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morkalork | on: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs
You're absolutely correct and I think it's what drives all the resentment about DEI programs. People aren't dumb, when they see some group only makes up 3% of the population of engineers and they see a program trying to balance senior positions, they're going to feel its unfair bs. What's really interesting is that almost every woman I've worked with professionaly isn't from North America, they're all from India, Iran and Eastern Europe (Belarus, Bulgaria etc). There's something deeply wrong with the culture here that's screwing up the top of the funnel.
energy123 | parent | next
> There's something deeply wrong with the culture

Another possibility: Women in poorer countries enrol in CS out of necessity. In wealthy countries, they have more economic freedom and there are more jobs available higher up on Maslow's Hierarchy, so they enrol in what they actually want (which is not CS).

On average.

pxmpxm | root | parent
Entirely accurate, in ex-communist eastern europe some sort of math/engineering job was about the only way to live somewhat decent, so anyone remotely ambitious would go into that.
iforgot22 | parent | next
This tracks. I got a computer science degree from a large US university. Something like 75-80% of the major was male. The majority of the male CS students were Asian-American*, but not extremely. Way larger share on the female side, like 90%.

Several of my friends in CS said their parents wouldn't have supported their college education if they were getting a humanities degree, with the possible exception of law. Even business was unlikely.

* counting South and West Asian too

blitzar | parent | next
(~2018) In India, women represent 45% of total computer science enrollment in universities, almost three times the rate in the United States, where it is 18%.
morkalork | root | parent
And in Iran, it's even higher (1). It is not what you would expect from either country based on the stereotypes people have in their minds.

(1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyguttman/2015/12/09/set-to-ta...

Manuel_D | root | parent | next
The 70% statistic is very prominent, but some of my Iranian friends were incredulous of it. Some speculate that men tend to pick up skills during mandatory military service, so women make up a larger proportion of college graduates. Interestingly when you look for statistics on the workforce itself (rather than graduates with STEM degrees), you see familiar ratios of ~20-25%. E.g. https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/425963/23-percent-of-mobile...

"Women make up 48 percent of internet users, 45 percent of cellphone users, and 23 percent of mobile app developers in Iran, Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said here on Sunday."

I can't seem to find stats on the aggregate gender breakdown of software developers in Iran.

iforgot22 | root | parent
The stereotype in my mind is that countries in Asia prioritize STEM a lot, so this makes sense to me. And they don't call it STEM, it's just school.
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llamaimperative | parent
Hint: None of this is news to people advocating for DEI programs. They believe that part of what screws up the top of the funnel is there being so few examples to follow later on down the funnel.

There is no person on the planet who's advocating for DEI at senior level positions in advanced fields and no changes elsewhere in the system... obviously.