Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful response. On its face that seems plausible.
I wonder if gender bias still kicks in once in career. I seem to see way less than 35% Indian women vs men in very senior or management roles. (Just my anecdotal data point of one, I don't have any numbers to back that up).
That's probably the case, but I believe it's a slightly different issue. I'd assume it's harder to break into management as a women because:
1) women entered the field later than men (so the distribution on the experienced end is less)
2) women have a significantly higher societal expectation to be the caretaker. Many pause or stop their careers when they have kids.
3) Indian society is heavily patriarchal
Regardless, I personally think the situation is better in India. It's pretty hard for the US to improve if not enough women enter the field in college. If the bottom of your funnel is weak, all the efforts on managing the middle and end are largely fruitless. We (Americans) need to take a better look at how our education and culture is causing the gap at the university level. I think that some of the approaches Harvey Mudd has taken is something we need to implement across universities.
I wonder if gender bias still kicks in once in career. I seem to see way less than 35% Indian women vs men in very senior or management roles. (Just my anecdotal data point of one, I don't have any numbers to back that up).