Women will never catch up to men in the tech field?

A controversial study came out in 2018 saying that while girls performed better than boys in STEM subjects at school, countries with more gender equality, like Finland, tended to have fewer women earning degrees in those fields. while women in less progressive countries, like algeria, have more.

The authors and study were attacked and the data and statistic analysis were questioned but the publication put out a statement saying that they won’t remove the study as there are no fundamental errors and other studies should be done to further approve or disapprove.

I think these kind of studies are interesting. The only problem is that it is often abused by sexists and right wingers.

Edit: to clear any misunderstandings the authors are actually saying that while girls are better at stem in school they don’t major in it in uni and that’s why in Finland engineers are 20m:1f. But in a place like Algeria women are going more into stem majors bc they are pressured to secure good jobs. So they arguing the more freedom you give to women the more they stay away from stem. That’s why there was a backlash

I personally hate coding with passion

Quote from dummi

I already know the Elon Musk stans are about to come in talking about "bUt WoMeN hAvE bAbIeS" argument as if it proves anything other than womens ability to deal with societal pressures and STEM all the same. I loved that study, we talked about it in one of my classes. The people who had problems with it were overwhelmingly male, and conservative as you said. Wonder why...?

An Elon musk stan and a kpop stan? That would be interesting to see

Quote from dummi

I already know the Elon Musk stans are about to come in talking about "bUt WoMeN hAvE bAbIeS" argument as if it proves anything other than womens ability to deal with societal pressures and STEM all the same. I loved that study, we talked about it in one of my classes. The people who had problems with it were overwhelmingly male, and conservative as you said. Wonder why...?

Check out my edit I think you misunderstood

Quote from jinaland

some people are extremely talented in tech not depending on gender

there was one boy in my class, he was poorr and busy taking care of his brothers but he always used to nail when comes to every subject while i study all day all night, he got in very prestigious UNI tho, he was a genius, sometimes i feel jealous

Yeah I think with tech and coding an those stuff it is a talent just like in art and music.

Quote from dummi

I think I didn't? The study was interesting because it brought up an age old argument of "women dont usually like stem if given the freedom to choose", and a lot of people disagreed and people who had problems with having an argument, saying that it was natural etc etc were overwhelmingly male and conservative.

Yes sorry I’m the one who misunderstood you.

Quote from rainbowblink224

Wasn't Ada Lovelace the inventor of code?

Yeah they are not saying no women is interested in STEM. But that it would never get close to 50-50 as some people demand or dream of.. that’s why some people got mad

Quote from lonelymoon

I do not think an equal repartition between men and women is really reachable in all STEM fields. I am studying engineering (mechanics and energetics) and there is only about 25% of girls in my school. However , my brother and also my best friend both are studying to become engineers in agri-food sector and this field is largely dominated by women (80%). I do think men and women simply tend to have different interests. That said, there is still progress that can be made. Even when women are free to choose their carreer, they can still be influenced by their parents' view for instance. When I was in middle school I had the feeling my parents were indirectly pushing me to be more interested in non-scientifics subjects while doing the contrary for my brother . Mentalies still have to change to ensure everybody can choose one's carreer path freely.

Yeah that’s what the opposite team argued, that even if women are given freedom to choose, there is still social expectations and influence.

Good luck with your studies!

Quote from Icaro_Ribeiro

yes

I've read this studies before

In poorer countries your foremost desire is to get a job, if jobs are found in engineering and TI female will easily gravitate towards those jobs just as much as males

However in countries where society is more wealth and you can find a nice paid job in pretty much any studying field people are more likely to do what they like

And girls seems more inclined to more social jobs like laws, health services, psychology, education, management etc.

Display More

You are right.

I think what causing the problems is that big tech companies are having inclusion goals like having 20% of software engineers or any other job be women and the percentage should increase over time. I remember mark Zuckerburg talking about it he said all our inclusion goals fail and maybe society should teach young girls to love stem more. But studies like this one makes me think.

Quote from Icaro_Ribeiro

I work for a major tech company, we now have 40% of our employees to be woman, but working on software engineering is only about 20%

Overall in TI companies you can choose if you will stay doing technical job like coding, support , testing etc or something more management and services-related. I see women assign themselves more into senior management positions than senior technical positions

My director is a women (she leads group of workers to some major clients, around 120 workers under her authority) and about 35 of us are women (~29%), and I realize there are some of women in entry/mid management positions such as scrum masters, team leads, Procut Owners, PMO etc. But are very sparsely represent in senior QA analysts, senior application analysts, and and senior positions in infrastructure and DBA squads

So even when they start as coders they end ditching coding and go to leadership positions, while men assign more equally to both senior technical jobs and leadership

Edit: Need to point there is a threshold of what position you can be in company hierarchy doing only technical job. While senior analysts and engineers can have high paid salaries they will never be in directors and executive positions unless they choose to go to management and leadership and it means stop coding, some people don't like it so they choose coding

Display More

Interesting... thanks for sharing