Reply #20: I'm a bit confused by the article [View All]

[caraher]

Women have reached parity in other fields with equally great time demands (e.g. biological sciences). I cannot believe women outside engineering, math and physics don't have as much of a conflict between work and family, so the time competition alone cannot explain a discrepancy.

It certainly isn't that women can't hack - or even don't like - mathematics. The reason they "prefer less math-intensive" fields is almost certainly related to the lack of support for their personal needs found in those fields. It would be naive to chalk up that "preference" to a difference in intellectual style; rather, I find it far more plausible that highly intelligent women sense that balancing family and career in certain settings will be especially challenging thanks to less support and understanding, and either push ahead anyway (and drop away in disproportionate numbers because of poor support) or make a different choice, which they simply choose to frame as a personal preference.

It's worth noting that the effect is the same whether through malice or mere insensitivity or incompetence. The faculty who train the next generation of scientists are not selected for their mentoring skills and are only rarely trained well, if at all, in their roles as managers and mentors. Again, we're talking about intelligent, busy people who do not want to waste their time; when they know their success is measured primarily in publications and grant dollars even the well-meaning will tend to bend their efforts in that direction, at the expense of other worthy goals.