Gender and Career Choice

https://www.sokanu.com/insights/gender-and-career-choice/

by jhookham • 11 years ago

49 65 11 years ago

Nadya9• 11 years ago

Completely 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...

steveklabnik• 11 years ago

    > 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.

Nadya9• 11 years ago

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.

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...

jacalata3• 11 years ago

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".

Nadya9• 11 years ago

With a majority of majors going to Health professions, Psychology, English, Biology, Arts, Social Sciences, etc and few going to Engineering. It's not a big surprise that, although many claim an "interest" in Engineering that many are also unqualified to hold a position as an Engineer [0].

Having an interest in something and being qualified for the position are two entirely different things. Being qualified has a large factor in whether or not you get a job related to your interest.

[0] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...

exarch2• 11 years ago

Not if the only measure of interest used is literally self-reporting a binary "interested/not interested", like it is here. This is deceptioneering through statistics.

rcoder2• 11 years ago

/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.

tosseraccount2• 11 years ago

Don't more women attend college than men?

Hasn't that been true for 40 years?

batbomb• 11 years ago

As someone who majored in Physics and minored in Math, there was quite a bit of women in the Math department and a few women in Physics, but both had much more women than the entry level CS class I took, and I'm not sure there were any that I can remember in the one, large, entry-level EE class I took.

I did graduate 2008/2009, and tried to find a job for a while without much luck, partially because employers were (short-sightedly) specifically looking for EE/CS degrees.

That's where I think the second part of this problem lies: Majoring in math and physical sciences, specifically with only a BS, doesn't get you very far in a job market when even entry level positions are heavily favoring CS and EE degrees... even though most STEM degrees usually share a common pedigree of math, sciences, and basic programming skills. In many cases, students who are able to do any kind of research as an undergrad in math or physical sciences will have quite adequate and advanced programming skills, but that's still harder to market than a engineering degree.

Nadya9• 11 years ago

While only 22% of CS PhDs were given to women, they made up an even more minuscule 14% of CS faculty.

Not everyone who obtains a degree later chooses to enter their field of study. A degree also does not guarantee a job. This is yet another example of trying to misuse statistics as a form of confirmation bias.

Looking at statistics from this Slate article [0], since 2003 only <50%~ of Engineer PHD's are employed. What that means is that of those 22% CS PhDs roughly 11% would be the the number who are employed in the end assuming no gender discrimination beyond obtaining the degree.

Given the data is 3 years out of date, it's possible employment rate has jumped to 63% (the highest its been since 1998!) and that 14% is exactly on-par for the course for having no gender discrimination (against or in favor of) women. A more realistic estimate is that the employment rate is still at 50% or below and 14% is actually discrimination in favor of hiring women given less than 11% should be hired at current employment rates.

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.

It was one example of a major dominated by women that is useless for holding any of the jobs listed as "liked". They also "opt out of the Engineering work force" by majoring in Biology, Business, and Psychology and not Engineering if you feel that using Gender Studies was somehow sexist.

[0] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/07/empl...

rayiner2• 11 years ago

I majored in aerospace engineering at a pretty good state school. My major was probably 10% women. However, if you look at the pool of people with a 700+ SAT Math score, which was pretty representative of my classmates, it's over 35%. And apparently, the interest among women in mechanical engineering is up around that too.

So where did those women who are good at math and interested in being engineers go? I think a lot of them make the sensible decision to go into careers where they won't spend the rest of their lives fighting an uphill battle as a minority.

beat9• 11 years ago

A sad and worrisome trend over the past few decades has been fewer rather than more women in engineering fields (especially computers). I haven't seen well-researched explanations for this, but it's a measurable and observable phenomenon.

neilk• 11 years ago

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.

Nadya9• 11 years ago

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 salesperson does not typically require a degree. Being a chemist or an engineer largely requires a relevant degree to be a serious candidate.

protomyth3• 11 years ago

I'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%

In 2007, about a third of public middle school science teachers either did not major in the subject in college and/or are not certified to teach it.

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.

chrisBob• 11 years ago

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.

protomyth3• 11 years ago

read the whole set: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c1/c1h.htm - and yes, you can major in both - plus we're talking not even certified.

vonmoltke• 11 years ago

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.

beat9• 11 years ago

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 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.

ackim• 11 years ago

I 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.`

tedks2• 11 years ago

Wary, not weary?

oldmanjay4• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity, how would one measure interest without self-reporting? Constant surveillance to make sure women aren't secretly reading Dr Dobbs (RIP) in an incognito browser window while filling their history with TMZ?

brighteyes5• 11 years ago

You can measure interest more objectively by seeing how many start down a career path, for example. Another measure could be to look at proxies to interest - such as hobby programming as a proxy for interest in computing, or reading books as a proxy for writing.

But, those are much harder to measure than just counting "likes" on a web form.

