There was an interesting Norwegian documentary that looked into this[1]. The overall observation was that societies where women were extremely free, usually ended up with the same gender distributions as societies in which they were less free (e.g. few women in STEM).

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.

---

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70

Came here to post that documentary (the entire series of which is freely available, btw[1]). I think you misinterpreted it slightly, however. The documentary presents evidence (strongly denied by the Norwegian social scientists interviewed) that male and female brains are wired differently, to be good at and enjoy different activities. It even goes so far as to show studies that link receiving an excessive amount of the opposite sex's hormones during prenatal development to developing the stereotypical interests of the opposite sex early in childhood.

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?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask

If this holds up to scrutiny maybe a better way forward would be to try to increase the status and pay jobs that typically attract women?

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.

I have to say that while the Scandinavian countries are seen as bastions of gender equality, my personal experience has shown some extraordinary sexism there in academia, far far far more than I've ever experienced in mathematics or physics in the United States. Like men straight-out telling women they don't need to get that science PhD because they'll just drop out to have babies anyway, since all women just want to be mothers above anything else, or a friend being explicitly denied a grad fellowship because her slacker male colleague "has a family to support" so deserves it more (despite fewer publications, fewer grants, behind in the program, stopped showing up to the lab for a while). Scandinavians have an inflated view of their own gender equity (and so does everyone else).

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...

This "nurses or teachers" stereotype is awful. There's plenty of women who are both smart and not people's person.

Pretending that there is this one axis of "free vs. non-free" and that Norway represents best how people behave free of constraint is ridiculous. You are doing the mental gymnastics you accuse your opponents of, in service a thinly veiled promotion of the "men work, women care" theory.

Was there extra social pressure to stay out of STEM in in the less free societies?

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)

my personal observation over the years says that the vast majority of new female engineers have come from foreign countries. Or are American citizens who immigrated here after middle school.

We're celebrating a narrowing gender gap, but American women seem to be largely left out.

Weirdly enough, these foreign female engineers never complain about "culture problems" even though they make up the majority of female engineers.

They definitely do; I've had plenty of private conversations with non-American women in CS about sexism. I think Americans are just more likely to be openly vocal about it.

But just because you don't hear them complain doesn't mean that there aren't problems.

I wonder which of these other nations are. Perhaps their engineering cultures are more gender-egalitarian than ours.

The best explanation I've seen is that in countries with high economic insecurity, people are motivated to work at lucrative careers with low barriers to entry, despite their lack of inherent interest. Programming is top of the list almost everywhere. The survival instinct surely is egalitarian.

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.

Equally as important, perhaps they do not have it drilled into them that beauty is all they should aim for. Everything they see is that women should be (model level) beautiful. Should flaunt their women-ness.

Advertising, makeup, dolls, television, films play a bigger part than the so called sexism that exists in engineering cultures

Even in male dominated fields this applies.

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"

The fact that makeup exists speaks a lot about our culture and how it views women.

Since it exists in every culture that has ever been known to man, it's not actually possible to draw conclusions in the normal way, by comparing a culture with makeup to one without. You can make claims about what it would mean for a culture not to use makeup, but if you do you should realize that those claims are, in their entirety, just some random junk you made up.

I was inferring global human culture, we didn't really develop in vacuums. And pardon my wording, I meant species, but I felt that'd imply that women were biologically disposed to wear makeup, which obviously I don't believe is true(maybe social factors caused by biology, but none still relevant in the 21st century).

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.

Culture does not have a view, as abstract concepts cannot themselves conceptualize

Are you saying makeup doesn't exist in Eastern Europe?

Well, it exists everywhere, but so does sexism.

So... it doesn't have anything to do with our culture at all, then?

Human culture, I guess if you step back far enough. I say culture because I don't think makeup is tied to genetics.

What evidence do you have that makeup is actually linked to sexism at all?

That women wear it daily while it doesn't even cross most guy's minds. Also that women wear it, and are expected to wear it, to look better while, again, the concept rarely crosses most men's minds.

If it doesn't cross guys' minds but it does cross their minds, isn't it a reasonable explanation that they personally notice the effects and like how it looks on them?

It's not really about egalitarianism per se, it's about what roles women are expected/allowed to take, and what roles men are expected/allowed to take. The decision that engineering or programming is a "male" role is a fairly arbitrary one that we've made in the US.

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.

Totally anecdotal, but I seem to meet disproportionately many woman engineers from Russia and Iran.

Is it largely the industry's fault though, or some mix of the dominant culture and the education system that sets a trajectory at a much earlier age which is very hard to reverse? Women are only about 18% of the computer science majors.

EDIT. NPR had an interesting perspective on this, thought I'd share: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

Coming from an ex-communist country to the US as a 25 year old I was shocked that the whole "Wife stays at home to take care of kids" is actually seen as a real thing to do in 2016. I was certain this was something that only happens in old sitcoms.

Assuming it's actually a problem and not an outgrowth of womens' preferences.