Posted on 05/19/2008 2:18:30 PM PDT by shrinkermd
Women make up almost half of today's workforce, yet hold just a fraction of the jobs in certain high-earning, high-qualification fields. They constitute 20 percent of the nation's engineers, fewer than one-third of chemists, and only about a quarter of computer and math professionals.
Over the past decade and more, scores of conferences, studies, and government hearings have been directed at understanding the gap. It has stayed in the media spotlight thanks in part to the high-profile misstep of then-Harvard president Larry Summers, whose loose comment at a Harvard conference on the topic in 2005 ultimately cost him his job.
Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women - highly qualified for the work - stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.
One study of information-technology workers found that women's own preferences are the single most important factor in that field's dramatic gender imbalance. Another study followed 5,000 mathematically gifted students and found that qualified women are significantly more likely to avoid physics and the other "hard" sciences in favor of work in medicine and biosciences.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
The first thing that came into my mind--and what I was going to post--was nearly verbatim what you posted!
Flame suit on...
Only a small of women are cut out to be in logic driven fields such as software or “hard” math careers. We see it everyday. The ones I have been around in software development do not last long or work on relatively simple things.
Flame suit zipped...
There will always be the notable exceptions but the biggest reason is that a good many women simply do not want to sacrifice everything for the “bitch goddess” of success.
No woman (or man) ever said on their deathbeds: “I wish I had spent more time at the office and less with the family.”
Benbow and Lubinski also found something else intriguing: Women who are mathematically gifted are more likely than men to have strong verbal abilities as well; men who excel in math, by contrast, don't do nearly as well in verbal skills. As a result, the career choices for math-precocious women are wider than for their male counterparts. They can become scientists, but can succeed just as well as lawyers or teachers. With this range of choice, their data show, highly qualified women may opt out of certain technical or scientific jobs simply because they can.
As a software developer with decades of experience, I completely agree with you.
I would also say the same thing about men.
Sorry ... I agree with you. I am a woman with a PhD in Finance ... now I'm staying home with my kids ... it's my choice. However, most women I knew in undergrad or even my master's lacked the math talent to get to the next step. It's hard to score in the top 1% in math on the GMAT ... the average scores between men and women are the same ... but males have more freaks ... at the top end of the spectrum ... and at the bottom.
Yes. I have noticed the trend of the “undermathed” shying from complex systems ( like any system using C based languages or assembly ) and becoming webpage developers.
“freaks”
I like it :)
My 2 intelligent teenage daughters are capable of doing math but they both hate it. Neither wants to be an engineer like their old man. One wants to be a teacher, the other wants to be a marine biologist. The fact that they can make more money by going into engineering or computers is not a factor in their thinking - they are only concerned with what they enjoy doing. This is a good thing as far as I am concerned. And yes, there is a difference between how women and men think in general, though you can always find exceptions.
It’s a well-known fact that women and men have different academic strengths. It was even mentioned at Harvard once.
It does not speak to women’s overall intelligence that they tend to be less gifted in math. Despite what some people think, an intelligent person - even an exceptional person - will not necessarily be exceptional in all academic areas. For instance - this is one of my New Facts - C.S. Lewis couldn’t do algebra. He got into Oxford only because the mathematics entrance exam was waived for veterans of World War I.
Lewis was an Oxford professor for years, and then I think he became a Cambridge professor. It’s a little ironic - you need to know math to be a student at Oxford, but not a professor at Oxford.
They have been men in pretty much *every* case.
Perhaps it's just that so few women persue programming/engineering careers that the statistics are skewed, but I personally haven't seen any evidence that women are less suited to be programmers than men.
You missed the point of the article. They followed women who were talented in math & science (it’s irrelevant whether they are a lot of women or just few), and they’re the ones who didn’t want hard science careers.
Very few women like software development, even ones who are good at it. The ones who stay in the field at all soon move into assignments like customer service, training, or even management.
If by “cut out” you include personal desires as well as skills, then you are correct.
People who think the imbalance can be cured by education and skill development are wasting time and money.
Middle class white women moan and groan about the oppressive male patriarchy all day long - but what class on earth, aside from the British upper crust, gets to CHOOSE if they want to work or stay home? Do men get that kind of choice? Do poor people? Do people in other countries where women CAN'T work, or other countries where the MUST work get those choices?
There has almost NEVER been a large class of people as privileged as the middle-class American white woman.
I have an industrial engineering degree and work in our IT department on engineering software training/solution development.
I admit to switching to that less demanding avenue after having had my second child. The long hours demanded of process engineering were contrary to what I considered more important - my kids.
If feminism is having the choice, I exercised mine. Fewer hours, more happy family time.
I’m a woman and agree with you, too. I’ve always loved the logic of math and have chosen a career that utilizes that, but I love the analysis part of my job more than the hard math.
I thought what the former Harvard President had said made a lot of sense - I was shocked that it came out of Harvard. Not so shocked when they railroaded him out...ahh, such tolerance.
My daughter is the same way. Top of her class, and in the top 1% for state and national standardized tests for math, reading, and writing. Her careers of choice (for now) are clothing designer, musician, or teacher.
The women I knew did not especially like development on a large scale. They liked doing development with support and other tasks mixed in.
Yes. Women last longer in software development if a significant portion of their time is spent with other tasks. People oriented tasks like support and training, or even language oriented tasks like documentation add to their satisfaction.
That is exactly what I am doing.
A quibble with your analysis: Oxford is traditionally seen as the arts and letters university, while Cambridge is science, math (Newton) and economics.
You do have to admit that programming is boring. Architecting and using saved routines is another matter, but coding is just plain boring. To me anyway.
Another quibble: It’s Magdalen (Oxford) and Magdalene (the other university).
“My 2 intelligent teenage daughters are capable of doing math but they both hate it. Neither wants to be an engineer like their old man.”
My daughter is the same way. She had straight A’s in High School in Calculus and Physics and was near the top of her class (22 out of 784) with a 4.2 GPA but entered College in Language and Political Science.
I tried not to force her to become and engineer like me and I guess I was successful.
Wow, so when does Larry Summers get his job back as President of Harvard U.?
All he did was ask a couple of questions and the firestorm consumed him....
“I felt I was going to be sick,” said MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, who had led an investigation into hiring practices there. She walked out during Summers’s remarks. “My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow,” she said. “I was extremely upset.” Was there a feminist around — myself included — who didn’t wince at this bring-out-the-smelling-salts statement?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27819-2005Jan21.html
Okay...thanks.
A quibble with your analysis: Oxford is traditionally seen as the arts and letters university, while Cambridge is science, math (Newton) and economics.
Lewis himself, in Surprised By Joy, says that he would have had to give up the idea of going to Oxford if WWI veterans hadn't been exempted from taking "Responsions" - which, he said, "involved elementary mathematics". Apparently "elementary mathematics" included algebra, which he studied in an unsuccessful attempt to pass Responsions.
DUH!
You could say the same thing about some men.
A lot of folks who are pretty good at languages are rotten at maths . . . I certainly am. I guess the better you are at Latin and Greek (like Lewis, who was brilliant) the worse you are at maths. I managed Algebra and elementary Calculus o.k., but I've forgotten (or repressed) almost all of it. I still use Geometry on a fairly regular basis (area and volume calculations), but I chose my college because there was no maths requirement for graduation.
If I am doing new coding and designing I am happy. I dislike documentation, support, fixing someone else’s code or working on legacy apps. Non-critical bug fixes are boring too. I also really do not care about UI work, the meat is in the business layer.
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