NTDF95• 11 years ago

Opportunities to pursue interests != career choice

A lot of things are interesting to a lot of people. That does not mean they are competent in it to make it a viable career.

In other words, even if I "think" I like something, doesn't mean I'm actually going to thrive in that occupation in the real world.

I used to play for local soccer teams. That did not translate to Ronaldo-level paychecks.

Another example: I used to be uber-good at math. Does that mean that I'll survive the stresses of HFT? I don't think that's a guarantee. Those environments are brutal, full of abuse. It is a necessity in those environments. If I (a person, regardless of my gender) cannot survive that environment, I should not be taking that job...and not be expecting to do so either.

I think many women completely miss the point that fairness is just equal opportunity to pursue your interests.

"Just because you are interested" is not reason enough to land those jobs/careers. You need to work for it....just like any other man. Welcome to equality!

beat9• 11 years ago

This is perilously close to arguing that women don't do engineering because they're not as smart as men.

Either you're using competence to explain the disparities, or you're not. If you're not, then you need an explanation for the observable interest/career disparities. This is especially true for paths where gender bias is reflected in the low/high career paths within the same field (for example, nurses vs doctors).

And if you're just saying women aren't as smart as men... well.

NTDF95• 11 years ago

> This is perilously close to arguing that women don't do engineering because they're not as smart as men.

Smart is the wrong word. It gives the analysis a different connotation. I think the word we are looking for is aptitude.

Among men, there are many who have the aptitude to do STEM. Then there are other men who don't....and that is fine.

I think the same goes for women. Many women have the aptitude...but many don't.

> Either you're using competence to explain the disparities, or you're not. If you're not, then you need an explanation for the observable interest/career disparities. This is especially true for paths where gender bias is reflected in the low/high career paths within the same field (for example, nurses vs doctors).

I am using competence. And competence is not just inherent. Competence is developed. This is called schooling.

A lot of girls spend their teen ages trying to look good and be popular(mostly because of social expectations and peer pressure). They buckle under that pressure and choose to not study as their nerdy-male counterparts.

When they grow up, the nerdy-males get into high-flying jobs/careers while the females struggle to compete with them in the real world. That's why interest != competence

It takes work. Nobody stopped those women from pursuing the hard stuff. They did it to themselves. You can't have everything. Nobody can. Not even men.

SolaceQuantum2• 11 years ago

I think many women completely miss the point that fairness is just equal opportunity to pursue your interests.

What might be being implied is that women inherently don't have equal opportunity to pursue interests, if a bunch of women are interested and somehow never enter the field in comparison to men who show interest and enter the field in rates according to interest.

NTDF95• 11 years ago

What might be being implied is that women inherently don't have equal opportunity to pursue interests, if a bunch of women are interested and somehow never enter the field in comparison to men who show interest and enter the field in rates according to interest

Well, most male software engineers in the world aspire to become rich and famous like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Does that mean every single male has equal opportunity to become one?

Women nowadays have full access to all kinds of education, all kinds of scholarships, all kinds of resources (as much as any man). If they don't take those things to pursue their interests, what else can be done?

Are you suggesting women should have a red carpet laid out to enter any field? Why? Where is equality then?

exarch2• 11 years ago

the correlation between the mix of men and women in a career with the self-reported interest in that career is 0.56

Low quality research detected. Self-reported interest in a trendy subject is a poor way to evaluate genuine dedicated interest in that subject.

nickff3• 11 years ago

This post would be much more informative and useful if similar statistics were included for men. If the porportion interested in a subject, but not entering it (versus the porportion interested and entering it) was higher for one gender than the other, then it would suggest that one gender faced more difficulties in attaining success in that field than the other. If the proportion of one gender with (similar) credentials in a given field, but without employment in this specific field (which they have a stated desire for), then it would even stronger evidence that there were some obstacles with gender-specific impacts.

From what I can understand of this piece's evidence, it only shows that many women want to be civil engineers, but do not go into that field. Anecdotally, I know many men who would have liked to be engineers, and did not succeed. I am left wondering whether there are a large number of men and women who would have liked to go through years of agony in post-secondary education, to end up in front of a computer all day with few social interactions; if so, what are the differences in preferences, dedication, and outcomes for the genders (as there are likely to be many).

edit: It would also be interesting to see the impact of age on preferences and employment, to see whether younger women were more likely to achieve their preferred employment, and whether preferences varied with age.

edit2: It would also be useful to know how many careers each individual 'liked'. It is possible that (of the population surveyed) one gender 'liked' more jobs than the other, and so is less likely to be employed in any specific 'liked' career.

