Interestingly, the rates of women in tech were higher 50 years ago than they are today. Reduction in inequality between men and women has an inverse relationship with rates of women in engineering. The countries with large inequality between men and women like Indonesia and India have some of the highest rates of women on tech. Egalitarian countries like those in Scandinavia have the lowest rates. The idea that low rates of women in tech is a product of inequality and discrimination is hard to justify in practice.

My response to bluntfang, HN is rate limiting my office IP:

> Who's to say there's a reduction?

Anyone who studied gender relations over the last half century will say so, unambiguously, Trump notwithstanding. Women didn't have the right to abortion 50 years ago. They earned college degrees at half the rate of men (today, 3 women earn a degree for every 2 men). Workforce participation was much lower. Many states did not allow women to initiate divorces except under specific circumstances. Explicit denial of employment on the basis of sex was socially acceptable.

I'm willing to claim that women are better off today than they were in 1969 is a fact. I suppose "equality" is fundamentally subjective, and there might be people who genuinely believe that women getting the right to abortion, divorce, protection from discrimination, etc. somehow harmed them. But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most women see such changes as beneficial.

I think those are interesting data points, but it's hard to take that data and clearly conclude there is a non-problem.

For one, 50 years ago in America, women were unintentionally at the frontline of computers perhaps because high numbers of women were the "computers" before machine computers were introduced. And when the machine computers were introduced, the departments of women "computers" got exposure to them perhaps because of a high overlap in the departmental "compute" functions.

Similarly if you look at high level women in computing from 50 years ago, they often got chances to apply their extraordinary skills because they happened across extraordinary opportunities - in some part because no-one else was above them for unique job, nor was there a formal role to hire for and choose between a woman or man. Another contributing factor might be the nature of war as well as the newness of the tech that created a temporary gender-blind vacuum.

> For one, 50 years ago in America, women were unintentionally at the frontline of computers perhaps because high numbers of women were the "computers" before machine computers were introduced. And when the machine computers were introduced, the departments of women "computers" got exposure to them perhaps because of a high overlap in the departmental "compute" functions.

The correlation between lower gender equality and higher rates of women in STEM is not just a pattern in US history. It also holds across different countries in the modern day [1]. The idea that this is just a coincidence that electronic computing happened to come into existence around the time that women started gaining more rights does not hold up.

> Similarly if you look at high level women in computing from 50 years ago, they often got chances to apply their extraordinary skills because they happened across extraordinary opportunities - in some part because no-one else was above them for unique job, nor was there a formal role to hire for and choose between a woman or man. Another contributing factor might be the nature of war as well as the newness of the tech that created a temporary gender-blind vacuum.

This, too, does not hold up to scrutiny. Women's share of computing jobs did not drop after the war was over. It continued to rise until the late 1970s or early 1980s depending on which estimate is used. Since the share of women in computing continued to increase several decades after WWII, the idea of a temporary gender-bind vacuum is not promising.

1. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/03/14/investigating-the-stem-...

> The idea that this is just a coincidence that electronic computing happened to come into existence around the time that women started gaining more rights does not hold up

This is a misstatement of my idea, which is that which is that greater numbers of women were higher in stem at the beginning because of a historical circumstance. The data you show in [1] is a snapshot of the modern day, and really says nothing about the historical circumstances.

> Since the share of women in computing continued to increase several decades after WWII, the idea of a temporary gender-bind vacuum is not promising.

You act as if there are no momemtum effects of the initial higher rate of women in computing technology. A baseline rate of women in the culture at the time would encourage more women to be in the industry, perhaps until other effects became stronger. That the numbers continued to rise, in my opinion, say nothing about my second proposition one way or other.

> This is a misstatement of my idea, which is that which is that greater numbers of women were higher in stem at the beginning because of a historical circumstance. The data you show in [1] is a snapshot of the modern day, and really says nothing about the historical circumstances.

For the third time, the inverse correlation between gender equality and women's participation in engineering and technology hold true both when viewed over time within individual countries and when comparing different countries at the same time. Look at the rates of women's participation in engineering and technology in the US and it peaks at in the 1970s and 80s and tapers off after that. It does indeed show a relationship between the historical circumstances of women and their career choices. And when the same circumstances exist today in other countries, the inverse relationship between gender equality and rates of women in STEM holds true as well.

> You act as if there are no momemtum effects of the initial higher rate of women in computing technology. A baseline rate of women in the culture at the time would encourage more women to be in the industry, perhaps until other effects became stronger. That the numbers continued to rise, in my opinion, say nothing about my second proposition one way or other.

The same trends are observed in countries that did not participate in WWII which makes this hypothesis that the war imparted some sort of momentum on women in computing questionable.

> For the third time, the inverse correlation between gender equality and women's participation in engineering and technology hold true both when viewed over time within individual countries and when comparing different countries at the same time.

For the second time, that's not what the data in your link shows. It shows a single data graph of the modern day state. It is an interesting conundrum - but I don't understand how it supports what you are saying about the historical state.

Other nations who didn't participate in WWII were largely further behind the industrialization curve. Not sure what that means for interpreting STEM data other than there wasn't as much STEM in those nations then.

