I'm a PhD student at a UK university. From what I've seen in my department
(Engineering) there are about 3 women for every 5 men, both in staff and
students, a not unreasonable ratio. However, I struggle to remember more than
a couple of women who are British or from an English-speaking country. The
majority come from India, China, the rest of Europe, the Middle East etc.
I've also seen this in the six years I worked in the UK as a developer, before
starting my PhD. Of the women developers I worked with, (in this case, not so
many) the majority were Indian or Eastern or Southern European. The same goes
for the students in my data science Masters (also in a UK university).
Other women I've discussed this with, have similar experiences. In particular
Greek women (like myself) don't remember any perception of a strong bias in
numbers against women in STEM subjects. I have a fair few Greek women friends
who have bachelors or master's degrees in computer science.
All this is of course anecdotal but it makes me think there is some sort of
bias that is not explained by "interest in things" vs "interest in people", or
any such difference between the sexes, because it is particular to specific
cultures, rather than to the sexes around the globe.
In any case "gendered interest" sounds like a convenient oversimplification
that seeks to confirm cultural bias as natural and spontaneous, rather than
an attempt to understand it. Instead of answering any questions it passes the
buck; it leaves someone else to wonder why girls and boys are interested in
different things (e.g. fire trucks vs barbie dolls). The same goes for
academic performance in school: that is also an observation that requires an
explanation- not an explanation in and of itself.
Casual lay observer here (i.e., don't treat this as coming from a position of being deeply informed). The phenomenon you describe sounds similar to the 'Nordic gender paradox' (or variations of the term). It's been a while since I last touched on it and I can't easily find a source worth pointing to - at least, one that hasn't been presented through a political lens - and academic names on the subject don't come to mind just now.
Essentially, despite various attempts to get to 'equal' gender outcomes in the most 'equitable' societies in the world, participation in jobs and industries associated with men and women remains stubbornly unmoved towards 50:50 (or whatever proportion is considered desirable). The suggestion is that it's precisely the relatively equitable and liberal norms of those societies that have provided the conditions for women to make use of their agency and choose roles according to their preferences. Whereas women in societies less predisposed towards liberal norms may be motivated by other considerations, such as the need to maximise their earning potential, familial expectations of success or a stronger sense of needing to prove one's potential and achievement (including perceptions of gender in their own societies). In the instance of the anecdote about your Greek colleagues, I wondered if the financial crisis was a catalyst for greater participation, along with the current trend of Greeks' tendency towards staying in HE for longer?
I've probably made mistakes or mischaracterised aspects of this idea, but that's broadly how I understand it. It doesn't answer the why of 'systems/things' vs 'people' (which has more accessible academic discourse than this does), although I think it offers a different perspective on biases that may be in play.
What you mention is also referred to in the article itself, and it does make sense - true emancipation and gender equality is IMO more about equal opportunity, and the freedom to choose. The push towards getting more women in STEM and specifically CS feels like it tries to take that freedom away in a sense; you SHOULD pick CS, here's all the money we're investing in getting women to work for us.
> What you mention is also referred to in the article itself
Admittedly, I'm yet to read it (Pocketed it for later).
I assume I agree with your sentiment about what equality means and what its relationships with freedom and liberty are - it's just not something that can easily be said in the open without running the risk of having to defend it or attracting pariah status. I don't really want to say much more on the matter here beyond that (it's mostly a draining experience).
What can I say, I'm a man! I attempt to build the Lego without the instructions, drive the car without the map, and play the board game without the rule book :D
Nooooo! It's not a good board gaming session unless you spend 90 minutes poring over the rulebook and 19 minutes in gaming, well known fact. How can you do that if you don't have the rulebook with you!
The problem with that alternative explanation which is also offered by the
article above is that in the very big part of the world that lies outside of
Silicon Valley, the top salaries are accessible not through the technical
career paths, but though the managerial ones. So anyone who's just looking for
the highest paid job would not go for a technical career. [1]
What this tells us is the opposite of what the article concludes. If women in
more equal countries, with an absent "glass ceiling" that keeps them from
attaining the top-paying positions, choose non-technical careers, that is
because (they expect that) those careers pay better than technical careers.
This choice however, does not allow us to conclude a lack of interest in
technical subjects. It merely suggests an interest in a better paid job.
Note that we also can't conclude that women in less equal countries are more
interested in technical positions. However, this is not what I'm claiming. My
point is that it's not safe to infer "interest in X" fom "works in X".
P.S. I see below you say you didn't read the article. It basically says what you say in your comment.
_______________
[1] This comes from my personal experience, but I don't expect it to be
controversial. In many companies I've worked, men and women, even if they
started out as technical workers, jumped on to a managerial track as soon as
they got the chance. In one particular multinational financial company I
worked, this was so common that the company had very few technical employees
and had to outsource most of its technical work to contractors- which should
also not come as any news to anyone who's worked in the financial sector.
Do you not think this could be because immigrants are looking for economic prosperity and have fewer connections?
