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Gender and Career Choice

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Re: Gender and Career Choice

#61

Post by protomyth »

vonmoltke wrote: post #58
chrisBob wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure I understand. You can't major in math and teach middle school math. You have to major in education to teach middle school math.

No you don't. You only need a Bachelor's degree, state certification, and certification that you are qualified to teach the subject area at the level you want. The Education degree exists for people who want to teach but do not want to delve into the depths of a particular subject that a degree in it would require.

"certification that you are qualified to teach the subject area at the level you want"

According to the data, they are giving waivers so you don't need the certification. This happens at rural and poor schools most often.

Re: Gender and Career Choice

#62

Post by jbob2000 »

beat wrote: post #9

My daughter is a cook, working toward maybe being a chef in the future - or some other mechanism for creating a satisfying career in food. When she got her first job as a full-time professional cook, it took days for others working there to figure out that she wasn't front-of-house, dealing with customers, but was actually there to cook. Professional kitchens are "sausage fests". Part and parcel with this is kitchens…

Being a cook is a sausage fest because it's an awful job. Terrible hours, dangerous working conditions, usually sweating the whole time, and definitely high stress.

Look at all the other sausage fest jobs: garbage collection, soldiers, fishing, plumbing... All sausage fests. All awful. Kitchens aren't sausage fests because of the rampant sexism, they're sausage fests because women don't want to do that work. The rampant sexism comes after.

Re: Gender and Career Choice

#63

Post by Nadya »

jacalata wrote: post #57
Nadya wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps my choice of using "irrelevant" wasn't the the best. I should have said "completely meaningless". Close meanings but the nuance is a bit different. My proposition is that interest is only a small factor in eventual career path and that interest alone won't land you many jobs. You have to put effort into obtaining the necessary credentials (be it academic or otherwise). Did you put that effort in because of in…

Ok, so what if I told you that "people in your office aren't astronauts because they aren't interested in being astronauts"? You'd say that was wrong, but could you prove it? That's what this article is trying to do - refute people who say "women aren't engineers because they aren't interested in being engineers". I don't understand why you are leaping straight over this point.

Anyone with an actual interest in a subject displays motivation to pursue that interest. A self-reported interest that shows no signs of being an actual interest isn't an interest worth accounting for. Therefore I would claim that, because nobody has pursued a job as an astronaut in my office, that 0% of the people in my office are truly interested in becoming an astronaut - regardless of their claims (yes, I'm calling them liars [0])

>That's what this article is trying to do - refute people who say "women aren't engineers because they aren't interested in being engineers".

I often see this argument more accurately represented as "women aren't engineers because they aren't choosing to be engineers" (which stems from a lack of interest in comparison to other fields)

How much do women like Engineering over Biology, Business, Psychology, and the myriad of other choices they are presented with? Is it wrong for women to prefer Biology over Engineering?

[0] I like strawberry icecream. I am presented three choices of icecream: chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry. I am allowed to pick two flavors. I pick chocolate and vanilla.

Re: Gender and Career Choice

#64

Post by tosseraccount »

Nadya wrote: post #49
neilk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many of the females are interested in Engineering but majored in Gender or Women's Studies and effectively slashed any chances they had of working as an engineer? The guy who started this site majored in philosophy and identified as a painter for a long time.

My mother majored in psychology but runs a home business. My father majored in English but installs security cameras. A project manager I know majored in Audio Engineering. It doesn't seem uncommon to work outside of your major. But the jobs are also generally jobs that don't require a major to be a serious candidate. The number of salespeople and marketers who don't hold business-related degrees shows that being a s…

Not all jobs require degrees. Many jobs that do really don't need to require them.

Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs didn't finish college.

Re: Gender and Career Choice

#65

Post by Nadya »

tosseraccount wrote: post #64
Nadya wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother majored in psychology but runs a home business. My father majored in English but installs security cameras. A project manager I know majored in Audio Engineering. It doesn't seem uncommon to work outside of your major. But the jobs are also generally jobs that don't require a major to be a serious candidate. The number of salespeople and marketers who don't hold business-related degrees shows that being a s…

Not all jobs require degrees. Many jobs that do really don't need to require them. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs didn't finish college.

Starting a business never requires a degree - or experience! That could also be why they have a high failure rate and only few go on to be extremely successful. Many entrepreneurs will go through several failed businesses in which they acquire more experience before "getting it right".

You'll find that being hired into a high level position with no education and no experience is an extreme rarity. You'd have more luck finding leprechaun's gold.

Re: Gender and Career Choice

#66

Post by dragonwriter »

vonmoltke wrote: post #58
chrisBob wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure I understand. You can't major in math and teach middle school math. You have to major in education to teach middle school math.

No you don't. You only need a Bachelor's degree, state certification, and certification that you are qualified to teach the subject area at the level you want. The Education degree exists for people who want to teach but do not want to delve into the depths of a particular subject that a degree in it would require.

> The Education degree exists for people who want to teach but do not want to delve into the depths of a particular subject that a degree in it would require.

Education is as much a specific subject as any other (its not the subject most people are teaching, but its the body of knowledge of teaching itself, which also of no small importance to teaching, independent of subject being taught.)

Re: Gender and Career Choice

#67

Post by beat »

oldmanjay wrote: post #60
beat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to critique this argument, but then my mouth just open and closed over and over, silently. Really? You're serious? Women aren't as smart (or competent, to use your euphemism) as men because they would rather be popular and pretty? That men do the "hard stuff" while women stop themselves? You're serious ? Oh, dude. You really need to talk to some women.

Instead of alluding to a mysterious critique that refuted anything, you should have delivered it, because this post was not only sexist but you appear to have entirely missed the point in your fervor to demonstrate your "right" thinking.

Oh, I'm quite certain I understood the point. Women aren't as smart as men because they're more concerned with being pretty. They cave to social pressure because they're weak, unlike those strong nerdy men that go on to do important smart things like engineering.

The fact that not all men are sufficiently intelligent and brave and focused to be engineers is a sufficient defense of the sweeping generalization that women fail because of reasons completely different from men failing - specifically, desire for social status.

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