> For the second time, that's not what the data in your link shows. It shows a single data graph of the modern day state. It is an interesting conundrum - but I don't understand how it supports what you are saying about the historical state.

Because you asked for evidence on geographic trends, and I provided it. If you insist that I demonstrate statistics that are widely known, I'll oblige:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-the-declinin...

> Other nations who didn't participate in WWII were largely further behind the industrialization curve

Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark (only fought for 9 hours, so it effectively didn't fight) are further behind in the industrialization curve? France, too, could be counted in this category, as their wartime contribution was largely paused from 1941 to 1945 besides partisan activity and French forces outside of mainland Europe.

The gender equality paradox is widely understood. What is motivating the instinctive dismissal of such a widely studied and known phenomenon?

Those are all fine points, but it doesn't entirely address this gender paradox issues of Engineers in developed countries.

Moreover, it doesn't address the underlying assumption that 'equality' actually has to imply 50/50 in every labour category.

I personally believe that anyone should be able to do anything, but that gender is so deeply ingrained into culture and society, that there'll never be 50/50 in most professions not matter what we do - and that we should consider accepting 'different strokes for different folks' - and that ironically 'diversity' means people will do different things. There can still be equality in the world even if people do different things, we might just have to look at things a little differently and make sure 'fairness' is applied from another angle.

In the 1920's, Lenin tried to abolish that utterly bourgeois institution of the 'family'. He banned 'weekends' and made Russia work on a 5 day work day. Everyone got one day off - but different days off were assigned to different workers. Husbands and wives would often be assigned different days off specifically so they'd never see each other, i.e. to wear down the coherence of the family. This is not some Netflix Dystopia - this was a reality for 10's of millions of people in a 20th century country.

It failed miserably because I think the hyper intellectual social egalitarian attitudes were at odds with the social reality of humanity. I believe much of our gender wars boil down to this as well: we have gender, it's never going away, and trying to kill it is absurd. It's ok, we can have real equality without having to wipe out gender - we just have to think a little bit about it.

> Reduction in inequality between men and women has an inverse relationship with rates of women in engineering. The countries with large inequality between men and women like Indonesia and India have some of the highest rates of women on tech. Egalitarian countries like those in Scandinavia have the lowest rates. The idea that low rates of women in tech is a product of inequality and discrimination is hard to justify in practice.

That sounds like a cherry-picked example. For example, Eastern Block (USSR and similar countries) had a lot more gender-equality than the Western Block (like US) and has way more women in STEM.

This does nothing to explain why 85% of women and 85% of men in Sweden work in gender segregated professions, with gender segregation getting worse for every year. It does nothing to explain why out of 5 professions with 99% or higher gender segregation, 3 is female dominated and 2 is male dominated. It also does not explain why the only university program that ended up single gender a few years ago was female dominated.

The gender paradox is also poorly explained through the narrative that historical gender roles is the cause of gender segregation today.

It might just be that with a social net that one can fall back onto, people pick the careers that they want instead of the careers that pay more?

Right, and what we’re seeing is that men and women enjoy different things.

> Fixing the lack of women in tech is a multi-century process

Why does tech take longer than other professional fields like medical and legal? Harvard law started admitting women in the 1950s. MIT started admitting women in the 1870s. Yet the gender balance in the legal field narrowed much more rapidly.

I don't see how this argument can coexist with the reality that during the same time, women have achieved equal numbers and majority status in many other lucrative careers in medicine and law etc.

Highly talented women are not having to work as nannies and school teachers because they're kept out of tech. They choose other high paying careers and do very well in them.

> barely allowed into workplaces in general within the last 50 years

Pardon? 50 years ago was 1969. Not discounting the fact that lower class women have always worked, the 60s saw a huge growth in Women's liberation, with the first woman to be a Fortune 500 CEO happening in the 1972.

To say Women were "barely allowed in the workplace" during the 60's, 70's 80's and 90's needs significant proof.

Why not just look it up? It took 10 seconds. https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/NEWSTATS/facts/women_lf.htm#Civ...

In 1969, the labor force participation rate of women was 37.8%, and today it’s 46.8%. That’s a big change, and you have to realize that this difference is also coming out of the men’s share; it’s a bigger change than it looks. Also the women’s share was much lower - only 29% - just 20 years before that in 1949. In 1920 it was 20%. And don’t forget 1920 was the first year that women were allowed to vote. So if you’re looking at the bigger point and don’t fixate on exact dates, the pattern is one of massive change in the last 100 years from almost nothing to now nearing 50%.

FWIW, while the comment you replied to maybe seemed to overstate the claim a little for recent years, your response here doesn’t look particularly good in this sensitive/divisive topic, if you’re actually worried about being unfairly labeled. For example, the fact that the first woman Fortune 500 CEO happened in the last 50 years, after 1969, really goes straight to the parent comment’s point, and constitutes extremely clear proof that in 1969 women were barely allowed in some parts of the workforce.

> In 1969, the labor force participation rate of women was 37.8%

I would not call 38% participation "barely" in the workforce. And the point of noting the first female Fortune 500 CEO in 1969 was to highlight that while it is a shame it took so long, women would have been in senior roles well before 1969 to make her promotion possible.