It it my somewhat anecdotal experience that, in spite of gender inequalities there are far more percentage of Indian women in tech than their western counterparts (particularly US).

I remember rubyconfindia 2010 - where 30-40% participants were women. Ola bini or one of the keynote speakers commented this is first rubyconf. where he has seen so many women and I could concur because I have been to many conferences here in US and there never were that many women.

Tech. meetups is another story though. Most meetups in India are organized on weekends and there are hardly any women.

There were a couple of studies that showed that in developing countries where social support structures aren't strong you generally see a lot more women go into the less gender traditional fields such as engineering. See Eastern Europe, China, India etc.

However once a country's quality of life goes up dramatically, women generally (this word is key, there are always outliers) will gravitate towards more traditional feminine occupations such as nursing, teaching, etc . See the Scandinavian countries.

>There were a couple of studies that showed that in developing countries where social support structures aren't strong you generally see a lot more women go into the less gender traditional fields such as engineering. See Eastern Europe, China, India etc.

I had to read that twice to follow you.

Be careful with your wording. What you meant was government funded social structures, as opposed to actual social structures (family structure, etc). Most Indians who move to the US will be quick to tell you how much worse the social support structures are in the US. In India, there is usually little need for daycare (relatives almost always look after the kids). Same goes for taking care of the chronically unhealthy people, etc.

My guess is that the fundamental driving force is this. There are great masses of people in a country like India living in abject poverty. If you're smart and lucky enough to have opportunity, what you have in India, that you don't have in a country like the United States, is day-to-day contact with the wretchedly poor. This staring you in the face puts your choices into stark relief.

In the U.S., for example, a bright young lady with opportunities can rest assured that, no matter what she chooses to study, life has a good chance of turning out alright for her. Her family, friends, teachers, and so forth generally agree. However in India, for example, it's far more likely that a bright young lady with opportunities will be thoroughly encouraged -- some might even say pushed -- to pursue only the most remunerative and prestigious occupations. In plain language: "Do you want to end up in the gutter?"

I wonder if these are the social structures that make the most difference.

This strikes too close to home. Growing up in India - one of my uncles drove Autorickshaw's for living - each time he came to our home and saw me not studying, his response was pretty much - "what the heck are you doing? Do you want to drive autorickshaw's for living?"

I had no response to that.

Also - a lot of women in their 30s/20s now have seen - what it means to be a homemaker in India. I think neither their mothers and nor themselves want a life like that.

The mentality was if you are not required to do the physical work then why are you not studying which will free from the physical work forever and you do not have to live a life like the adult uncles who had no choice but to do the physical work to survive . As a school going kids this attitude cause much frustration and depression because they are not permitted to play. But I am happy now that this hard love from my uneducated but well wishing uncles and other souls had made me capable of using internet for other than social media.

If you are not born in India and have guessed this just by studying about India from books and media then you are an excellent guesser.

That's fair, cheers.

Does anyone have a link to these studies?

That's the point. The author merely guessed it from the data of other studies which is impressive and totally correct

I could be wrong but this sounds a lot like what happened in America during WWII. Many men were off at war and the country was coming out of a depression. As a result a ton of women joined the workforce in fields that were typically dominated by men. I don't have any stats to back this up. It's pretty much just what I was told in history class as a kid. Perhaps someone here knows more about it.

I know about as much as you:

I always thought of it as a massive success for the war effort, someone had to assemble the planes, after all. Rosie the Riveter ended up becoming an iconic piece of propaganda during the war, IIRC.

The examples you give do not support given hypothesis at all. Scandinavian countries have not had more gender equality at the time of lower quality of life. I'm also not sure about them having ever had “dramatic“ improvements in quality of life. But even if they had more gender equality, and even if they had dramatic improvements in q. of l. the assertion you made still does not follow in any way based simply on that observation. There are so many other factors that could be involved. For example, notice how all the countries you mentioned as more egalitarian in this area were either socialist, or influenced by socialism (India). Eastern European countries, for example, before the revolutions were extremely patriarchal and conservative in regards to gender roles (and other aspects of life). You can see this returning after the Eastern Block collapsed. You can say what you want about economic aspects, but socialism brought gigantic improvements in a lot of social and cultural aspects of life in those societies (gender equality, literacy, etc.).

Regarding Scandinavian countries, while these are very rich, the cost of living is also very high. The high equality perceived from statistics is actually an economical pressure.