For example, a British woman that graduates from a British university with a history degree and wants to work in the UK probably met a couple people during the course of her degree (or at any other point) that can help her move forward with a career. Because let's face it, you're not going to get a high-paying job with high marks in your History BA and nothing else. As such, her prospects will be better in her field of study or in a reasonably related field (or any field where having contacts strongly helps and where she has made such contacts).
Meanwhile, an immigrant will be much, much less likely to have such local connections/contacts. Presumably then, immigrants will gravitate towards fields where getting into them / your pay grade is more closely based on competency and not "who you know". In other words, fields like STEM or (in your case) anything which requires a PhD.
Could that not be an explanation for your experience?
It's an explanation but not a very simple one. It requires the immigrant to have chosen a career while in their country that would offer them more prospects once they emigrated. But then, why immigate instead of choosing a career that would be profitable and respectable in their country in the first place?
I think a simpler explanation is that people choose a career in their countries for whatever reason (that I don't know and can't speculate about) then when demand for their skills rises, they may find that emigrating is a better choice than staying at home- for instance, because salaries are better abroad.
That would be a simpler explanation for why more women in IT professions are immigrants to the UK (and possibly the US, though I'm not sure): they got the skills, there's job offers, they go abroad and take the offers.
I would expect immigrants to more frequently choose careers that require fewer linguistic skills, such as engineering or music, rather than law or advertising, say.
Some of my engineer colleagues are very hard to understand on the phone because of their language. It's hard to imagine them getting anywhere as a lawyer, for example.
In the UK, a large number of doctors and medical staff are foreign, particularly Indian or EU citizens. For Indians I'm guessing English is not a problem because they learn it at school, especially the ones from the poshest backgrounds. EU citizens will have similar command of English. For those who have studied in British institutions, foreign language courses are mandatory if they can't prove a level of English that allows them to participate in the courses.
Some Indians speak English fluently, but in a way that most British people find incomprehensible. In contrast, and somewhat ironically, a German speaking bad English is often easier to understand than a random British person (as opposed to a British person from one's own social class and locality).
The level of English knowledge you need to study maths or engineering at a British university is obviously very much lower than the level required for studying law or working as a lawyer. Some otherwise intelligent people are bad at languages and will realistically never achieve knowledge of another language to a level sufficient to successfully work as a lawyer. In fact, I have been reliably informed that some Germans give up on physics as a career because they realise that they will never manage to learn English well enough to succeed in academia, which is a bit sad, really.
That may be true in the USA but I don't think we were talking about the USA specifically. In the EU we have lots of immigrants who didn't have or need a job-specific visa. Even in the USA, don't you have immigrants who were refugees or family members who are allowed to work?
>> Visas are overwhelmingly only granted to technical fields. So people who can immigrate to america are the ones in technical fields.
Even so, why are there more of those technical immigrants female than the locals? That the majority of visas granted are for technical fields doesn't tell us anything about the gender of those who obtain them. There's nothing stopping 100% of immigrant IT workers from, e.g. India from being male. Why are they not?
Also, I'm not sure the assumption that visas are only granted to technical workers is correct. My experience is from the UK and I don't know what happens in the US, but over here, immigrants do all sorts of jobs. For example, many doctors and nurses in the NHS (the National Health Service) are from India or the EU; the majority of agricultural workers are from the EU; plumbers, famously, are all Polish; catering workers are from the EU; etc etc.
> Even so, why are there more of those technical immigrants female than the locals?
You are comparing locals( general population) to immigrant females( self selected group). Ofcourse population selected for technical degrees has higher % of technical degrees.
> There's nothing stopping 100% of immigrant IT workers from, e.g. India from being male. Why are they not?
Because all people want better life male or female. Getting into tech(even if goes against their inherent choices) for Immigrant female population is worth the high reward vs local population where upside of getting into tech is might not be worth going against their inherent interests.
> the majority of agricultural workers are from the EU
You explained it yourself. What you are asking is equivalent to 'why aren't there more of UK natives among agricultural workers'.
I've also seen this in the six years I worked in the UK as a developer, before starting my PhD. Of the women developers I worked with, (in this case, not so many) the majority were Indian or Eastern or Southern European. The same goes for the students in my data science Masters (also in a UK university).
Other women I've discussed this with, have similar experiences. In particular Greek women (like myself) don't remember any perception of a strong bias in numbers against women in STEM subjects. I have a fair few Greek women friends who have bachelors or master's degrees in computer science.
All this is of course anecdotal but it makes me think there is some sort of bias that is not explained by "interest in things" vs "interest in people", or any such difference between the sexes, because it is particular to specific cultures, rather than to the sexes around the globe.
In any case "gendered interest" sounds like a convenient oversimplification that seeks to confirm cultural bias as natural and spontaneous, rather than an attempt to understand it. Instead of answering any questions it passes the buck; it leaves someone else to wonder why girls and boys are interested in different things (e.g. fire trucks vs barbie dolls). The same goes for academic performance in school: that is also an observation that requires an explanation- not an explanation in and of itself.