write a letter to the authors :)

------
purple-again
Has anyone ever looked at it from the network effect angle? I’m a software dev
because I didn’t like being a CPA and my friend was a tech guy who got me into
it.

My wife went into the medical field because her sister turned her onto this
speciality that was easy to get into and paid quite well.

I tried to teach my smart wife to program and failed miserably because that’s
not how our relationship works.

Most people in even your industry are not die hard passionate live and breathe
the code lifestyle types. They show up, work, and go back to their lives.

We all know that ‘in general’ in the USA at least but I’m sure in other
countries as well the genders tend to self segregate their peer networks. My
close friends are men. Her close friends are women.

~~~
kyleschiller
Yeah this is absolutely a large chunk of it. Especially when you consider how
many jobs are filled through referrals [0]. At my last company, I only worked
with male engineers, and so when I got a new job, I could only think of male
engineers to refer to open positions.

I think this is also why inertia is so hard to offset here, we have a strong
self-reinforcing cycle that's going to take a lot of external force to break
out of.

[0] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-survey-reveals-85-all-
job...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-survey-reveals-85-all-jobs-filled-
via-networking-lou-adler/)

------
platz
However you feel about Jordan Peterson, he brings up this fact all the time,
esp w/ regards to Scandinavia, would define this phenomenon as the difference
between equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome, and that the genders,
when provided the option, tend towards different preferences (e.g. bricklayers
vs nurses), and that environment factors can skew these natural preferences in
either direction.

raises the question of _why_ women in these egalitarian societies are
currently are selecting against STEM. Because for example there are plenty of
female accountants, which is not normally thought of as a "people" business.
So perhaps the environmental factors could change the preferences.

Whether the overall result is preferable for society, I have no idea.

~~~
kenning
> (e.g. bricklayers vs nurses)

How about doctors vs nurses? I think this is a much more relevant comparison.
In the united states (sorry) male doctors outnumber female by about 2:1 [1],
while female nurses outnumber male nurses by more than 10:1 [2]. Comparing
these two professions it's a lot easier to make the argument that women are
implicitly encouraged to set their expectations lower than men, who actually
may feel emasculated as a nurse.

STEM jobs are seen as more difficult to train for and to achieve than non-STEM
jobs, similar to the job of a doctor compared to the job of a nurse. If you're
confused as to why women choose 'difficult' jobs less often, I hope this line
of thinking is convincing...

[1] [https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-
gend...](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-
gender/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)
[2] [https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of-
pr...](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of-
professionally-active-nurses-by-
gender/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)

~~~
LyndsySimon
Why the assumption that nurses are "lower" than doctors?

~~~
serf
lesser pay rates on average, less training required, more nurses than doctors
exist in the work force.

That doesn't make the profession less noble or endearing or anything -- but by
any metric that we use to judge modern occupations, a nurse ranks lower than a
doctor in most every way besides number of hours worked.

------
js8
"If governments want to increase women’s participation in STEM, a more
effective strategy might be to target the girls who are clearly being lost
from the STEM pathway – those for whom science and maths are their best
subjects and who enjoy it but still don’t choose it"

I don't understand why we should try to make somebody choose a subject they
didn't choose to do.

~~~
walshemj
well making Engineering and Science careers as well rewarded and give them the
same social status as say the Law, Medicine are might help.

Those young women with triple A's beloved of headline writers come exam time
are making a rational decision not to go into a field where they are badly
paid.

~~~
aoeusnth1
Are women more status-seeking than men?

Are women more money-seeking than men?

It seems to me that the assumptions which gave rise to your comment would
imply that Wall Street traders should be dominated by women. Why is this not
the case, in your opinion?

Would increasing the pay and status of a job increase, or decrease the
percentage of women?

Should CEOs be paid more to increase their percentage of women?

~~~
walshemj
Well Traders do have this barrow boy image medicine or law has a much higher
"social" status in the UK and I bet the USA also

