A) Iran has forced labor (in the military) for men from age 18-20. Students are sometimes exempted, but the government makes it difficult for men to become students to prevent "abuse" of this exemption. Further, many men go straight to work after their term of forced labor is up - connections/skills they developed in the military serve a similar purpose to college.
(Israel has a similar phenomenon - due to forced military labor, college is not as strict a requirement. But this does not affect gender balance since Israel has forced labor for women as well.)
B) The country is ruled by, as you note, patriarchal theocrats. Religion is a path to power/money - this creates a brain drain among intelligent men.
Perhaps the next generation who grow up with very female friendly computer games and software (like facebook) will have the motivation to learn to program like boys have in the past. While boys might tend to enjoy things like programming for its own sake - I see a lot of reasons for girls to want to be involved in programming in the future.
"The plural of 'anecdote' isn't 'data.'"
To counter that, though, I would say that your presents to your nieces, while a great idea and well-encouraged, palls in the face of parental and social pressure. Their friends are playing with dolls. Playing with legos by yourself can be fun, but not quite as fun as playing with their friends.
If your point is, well, this is just two little girls, you're right, that alone would not allow one to extrapolate to all little girls everywhere. However, I know for a fact that large companies and institutions have already done lots of experiments with kids (especially companies that have a vested interest in figuring out exactly what kids want, in order to maximize their profit) and my understanding is that the studies show that yes, girls mostly prefer to play with girlish things and boys with boyish things. This was the result of Science with a capital S. Now, do all boys hate dolls and all girls hate robots and dump trucks and guns? Of course not. But in the majority of cases that's how the cookie crumbled in the real world.
Also the whole "pink vs blue" thing you see in stores in the kid sections? Do you think that's some conspiracy or cultural artifact? From what I've heard, it's isn't. They've done experiments. Girls in general, world-wide, really do tend to prefer pink and boys prefer blue. In the general case, when dealing with large enough numbers, etc.
Small children have a phase where they want things to be they way they "should" be. If it's a girl, she will like girly things because All Girls Like Girly Things because That's That Way It Is.
It takes until puberty when children start wanting individuality instead, sometimes with hilarious results in the opposite direction instead.
Studies show that it's incredibly hard to fight these tendencies, the onyl thing you can do is try to make tech more girly, by having female role models and to promote them.
(edit: in fact, as anecdote - girls supposedly have more tastebuds, yet professional cooking is heavily male dominated. Though women cooks can put up with just as much if not more than men. Physical traits have no bearing on this particular cultural quirk.)
Conversely, all of that /can/ be explained as cultural artifacts, amplified by years of exposure, an encroaching western monoculture, and a feedback loop of expectations. When you stick "pink" and "blue" in front of a kid and ask them what seems more girly to them, you're already presenting a pre-existing baggage of cultural conditions, be it through subconscious impulses, or because the kid's been around long enough to know what his or her peers prefer.
Let's not lose sight that scientific experiments have to be interpreted, yeah? The process of science isn't nearly so clean that we can reliably say that any one experiment isn't tainted by subjective bias. Half of the fights over any one theory in any field at all is because of it.
With my son, we have a lot of animal themed toys that come out of the box without an associated gender. This hasn't kept us from adopting gender specific names for them though (Mr. Monkey, Sophie, Boss Hog, Leeroy Jenkins, Charlotte).
That the roles are globally reversed now could very well be indicative of a newish cultural shift that has nothing to do with nature, genes or suchlike.
Although I guess the thing I read earlier might well be wong, I'm still not that convinced that colors are that gender based by default.
However, there have been a number of studies on this and they've found that toy preference is pretty innate. And even present in other primates.
See this paper: http://www.scribd.com/full/36579212?access_key=key-1ztjrngs9...
What is the attitude of their parents towards playing with masks etc? What is the attitude of their peers? The environment that you operate in introduces all sort of variables.
Btw, do you think society also has a problem (speaking USA) that the vast majority of cosmetics salespeople are women? Do you think there's some horrible educational/cultural/societal conspiracy or flaw going on that has caused there to be so few men in that field? And how about child day care? How about the small percentage of women that are garbage truck pickup workers? Auto mechanics? Hunters? Weightlifting?
