In Eastern Europe women in engineering has tradition. Its all about role models and social norms.

Here's a recent article about it:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321

In the west, the woman is traditionally the housewife.

It's also a side-effect of the "communist cultural heritage"... Engineers were quite respected in communist societies (at least in EE & Rusia), and women were also welcomed/forced to join the industrial workforce (because industry was inefficient and required tons of labor).

Hence, a smart woman wanting high social status kind of had two options: become an engineer or a doctor. First option was easier and also less painful (doctors were also subjected to nasty shit like having to relocate to unpleasant places without choice because there was a demand for their services there, some areas like surgery were also much less women friendly etc.).

Also, dunno about Rusia, but in Eastern Europe, even now, there is a good "girls in math" story. Maybe less in physics or computer-science, but in pure and applied math there's lots of girls. Probably most of the smart ones jump ship more towards finance than tech though, when they realize they can't really get a nice paying job with a math degree alone.

This is what makes me skeptical of the diversity movements in America. In Romania and even Russia it seems women are very well represented in tech and there are no movements there. It seems to me that these movements are mostly used for political maneuvering and are not helpful at all.

I'm from Romania. The general balance is pretty far from 50/50, and there are some not-so-nice jokes about women in CS (e.g. "mamma had 2 girls; one was smart & beautiful, the other one went on to study computer science"). Still, from what I saw (I work in a US company) - I suspect it's far better than US, and maybe even western europe[1]. There's no expectation that if you're a girl you must suck at math (or science/engineering in general), and in general I'd say programmers want/ like to have girls around. But it's still a fairly masculine environment, with some fair level of "bro" culture, so it must be somewhat tougher for a girl. It's double-edged though... the US "positive discrimination" culture is making inroads here, so on some aspects it's easier to be a girl in tech (I suspect it's actually easier to get a job compared to an equally-qualified guy).

The thing is - positive discrimination doesn't solve the problem, because it comes from school. You need to encourage girls to take science classes - it has to be expected of them that they do so (rather than go towards, e.g., humanities). That, I don't think is actively happening in the US or even some parts of western europe.... by the time you're dealing with graduates, it's already too late to fix the gender-imbalance problem.

[1] My little daughter's godfathers are German (she grew up in Romania, but he didn't). She told me that among german women, it's a thing of pride to be bad at math. And that her daughter was praised in school that "you're pretty good, for a girl". With that sort of attitudes during childhood... it's bound to be hard to get gender balance later (that "praise" would be perceived as insult here)

> There's no expectation that if you're a girl you must suck at math (or science/engineering in general),

When I was going to school girls were usually better at math. I remember getting help from them with some calculus problems.

My CS teacher in high school was a woman as well and before teaching she worked as a programmer. She was a great role model for girls I'd imagine. Well she was a great role model for me too because she was a great teacher.

At my University in Timisoara Romania, in my class in pure Mathematics 75% were women, I think the men were attracted more to the computer engineering at the other university but I do not have numbers, anyway girls still loved Math when I was at university 15 years ago

As someone from Eastern Europe, all of the women (three generations) in my family are/were in scientific/engineering roles and it didn't seem like a big deal 30 years ago or now. It was just the way things are. I have an aunt who knows COBOL.

Not being familiar enough with history of this in US/Silicon Valley, want to ask: were things always "unequal", or did things go wrong somewhere along the way?

Same here - my grandmother was a programmer, and my mother was an electrical engineer.

What it says to me is that women are just as capable of men in the engineering fields, and America has a unique problem that keeps women out here.

So yes, it makes sense to have a movement for diversity here, because something is pushing women out of these fields, so we have to push back.

There is a big movement in the US! Many organizations akin to girlswhocode.com. However, with the right wing in control right now, there's a real effort to suppress the legitimacy of that movement.

Eh, what? Russia still faces a lot of violence and discrimination against women: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21474931.

I'm not sure for the increased participation of women in tech though. Maybe better education? Maybe less of a "computer lovers are all nerds" culture? I honestly don't know.