~~~
aoeusnth1
Why do you suppose women dominate primary school teaching? Is it because it’s
too high status and too well paid?

~~~
walshemj
It is a pink ghetto and traditionally pre compulsory education was performed
by women and was on the very few profession open to women pre 20th century

------
globuous
Whenever thinking of gender equality, I like to go back to Beauvoir.
plato.stanford.edu's page [1] is fantastic, here's an extract:

"Before The Second Sex, the sexed/gendered body was not an object of
phenomenological investigation. Beauvoir changed that. Her argument for sexual
equality takes two directions. First, it exposes the ways that masculine
ideology exploits the sexual difference to create systems of inequality.
Second, it identifies the ways that arguments for equality erase the sexual
difference in order to establish the masculine subject as the absolute human
type. Here Plato is her target. Plato, beginning with the premise that sex is
an accidental quality, concludes that women and men are equally qualified to
become members of the guardian class. _The price of women’s admission to this
privileged class, however, is that they must train and live like men_. Thus
the discriminatory sexual difference remains in play. Only men or those who
emulate them may rule. Beauvoir’s argument for equality does not fall into
this trap. She insists that women and men treat each other as equals and that
such treatment requires that their sexual differences be validated. _Equality
is not a synonym for sameness_." (emphasis mine)

I find this paragraph particularly well written, but watch out, I've had an
american writer read it and he understood the _opposite_ of what is written. I
had to make him read it again ^^

I don't know if it applies to this particular statistics. My personal
interpretation of Beauvoir is that yes, this stat does make sense. In a gender
equal society, you shouldn't find equal ratios everywhere because du-hu, we're
actually not the same. But we should be equal.

That being said, I don't like talking about these things because I generalize
to much, and the question is way too complex for me to approach. I like
reading other people's take on it though. Anyway, I just wanted to share
Beauvoir's thoughts and my rough interpretation of it in this context.

[1]
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/)

------
curiousgal
The actual title is _' A gender equality paradox': Countries with more gender
equality have fewer female STEM grads_.

The findings only present a paradox if you believe that gender equality
requires equal representation in _all_ fields.

------
rtz12
Countries with more gender equality are richer. Countries with less gender
equality are poorer. In poorer countries, you are more inclined to choose
careers based on paycheck, less on personal preference. In richer countries
you are more inclined to choose careers based on your personal preferences and
less on for the paycheck.

It's pretty easy.

EDIT: A good counter example to this correlation could be Japan. Low gender
equality but also low female participation in STEM fields.

Why? Because Japan is a rich country.

~~~
ec109685
The study showed that adjusting for interest in STEM women were 10% less
likely to chose that career than a male in gender equal countries, so personal
preference (which you’d expect to match with interest) doesn’t entirely
explain it.

I don’t think the article cites anything that would support your Japan
hypothesis.

------
stevenwoo
Link to paper:
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617741719](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617741719)

Some analysis (source of link):
[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-
more...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-
equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/)

------
seaknoll
I wonder how much of this is related to parental leave policy versus generic
social safety net. Countries with a strong safety net also have generous
maternity leave but are behind on paternity. I imagine that at a large scale
this does make many companies slightly less likely to hire women, and families
much more likely to have the mother take time away from her job. The ultimate
effect, albeit in a warm and fuzzy way, could be to deemphasize women’s
careers by normalizing the idea that it’s best if you stay home with the kids.

I don't suppose that this could have a larger effect than the gender
inequality in many countries lacking a social safety net, but it could be a
contributing factor.

The idea that women, given the choice, generally would rather prioritize
motherhood seems totally plausible. If that's the case, it could indicate that
we need to think about diversity differently.

But I'm uncomfortable with a side effect that some of these policies could
have - subtly pressuring women to focus on motherhood. The solution is
complicated though if the mere existence of a good maternity leave policy
encourages sexism. Hopefully general parental leave can help address this.

~~~
Baeocystin
As far as I know, all developed countries have birthrates that are below
replacement values. Is it really so bad to think that motherhood is something
that _should_ be focused on? Of my family/friends that are women with
children, every single one of them wants more flexibility with their work,
because they want more time to spend with the children. Children certainly
benefit from parental attention. Yet many workplace policies regarding
childcare are downright draconian. Perhaps we should accept that prioritizing
parenting is a good thing, and try and make it so that people can both work
and have the support they need to help with their familial obligations.

------
dahart
> Girls, even with their ability in science equalled or excelled that of boys,
> were often likely to be better overall in reading comprehensions, which
> relates to higher ability in non-STEM subjects.

Why is reading comprehension non-STEM?

I've read that success in STEM graduate degrees is highly predicted by
language scores on the GRE, and not well predicted by the math part of the
test at all.

~~~
tnzn
It's just there's a Math "religion" in the West, and Math is pretty much a
sort of holy discipline that's the basis of the hierarchized school system,
and I guess it makes people believe such things. It's even more prevalent in
France where up till now, general high school shared their students between 3
cursus which were scientifc, economic and litterary. They are hierarchized in
the way you know, and pretty much defined by their degree... Of math.

------
Mikeb85
> Girls also tended to register a lower interest in science subjects. These
> differences were near-universal across all the countries and regions
> studied.