I think that today in the USA we're about as close to "culturally gender neutral" in mathematics, science and programming as we're ever going to get without some sort of significant genetic engineering or neurological/cyborg modification. Small changes? Sure, of course. Big changes? I highly doubt it without hacking on our DNA or hormones.
I'm afraid your underlying logic is full of holes. At the very least, it's unimaginative, and fails to at least ask "actually, /why/ is this so?" As for the 70%, Wiki's "Science in Iran" lists it as specifically degrees in science and engineering. While Wiki is, at times, unremarkable in its factuality, this specific assertion is actually backed by citation.
Furthermore, biology being /also/ male-dominant in the US, your point doesn't hold well. What makes biology more female-oriented than chemistry or physics anyhow? What basis are you making such a claim?
Why do so many women have vaginas and so few have penises? Cultural conspiracy? Or is there perhaps some other force or mechanism involved? I know which I think it is. :P
Tango's a good example -- yes there is obviously more male participation in that, especially at the professional level. But there has to be, IIRC, because the tradition is to have a male-female pair doing it. That old saying, "Takes two to tango!" I was talking more about among amateurs, among students, minors, etc. And other forms of dance. And in suburbs and rural areas, etc. From what I can tell in my life experience so far those subsectors of dance all mostly involve women. (Can't believe I need to even point this out. I can't even imagine a point anytime growing up where I ever saw a guy say, "Hey guys, let's go dancing tonight! giggle" whereas I had lots of exposure to incidents where women wanted to dance, or take dance classes, etc. That's what I'm talking about.) Also when I talked about males and dance I assumed straight males. A high percentage of males in professional dance seem to be gay -- just listen to them talk or walk sometime. And it's clear from studies that they have biological or neurological differences in their brain and hormones -- a point which further lends credence to the notion that men and women are different due to biological/structural/hormonal differences, and that this is probably a large factor involved in explaining statistical differences in interests, behavior and talents. Change a man's brain/body to make it more female and guess what both his body and his behavior become more feminine. And vice versa. Transsexual adjustment procedures depend on this fact. It's science, not wishful thinking.
This is my last post in this thread. Talking about gender in society on the Internet is right up there with religion and politics. Rarely leads anywhere. :)
70% of the technical degree holders living under the Iranian patriarchal theology
Even in India, Women in engineering have similar proportion as USA.
In 2000, Iranian women accounted for 56% of students enrolled in the natural sciences. No matter how you cut that, /that's not nursing and teaching/.
And isn't it a bit of a sign of discrimination to merely assume off-hand that another culture's definition of "science and engineering" isn't as "rigorous" as ours, even if we seem to be gearing up for a clash with them? Instead of pooh-poohing their efforts, it seems more appropriate to be astonished by their capabilities in as hostile a cultural paradigm as they live in.
And isn't it a bit of a sign of discrimination to merely assume off-hand that another culture's definition of "science and engineering" isn't as "rigorous" as ours, even if we seem to be gearing up for a clash with them? Instead of pooh-poohing their efforts, it seems more appropriate to be astonished by their capabilities in as hostile a cultural paradigm as they live in.
Finally as someone who grew up in India, I am familiar with eastern cultures/ educational systems, and can assure you 70% in "Technical [Science and Engineering]" is near impossible, unless significant men are enrolled in some technical military program and are not counted.
That's problematic to me. That suggests to /me/ that the gender disparity in Silicon Valley has very little to do with genetics. In fact, the role of genetics in intelligence is too heavily disputed to be considered anyhow - the tech field being a supposed /meritocracy/, and genetics having little to do with personal /merit/, it instead suggests to me that the problem is how our culture is defining "ideal merit" to our women.
The reason why tech conferences can't find enough women speakers is because there aren't enough girls encouraged /socially/ to enter the tech field. And by "girls," I don't mean to use disparaging language, but indicate that the problem is rooted all the way in how they're taught and influenced, be it in schools or amongst friends and family.
When mathematics, science and computer programming are considered culturally gender-neutral, that's when female representation in the tech industry will be less of an issue. Until then, we remain unable to tap a good half of our population's intellectual resources.
That's a bit of a problem.