The best explanation I've seen is that in countries with high economic insecurity, people are motivated to work at lucrative careers with low barriers to entry, despite their lack of inherent interest. Programming is top of the list almost everywhere. The survival instinct surely is egalitarian.
But in countries with less economic insecurity this motivation to work in a field without an inherent interest simply isn't there. Perhaps this motivation is different across genders in wealthier countries (men are more likely to go into fields they don't like), or men simply like technical fields at higher rates.
Equally as important, perhaps they do not have it drilled into them that beauty is all they should aim for. Everything they see is that women should be (model level) beautiful. Should flaunt their women-ness.
Advertising, makeup, dolls, television, films play a bigger part than the so called sexism that exists in engineering cultures
There are pink hammers, pink calculators, and plenty of other pink tools that would otherwise not be gendered. A black handled hammer isn't masculine, it's gender neutral, it's functional.
You can't simply be a woman, who is in the tech industry, you have to be a "woman in tech"
Since it exists in every culture that has ever been known to man, it's not actually possible to draw conclusions in the normal way, by comparing a culture with makeup to one without. You can make claims about what it would mean for a culture not to use makeup, but if you do you should realize that those claims are, in their entirety, just some random junk you made up.
I was inferring global human culture, we didn't really develop in vacuums. And pardon my wording, I meant species, but I felt that'd imply that women were biologically disposed to wear makeup, which obviously I don't believe is true(maybe social factors caused by biology, but none still relevant in the 21st century).
More importantly, you're right though, I have zero evidence backing this up, or going against it. I just don't feel like it's very right.
That women wear it daily while it doesn't even cross most guy's minds. Also that women wear it, and are expected to wear it, to look better while, again, the concept rarely crosses most men's minds.
If it doesn't cross guys' minds but it does cross their minds, isn't it a reasonable explanation that they personally notice the effects and like how it looks on them?
It's not really about egalitarianism per se, it's about what roles women are expected/allowed to take, and what roles men are expected/allowed to take. The decision that engineering or programming is a "male" role is a fairly arbitrary one that we've made in the US.
In some countries programming is seen as a good job for women because it's an indoor job, maybe you can be in a predominantly female environment, it involves typing, it's not that prestigious so you're not fighting to climb a career ladder. It's a commodity job so you can enter and leave the workforce as necessary to deal with family issues.
None of these things is really about the work that needs to be done, unless we're talking about work that absolutely requires upper body strength. It's all just framing, perception, almost marketing. That's why I find the gender essentialist stuff nonsense. Why is being a top chef a male job and a home cook a female job? Because one requires bluster? You will often find that in countries with fabulously successful women programmers, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, these jobs are just considered jobs rather than Magical Jobs for Extraordinarily Smart Ninja Rockstars.