So girls are less interested in these subjects, but in more unequal countries
(read poorer) they do it for career prospects, while in more equal countries
(read richer) they do what they want (not STEM subjects).

~~~
joshuamorton
Do you know at what age they checked that? I've seen prior research that
suggests that the disinterest in stem appears in middle or high school, and
isn't statistically significant before then.

This would heavily imply some level of social conditioning to be the cause for
disinterest.

~~~
srtjstjsj
What people say they like is one thing, but observing proclivities is another.
In elementary schools, boys score higher in math and girls score higher in
reading comprehension.

~~~
joshuamorton
A cursory look suggests that math aptitude starts at parity or near parity and
grows over time, which doesn't necessarily disagree with either of us.

------
greentuna
One thing I have noticed is that male engineers are intrinsically motivated
but female engineers, even highly capable ones, are extrinsically motivated.

So you find very few female engineers in open source projects, under 3% by
some estimates, although the percentage of female professional software
engineers is much higher. Clearly this is not due to discrimination —- github
doesn’t ask you your gender. So there must be some other explanation. When
someone is intrinsically motivated (i.e., not motivated by salary alone) they
are likely to be a better employee.

~~~
ec109685
GitHub doesn’t ask for gender, yet you assume the 3% figure is accurate.

Even if you do, it doesn’t make sense to correlate GitHub contributions with
“intrinsic” motivation. You can still love to code but not want to contribute
to Open Source.

Also, what percentage of software engineers regularly contribute to a non-
corporate sponsored GitHub open source project? I would bet it is a small
number, which means you shouldn’t use it as a proxy to generalize for the
industry and gender differences within it.

------
datashovel
I wonder if it's that fewer females prefer STEM, or is it that more men are
doing things they would prefer not to?

~~~
bitL
If I (male) had a chance to be on a permanent comfortable welfare, I would
probably spend more time playing games, doing sports, socializing, traveling
etc. instead of being in a noisy office with bad light around desperate people
I often dislike, whipped by my boss in a constant rat race, being refused
bonuses for great performance as a new car/boat/house is of a sudden interest
to my superior.

------
kyleschiller
Here are three possible explanations for the observed behavior that don't
require a belief in inherent biological differences:

1\. Since countries with lower gender equality also tend to be poorer, STEM
could be seen as a rare opportunity to escape poverty, and this motivation
could outweighs any kind of societal bias agains female participation.

2\. A quick glance at the graph of results in [0], shows that there's also a
strong cultural division. Countries with more gender equality are mostly in
Nordic Europe and Western Europe, while countries will less are mostly in the
Middle East, Eastern Europe. It's possible for regions to develop cultural
norms that reduce gender equality without also developing cultural norms that
reduce female participation in STEM.

3\. As a corollary to 1, and pulled directly from the article: "STEM careers
are generally secure and well-paid but the risks of not following such a path
can vary. In more affluent counties, where any choice of career feels
relatively safe, women may feel able to make choices based on non-economic
factors."

To be clear, I don't have strong evidence that any of these are necessarily
true, but I think the existing of possible alternatives should at least force
a reconsideration of the immediate conclusion that this correlation proves
anything about biological difference.

I think it's troubling that as of writing this, none of the top comments do
anything to suggest alternative explanations, and are quick to use this to
confirm the existing narrative [1]. Again, I don't think I've done anything to
disprove these claims, but it's indicative of a larger intellectual problem on
HN if we would rather have discussions that confirm our beliefs than
discussions that challenge and sharpen then.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-
more...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-
equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/) [1]
[https://imgur.com/a/1Diel](https://imgur.com/a/1Diel)

~~~
hyperdunc
If a woman doesn't feel compelled to pursue STEM to escape poverty - if she
can make a career choice based on non-economic factors - then it's reasonable
to assume her more innate traits and desires will come into play. (One such
trait that asserts is a preference for dealing with people over abstract
systems.) These traits are at their root biological and only modulated by
culture.

------
mc32
Even if we do conclusively find that women on average prefer non STEM careers,
I think for the good of our society, we should still make an effort to entice
more women into STEM who otherwise would not. Not for dime immediate social
justice reason, but because the advancement and progress of our own society
needs more STEM grads, if we don't produce our own, we'll have to import them,
which we should not have to, if we could develop policies of encouragement.

------
pishpash
The article posits that the affluence of a country (not gender equality
itself, though correlated) affects how much the economic security that comes
with high-paying STEM jobs is an incentive to purse those jobs.

That can explain a gradient between countries, and doesn't affect the
original, purely gender question either way.

------
depressedpanda
Given a choice, more women than men will go for non-STEM careers, so in rich
countries you will find way more STEM-proficient men than women. This has been
known for quite some time.