*I initially misunderstood the data presented in the article (see brighteyes' comment below), but would still like to see the gender separated data for interest, credentialling, and employment.

beat9• 11 years ago

This is the only attack-the-methodology critique I've read on this thread that actually makes any sense.

nickff3• 11 years ago

Thanks? I am not trying to attack the author, the writing, or the idea; it's just that I don't know what to make of the data they present, because I require some context to understand the situation they are trying to characterize. I do not doubt their dedication, their motives, or their work ethic.

brighteyes5• 11 years ago

The others make more sense, actually. They report proportions, so if 40% are women, you know 60% are men. Therefore there is no need to report men. But as I said in another comment, the article is indeed poorly worded and confusing on this.

brighteyes5• 11 years ago

The article is poorly worded - I misunderstood it initially - but their metric does appear to measure that. It measures how many "likes" a career got from women, and how many women actually work in it. It does not show the absolute number of likes or people working, but the proportion of women out of both.

nickff3• 11 years ago

You are correct, and I did misunderstand the writing initially. I would still like to see the raw numbers for interest, credentialling, and employment for each gender, but it appears the author tried to boil down the data and make it more easily understood.

rayiner2• 11 years ago

Similar statistics are included for men. They're reporting male-female split in self reported interest data versus representation in the profession. So the 37.4% for civil engineers in the first chart means that 37.4% of people who "liked" that career were women, but the field has only 16.5% representation of women. You can get the numbers for men just by subtracting those from 100%.

brighteyes5• 11 years ago

This is definitely very interesting data. But there are several issues with the analysis:

Using a statistical measure called r-squared, we determined that the male/female mix within a career is on average about 31% explained by the fact that men and women have different interests. What this means is that about two-thirds of discrimination is explained by other factors.

Not "discrimination" in that last sentence, but "difference". Perhaps this was unintentional, and "discrimination" is meant in some obtuse technical sense. But to most people "discrimination" means intentionally unfair treatment. The data they show - again, very interesting data - does not show anything about discrimination.

edit: a second major issue is that they don't normalize the likes, or at least don't mention that they do. The likes are not limited, in other words, one can like 1,000 careers, and work in just 1. That would appear to show that person wanted to work in all those careers, but didn't, showing a "gap".

A more normalized measure could let each person only like one career, say. Again, maybe they did this, but it isn't stated, and generally "likes" are not limited.

mrwilliamchang• 11 years ago

Is there a way to see more of the data? I was curious to see what their data was for tech, but I couldn't find it.

tedks2• 11 years ago

This ignores the fact that discrimination in a career field deters women from being interested in the field to begin with, creating a self-sustaining vicious cycle.

Within broad notions of a career, for example a "career in law" or a "career in medicine", we see much more equal numbers for men and women, but when we look at the jobs women actually have, we see that women occupy low status jobs (like paralegal and nurse) while men occupy high status jobs (like lawyer and doctor), indicating that interest is not a factor in gender gaps for specific professions.

It's disappointing to read hacker news comments on any article related to feminism, and this isn't an exception. The goal of more than a hundred years of feminist struggle isn't to change the rules of society in some arbitrary way so deontological goals are adhered to, but women are not actually equal members of society. The goal is to create an actually equal society. Anything less is a failure, and if you argue for that, you are arguing against feminism.

oldmanjay4• 11 years ago

I find it disappointing to read any comments on feminism anywhere on the internet, from almost any angle. Between the outright attacks, debate framing, emotional reasoning, and near-religious adherence to party lines on things like redefinitions of the word "violence", it's impossible to have any sort of real conversation. This is without even considering the input of the trolls who just want to watch the world burn. The most you can do is nod along in an echo chamber, or see who can yell out their "facts" the loudest.

rubergly• 11 years ago

In case it wasn't obvious, the word "female" is an adjective, and referring to a group of people by an adjective instead of a noun has a demeaning connotation in English, especially when it's primarily used for one group and not another.

Notice how the word "male" is only mentioned in this article as an adjective ("male/female mix", "male/female interests"), but "females" is often used as a synonym for "women" ("% of females", "people likely to trust females", "females in career", "likes from females"). "Female" is not a drop-in replacement for "women".

Using "female" in this way is contrary to how we generally communicate. As noted above, "female" as a noun erases the subject—making "female" the subject of the sentence. In the most technical sense, it's correct, but by employing this word that is usually an adjective as a noun, you're reducing her whole personhood to the confines of that adjective. It's calling someone "a white" instead of a white person, "a black" instead of a black person, and so on.[0]

Not really trying to judge this article—it's been a while since I've dealt with research jargon, and I can't judge whether referring to groups as adjectives like this is standard practice in that field. And the Jezebel article I've linked to even mentions that "females" has a clinical feel, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's standard in this setting. But this bias is pretty prevalent in everyday speech and is worth being aware of and trying to prevent.

[0] http://jezebel.com/the-problem-with-calling-women-females-16...

beat9• 11 years ago

In disability-oriented fields and discussion, it's called people-first language. You're right, it's a sore point. I noticed it too, although I've been kind of trained to notice it.

bweitzman• 11 years ago

Sorry for being pedantic but "male/female mix" is actually using both "male" and "female" as nouns in the same way that "sugar/salt mix" is using "sugar" and "salt" as nouns.

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