Ha! If I knew that I’d get some sort of prize. I think one could start by finding out what happened in the fields that have changed rapidly in my lifetime (medicine, biology and architecture). I think it started with affirmative action for young women in part. I can only speak for myself. I knew women could be architects because my grandmother was an architect, though she died long before I was born - I knew it was a possibility. I was good at math and art - it seemed like a natural way to combine both interests.</p>
<p>My daughter just graduated with a degree in physics, and is going on to get a PhD in EE–but she went to a women’s college. Her decision to attend a women’s college was at least in part based on her experience in high school physics, in which she felt her lab partner was really ****ed at her for being better than he was, and the teacher didn’t pick up on the harassment. She is not an inherently competitive person, and for her, a women’s college took all the stupid stuff out of learning what she wanted to learn. She is a little nervous about starting at a coed school, in Engineering, because she doesn’t know whether she will be treated differently there than she was in undergrad. I hope that she will find that her gender doesn’t make a difference, but I doubt it.</p>
<p>Women’s colleges have an important role in turning out STEM women who are free to be themselves rather than gender-representatives. </p>
<p>And as far as the “but women have babies, and that makes them different” argument, nonsense. Even these comments have shown that part of what makes a difference in keeping and promoting women in STEM is the attitude and expectations of management concerning reproduction: yes, women have babies. It’s an inescapable part of biology. But it is perfectly possible for women to continue to have competitive careers, as well as babies, if it is understood that having a family is a goal for most people, men and women alike, and that making it possible for people to raise children while having a career should be a priority for the success of our civilization as a whole. The whole macho privileging of those people working 18 hour days, which is unique to American culture, is idiotic and self-limiting; the vast majority of people not only don’t want to work that many hours, but can’t perform at top productivity for that many hours, anyway, so a good chunk of that time is wasted. Men in charge of promoting women need to get the hell over themselves, and look beyond their ridiculous preconceptions to what is right in front of them, and judge women as they themselves would want to be judged–on their own merits.</p>
<p>The women have babies comments may be nonsense, but I have had dozens of female colleagues and people I supervise turn down promotions or growth opportunities because they didn’t want to travel or they didn’t want to relocate. I don’t work in STEM, but have worked in large corporations for 25+ years and I’ve actually seen the willingness of young women (20’s and early 30’s) to take on these stretch opportunities go down over time. I had a talented woman who worked for me refuse to travel (and she didn’t have kids at the time)-- which of course is her prerogative, but you can’t work for a Global organization and think that you can move up quickly when the person in the office next door is willing to get on a plane periodically and you are not.</p>
<p>So it’s more nuanced than “working 18 hours a day is macho”. If men and women are prepared to change corporate culture- great. For now, it is hard to maintain and sustain a career with a big company if you won’t “buy in” to the way leaders are built. Which for the most part- means getting promoted, more responsibility, spending time in other parts of the business besides the one you started in.</p>
<p>Or if a person (man or woman) is not prepared to do that- great. But don’t complain that you’ve been stymied due to your gender, or because you’re a man who has half responsibility for childrearing.</p>
<p>The women having babies comment isn’t completely bogus. Say you have a new 24 year old male along side a new 24 year old female competing for the same promotion. The female has a baby and is out three months. Now she comes back, they’re almost twenty five, and he’s got three more months experience then her. Now they’re 26 and she has another baby. Now he’s got six more months experience. The men are raking in the experience and moving on uninterrupted while the women are off. They can stuck up every day, etc. its not the way it should be but its what happens. Most of my friends that have kids had then pretty close together as to not have them so far apart in age. I work with some girls that I swear spend more time on maternity leave then they do working. (I’m sure that’s not the case but it seems like it. I know one girl just had her third and she’s been there like four years)</p>
<p>This obviously isn’t always the case. My one friend just had triplets. He left his job to take care of them because child care would be more and his wife makes more. He’s about 40.</p>
<p>My family has two stay at home dads and two stay at home moms. Both moms are younger, in their twenties, with two kids. The men are older in their forties and their wives are the bread winners.</p>