Had a friend in Denmark employed as univerisy lecturer. His salary was very high, yet they were struggling with two kids and wife unemployed (due to language barrier).

> Had a friend in Denmark employed as univerisy lecturer. His salary was very high, yet they were struggling with two kids and wife unemployed (due to language barrier).

This anecdote raises a few issues.

1. Not speaking Danish does not severely impact a job search in Denmark. Jobs from serving in a bar to working in an international company will be happy with an English speaker. There is a small language barrier but not anywhere near as big as e.g. Germany/Italy/France.

2. Denmark is definitely a country where two incomes are needed to live well.

3. The wage disparity between low and high status jobs is not that high. So if the second income is low status it will still make a big difference to household income.

4. Were your friends from outside the EU? There may have been a non language related reason for the wife to be unable to obtain work.

5. The Danish government provides free language lessons for foreigners living in Denmark - although the language is difficult.

6. Academic salaries cost of living adjusted are far better than in e.g. UK (but not as good as those for senior people in the USA).

7. At least your friend was a lecturer... In other countries their role could well have been filled by temporary staff. The Danish have rules preventing the eternal post doc situation that has developed in the UK and US.

Architecture professional from USA. Yep, the language was the official reason why she was getting rejected. Actually, as a lecturer, he has problems not knowing Danish even at the university - internal staff refused to speak English on meetings.

As you said, it's just anecdote - one's experience.

Several South Indian States has 30% seats in Engineering Colleges reserved for Woman. Significantly contributed to increase in women in Tech.

There are only four South Indian states. I am aware of caste-based quotas, but not gender-based ones. Can you provide a source for this?

No there are 5 South Indian States.

Here is a link to explaining Quotas in Colleges for AP and Telangana. http://www.netbadi.in/reservation-quotas.html?showall=1

Women's Quota for both states in 33.3% (1/3rd has to be women).

Personally I think it worked well. The Quota was first implemented in 1993.

There are. I lived through it. For the same grade, a girl could get into a better school than me.

Thid is maybe becayse IT/CS is considered "female" fields and "safe" for girls to get a degree into. My mother annoyed me for a month when I told her I wanted to get into IT, she told me it was a women field you take admission in mechanical etc

I'd be curious as to how much of this is a product of culture and parenting. I'm willing to bet, given my experience, that parents in India are far more pragmatic than those in the West when it comes to advising their children regarding education and lifestyle choices. Becoming a doctor or engineer in a in-demand field not only carries the potential for a high income, but also opens the door to emigrating to another country. Good data point: 11% of physicians in the UK are immigrants from India[1].

[1]http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMsa050004

It was very difficult to do anything other than engineering, medicine, finance, law, and science in India pre-2000s. Then, with the software and internet and mobile revolutions, in the late 90s and 2000s, software and electronics were substantially more lucrative than pure science or other branches of engineering. Things are becoming more like the US nowadays- with liberal arts being a viable option as the middle class is becoming richer and as children of the first wave of software nouveau riche come of age and their wealth providing some cushion for the liberal-arts and creative types.

There were not enough well-paying jobs (copywriter, creative, real estate agent, retail manager, etc. like in the US) like in the US for people with generic qualifications like English literature, etc. One way out for people with those qualifications was to write banking or governmental entrance exams for jobs. But these too leaned quantitative and had math components making them harder for liberal arts graduates.

From what I've heard from the few people I've met from USSR and China, the situation was similar there too.

I recently worked for a project in a Norwegian bank. Despite the claims of gender equality in Norway over 80% of IT personal and management there are male and most women work in testing.

It was rather interesting to see then when the bank signed a contract with an Indian company, women were like 50% of their IT folks with no gender devisions like testing/development. There were still less women at management positions from the Indian company, but the ratio is better than in the Norwegian bank.

I wonder, why many think that equality should result in 50:50 distribution.

I also wonder, as usually slightly more women live in a country than man, and woman have a slightly longer expected lifespan, which are effects which would distort the distribution.

Law of large numbers.

Assuming both genders are equally talented at a skill, and both genders equally enjoy a skill.

We can both offer equal opportunities, and realize different genders want different things out of a job.

That bank experience shows that women from India do show equal skills in IT. So the difference comes not from gender but from other things.

Wow thanks for sharing this. Read Viji's story. Truly inspiring that she was determined to fight cancer, finish her PhD, do great work, find a spouse who would marry her fully aware that cancer would consume her eventually, and support her research. What a great story!