But take care not to mention this at workplaces where they use diversity
hiring practices to try to artificially and unfairly inflate their percentage
of women compared to the field as a whole.

It will get you fired.

~~~
srtjstjsj
This argument would be more interesting if we weren't seeing heavy female
attrition due sexual harassment unrelated to work content.

~~~
depressedpanda
Is there female attrition?

Is there female attrition due to sexual harassment?

You're making a bold claim, which I am personally not seeing at all.

Care to back it up with any references?

------
dudul
I don't think it's a breakthrough, I remember seeing the exact same conclusion
from a different research a few years ago already. It was even a little
broader since it mentioned that countries with the most gender equality also
had the most stay at home moms.

------
harunurhan
In those countries which lack gender equality, in many cases people do not
choose STEM because it's really difficult to find a job otherwise.

------
zerostar07
Usually you get what you incentivize. If you go overboard on the equality of
outcome, people will adapt to it, be it women or any kind of person.

------
thriftwy
I don't like how there's not any charts anywhere. Numbers usually tell better
tale than words.

------
husmo
I can't see this thread in the front page any more. Not even the first three
pages.

~~~
yetanother1980
Pretty standard. Political posts are heavily downwaited.

------
thekashifmalik
This link was top of hacker news and then suddenly disappeared. What's
happened?

------
princess-aslaug
Maybe women that are free to choose more often don't want to graduate in STEM.

------
dudul
It would have been interesting to control for wealth. Unless I missed it in
the article, it could be valuable to analyze a group of countries deemed
"rich", but with low gender equality (I don't really even know how the latter
is calculated).

------
lumberjack
Not sure if this has been posted on HN before but I think this is a much more
interesting article: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-
rouser/201707/wh...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-
rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers)

tl;dr Girls tend to be more well rounded intellectually, with both strong math
skills and strong verbal skills, giving them more options, possibly more
lucrative options, beyond just STEM. Boys tend to be more lacking in verbal
skills limiting their options.

A closely related theory is that girls outperform boys in both sciences and
humanities, in HS, but they outperform boys in humanities by a much larger
margin, and therefore see themselves as strongest in those subjects.

------
omginternets
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797617741719](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797617741719)

Wonderful. Yet another publicly-funded research project with implications for
public policy that is behind a paywall.

I guess I'll never know the details of how "gender equality" was
operationalized, and therefore never have an informed interpretation of these
data. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
akvadrako
[http://sci-hub.tw](http://sci-hub.tw)

~~~
omginternets
Ah, so it's .tw now.

Do they announce their domain changes somewhere?

~~~
akvadrako
Wikipedia usually has the updated list.

------
dominotw
Too many political article today on HN.

This, code of conduct, fake news, peter theil ect

~~~
jessaustin
Just click on "flag". They disappear soon enough.

------
NegativeLatency
Never forget: causation does not necessarily imply correlation

~~~
trendia
Totally irrelevant to this article, but you are technically correct.

Let X = "angle"

Let Y = sin(X)

Then X has a causal relationship with Y, but Corr(X, Y) = 0.

I doubt that's what you're saying, though!

~~~
kazinator
However, small deltas around a particular X correlate with corresponding small
sigmas around the corresponding Y.

------
bluewave
The defensive tone of this article is alarming. If you don't study computer
science now you will likely be in the same boat 30 years from now with
illiterate folks of today. Disparity in computer science education in Western
countries puts women at a massive economic disadvantage and is a major
geopolitical risk. Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is
sexist and dangerous. Helping drive up the numbers of women and other
underrepresented populations in CS should be a major priority for developed
countries.

~~~
reitanqild
> Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations
> in CS should be a major priority for developed countries.

What if we try to respect womens choices and work to get them better pay for
the very important work they actually do, first?

Why is it that nursing or teaching should be paid so much less than software
engineering?

Or even worse: why is it so much cooler to be an engineeer like me than a
nurse or teacher? The pay can partially be explained by supply/demand
(qualified nurses are in high demand but buyers don't seem to be able to pay,
at least not here.)

~~~
purple-again
Because that’s how capitalism works. Money follows value generated to society
not individual perceived value. A teacher at maximum capacity can only deliver
a tiny tiny fraction of the value that a software developer can.

100 students per class 8 classes a day 40 year career. You have provided value
to 32,000 children all of whom have two parents so value to 96,000 people well
say.

~~~
ec109685
Valueable in what sense? Are what most programmers programming intrinsically
valuable?

If that teacher was a difference maker for 100k people, that seems very
valuable.