<p>I was one of the few female Mis majors. Maybe two girls average in each of my IS courses. I thought for sure I’d be in the minority at my companies IT department. Turns out were not nearly as split as I thought. I’m actually on an all girls team (6). I think that’s pretty rare…</p>
<ol>
<li><p>it is not bogus; the more time you spend with your family (male or female), the less time you are making money for your employer, thus decreasing your value to the company. Why should someone that doesn’t contribute as much make the same salary as someone that contributes more?</p></li>
<li><p>it is possible for women to have competitive careers and babies, of course. It is also POSSIBLE that some people would PREFER to spend more time with their family than advance as fast as possible up the ranks.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Equality is about choice, right?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I thought Larry Summers said that females were inherently inferior at these fields… which is completely different.</p>
<p>I don’t think every job has to be 50/50, but there’s a big difference between being 1/10 or 1/100 and something that feels sort of even. I was the only female in a German class one semester, and I found it surprisingly stressful.</p>
<p>I agree that this cannot be said too often–so I’ll quote it again :).</p>
<p>But if you want to see evidence, look at Switzerland. Men, but not women are required to spend a significant chunk of time every year in the army; and officers spend a lot more time than others. So according to the arguments used to explain the situation of women in the US, Swiss army officers should expect to have worse career prospects than enlisted men. However reality is the opposite. In spite of the extra time away from the job, being an officer is a career enhancer and many Swiss companies are willing spend a lot of money to provide extra staff support for the officer to carry out army related duties. Why is this? Well, the society valued military service, men did it, and thus things were arranged (“things” being everything from the way exams were organized at universities to workplace expectations) so that they were not only not penalized, but actually benefitted from participating.</p>
<p>There’s also the factor that selection processes for military officers on basis of education and leaderships tends to be higher than those of enlisted personnel as they are the ones who provide most of the overall institutional leadership…especially at the higher unit levels and determine strategic plans/policies in conjunction with politicians/civilian government. </p>
<p>field/junior officers, NCOs and enlisted soldiers are the ones who must implement and carry out those strategic plans/policies in consultation of officers immediately superior to them in the unit organizational hierarchy. </p>
<p>Not to mention a long historic high status associated with military officers because it was once the preserve of aristocrats and the well-off.</p>
<p>I’ve not followed this thread all the way through, but I’m puzzled by all the baby comments as most of them focus on women who have made it to a upward bound career. </p>
<p>Great number of girls decided not to go into STEM careers long before they take time out for babies. Examples in textbooks, the gender of science teachers, nerd comments and so on push girls away from the “hard” sciences (aren’t boys suppose to be hard?). Furthermore early education patterns teach girls it’s dangerous to travel (in rape culture, it is) and they are incomplete without children. Many girls are weeded out as girls not women.</p>
<p>BYW, I have seen few posts about CS and females. I bet posts are by people outside of CS. CS is at least 50/50, there is no male dominance at all, many many managerial positions at all levels are filled with females as well as positions at all levels. Engineering might be a different story, and I would say that it is possible that American culture has influence there, since it is NOT the case at all in engineering in other countries.</p>
<p>" For example, for the 2009-10 year the gender ratios for CS degrees at Stanford were:</p>
<p>BS: 8% female, 92% male"</p>
<p>Things are changing. Try 21% now and going up. The most popular major is CS with about 220 per year. So at 45 women, the women outnumber the entire CS class of most Ivies.</p>
<p>"Despite serving as section leader and interning at Apple, McLindon struggles with the stereotype that girls, especially sorority girls, don’t major in computer science.</p>
<p>At Stanford, just under 21 percent of undergraduate CS majors, the school’s most popular major, are women."</p>
<p>“A quarter of all undergraduates and more than fifty per cent of graduate students [at Stanford] are engineering majors. At Harvard, the figures are four and ten per cent; at Yale, they’re five and eight per cent.”</p>
<p>“In the 2011-12 academic year, the department broke the all-time record for students declaring computer science as their major: More than 220 students in that one class alone chose to major in computer science, a 25 percent leap from the previous record in 2000-01.”</p>