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In China's Booming Tech Scene, Women Battle Sexism and Conservative Values (reuters.com)

In recent years, even as China's tech industry has boomed, many women say they make far less than their male counterpart for the same job. An anonymous reader shares a report: Reuters spoke to more than a dozen women -- and some men -- in the sector, from entry-level employees to executives, who described an industry where female engineers and coders battle against ingrained biases favoring men. "The traditional view is simply to think that women aren't suitable to be programmers," said Chen Bin, a former Microsoft engineer and the Beijing-based founder of Teach Girls Coding, a campaign to get more women into the sector. "Things are better now than ten years ago, but overall the number of women getting into tech is really small," he said.

China is not the only country where the tech industry has faced heat over a lack of diversity in the workplace. But unlike U.S. peers that have faced legal action over discrimination, including Uber, Alphabet's Google and Microsoft, Chinese technology companies are relatively opaque about gender issues. Most give little data on hiring and none of the industry leaders share the diversity reports that are now customary in the United States, shedding doubt on whether women in Chinese firms hold a comparable number of technical or leadership roles.

2 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why the comparison? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, damn that Gamergate crowd for demanding that games be reviewed on their merit and not on the basis of what sexual favours the developer has offered the reviewer.

    And yes, you should be moderated to -1 for your comment that misrepresents Gamergate. You apparently don't even know what it was about and seem to believe it was about Anita Sarkeesian. It's clear that you have preconceived ideas about Gamergate and have decided that gamers are a bunch of misogynists without even investigating what happened.

    Obviously you assume that, in any situation involving a woman, the woman is always innocent and the men are always guilty. It is you who is the sexist.

  2. Re:evidence? by Cipheron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually Gender equal nations see bigger STEM gender gaps than sexist hellholes do.

    e.g. in nations which don't provide many social avenues or financial support, such as *Algeria* you have near-equality in STEM graduates (41% female). That drops off a lot in nations with good social welfare systems. *Because* women have more choice. More women doing STEM classes isn't necessarily a sign that the society is providing well for women in general. Mainly because things like Engineering and Computer Science aren't just a course you do, they're a lifelong commitment to keeping your skills up to date. e.g. a Comp Sci person is going to be dedicating unpaid hours FOR LIFE to keep up. Women generally want more work/life balance than that allows. e.g. doing a job where you can't "clock out" and have to keep studying after-hours for your whole life, just to tread water, isn't a great idea if you plan to start a family later. Computer Science is the kind of thing that completely dominates your life if you choose it as a career path, you have to be 100% focused on that or you fall behind. e.g. you have to be near-autistic about it to even think about starting. Women are just more *balanced* than men and less of them are one-track obsessive idiots, so less women go into obsessive niche careers. That's not a "problem" for women.