Gender and Career Choice
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Gender and Career Choice
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Re: Gender and Career Choice
#2Completely meaningless statistics without factoring in the experience and education of the people surveyed. It's one thing to say you're interested and another to go through the effort required [0].
I'm interested in being a pilot - but I lack any of the education or credentials to actually become a pilot. So my interest compared to the possibility of employment would be meaningless.
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? Surveying for level of education and major (if applicable) as well as previous work experience would make the apparent disparity more meaningful. Now, whether or not their choice of education (and thus chance of employment) was due to a gender bias or gender discrimination is another question.
[0] https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/11...
Re: Gender and Career Choice
#3Completely meaningless statistics without factoring in the experience and education of the people surveyed. It's one thing to say you're interested and another to go through the effort required [0]. I'm interested in being a pilot - but I lack any of the education or credentials to actually become a pilot . So my interest compared to the possibility of employment would be meaningless. How many of the females are inte…
> So my interest compared to the possibility of employment
> would be meaningless.
It's hard to measure the right thing.
Re: Gender and Career Choice
#4Completely meaningless statistics without factoring in the experience and education of the people surveyed. It's one thing to say you're interested and another to go through the effort required [0]. I'm interested in being a pilot - but I lack any of the education or credentials to actually become a pilot . So my interest compared to the possibility of employment would be meaningless. How many of the females are inte…
> So my interest compared to the possibility of employment > would be meaningless. I haven't really read the article yet, but this isn't true, depending on what they're actually measuring. For example, if people who are interested in the field are systemically denied access to the education to actually get into that field, this kind of measurement would account for that, no? It's hard to measure the right thing.
>Now, whether or not their choice of education (and thus chance of employment) was due to a gender bias or gender discrimination is another question.
I later clarified that I don't discard that line of reasoning.
E:
I will further clarify that I don't personally think this is the case though. Roughly 30% more women are attending tertiary education than men (at least in the US and other "western world" nations) and through affirmative action they even have the upper hand in being biased in favor of further education [0].
[0] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ENR.TERT.FM.ZS/countr...
Re: Gender and Career Choice
#5Completely meaningless statistics without factoring in the experience and education of the people surveyed. It's one thing to say you're interested and another to go through the effort required [0]. I'm interested in being a pilot - but I lack any of the education or credentials to actually become a pilot . So my interest compared to the possibility of employment would be meaningless. How many of the females are inte…
It's not meaningless at all. It directly refutes the constant argument that "women don't do engineering because they aren't interested in it".
Re: Gender and Career Choice
#6I'm not sure they really went deep enough to look at the external factors. For instance, the difference as related to pilots can be traced back to the military where most pilots get their training.
Also, focusing on one section, here are some interesting stats:
Job Stats
2014
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm total women
Preschool and kindergarten teachers 664 K 97.2%
Elementary and middle school teachers 3,102 K 80.9%
36 percent of public middle school math teachers in 2007 either did not major in the 1 subject in college and/or are not certified to teach it.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c1/tt01-08.htm
I still contend that those statistics combine to hinder young girls from desiring a career in STEM. If the teachers don't value the field enough to major in it when they will be teaching it, you are getting some strange signals. They also don't get the influence of male teachers and a demonstration of men and women working together. Shoot for 50 / 50 teacher ratios and push STEM degrees in teaching and the mix in STEM will even out. Its a little late in the children forming a self identity to try to fix it later in life.
Re: Gender and Career Choice
#7Completely meaningless statistics without factoring in the experience and education of the people surveyed. It's one thing to say you're interested and another to go through the effort required [0]. I'm interested in being a pilot - but I lack any of the education or credentials to actually become a pilot . So my interest compared to the possibility of employment would be meaningless. How many of the females are inte…
/me sighs
Where to start?
First, to your (horribly sexist) implication that women opt out of the workforce by studying "Gender or Women's Studies": it isn't even in the top 10 majors for women. You know what the #1 major for women is? Business. http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/02/top-10-college-majors-women...
Biology, math, and physics are all also popular majors for women: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-s...
Calling out "previous work experience" is similarly just so much BS. If women are excluded through systematic bias in hiring (hint: they are!) then they literally can't earn that experience. Furthermore there's a compounded effect, as fewer and fewer women make it up through each tier of the hiring/promotion filter.
Even the article you cited calls out gender disparities in academia. While only 22% of CS PhDs were given to women, they made up an even more minuscule 14% of CS faculty.
tl;dr: the system is rigged and women don't get a fair shake. Stop victim-blaming.
Re: Gender and Career Choice
#8I'm not sure they really went deep enough to look at the external factors. For instance, the difference as related to pilots can be traced back to the military where most pilots get their training. Also, focusing on one section, here are some interesting stats: Job Stats 2014 http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm total women Preschool and kindergarten teachers 664 K 97.2% Elementary and middle school teachers 3,102 K 8…
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.
Re: Gender and Career Choice
#9My 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 filled with rampant sexism, female objectification, and basically an uncomfortable working environment for the women who dare work there. And unlike a big corporate job with real HR, making a stink about the hostile and sexist working conditions puts your job, even your career on the chopping block.
Re: Gender and Career Choice
#10I question the credibility of this article. There are factors missing in this analysis, education for instance. I am also weary of an article based on `self-reported interest.`