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0 pointsYeGoblynQueenne8y ago0 comments

>> I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women.

Then there must be a biological difference between women from different cultures that's also contributing, because I've only observed this "lack of interest" in Anglosphere women.

From my experience, for instance, Indian women have no such problem and are in fact strongly represented within the IT profession and I've worked alongside several of them. Women in my country of birth (Greece) have no such problem and about two fifths of the Greek programmers I know are women. In the British universities I studied and the British workplaces I worked in the last few years, on the other hand, women are about a tenth of all programmers I've met.

So because it's a bit absurd for Anglo women to be so specifically genetically programmed to stay out of the IT professions, I'm going to assume it's not a genetic, but a cultural thing going on.

Btw, I've discussed this with a female Indian software engineer I was working with and she explained that in India, working in IT is seen as an office job and so more suited to women. Traditional gender roles, innit.

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tscs378y ago

There is plenty of evidence that there are genetic differences in how the brain is build up between men and women [0]. Several studies have also found that as early as 3 year old children will develop differences in their cognition; boys will develop better spatial skills at that age compared to girls, on the other hand the girls will have a better memory recall than the boys. This development can then be traced all the way into adulthood with a variety of skillsets (not only spatial tasks but eye-hand coordination, motor skills, reaction times, recollection, processing speed and verbal skills) [1]

Now this doesn't mean women are incapable or bad at copmuter engineering or anything in IT. Quite the opposite, women are just as capable and can be just as good in IT as men, there is no reason they can't.

If what you say is true and indian culture views IT as an office job and therefore a woman's job, then I don't see how that contradicts the assertion that there are biological cognitive differences, women can do the same job, they are just less inclined to be interested in it. On average.

So while gender roles may play a role (pun intended) in the distribution of gender in the IT job, expecting a 50/50 representation is entirely fictional, there will be a bias towards one or the other based on simple cognitive development tendencies.

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0: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-017-1600-2

1: doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.10.011.

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tscs378y ago

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0: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-017-1600-2

1: doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.10.011.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse