Women opt out of math/science careers because of family demands

[Demeter]

http://www.sciencecodex.com/women_opt_out_of_mathscience_careers_because_of_family_demands

Women tend to choose non-math-intensive fields for their careers -- not because they lack mathematical ability, but because they want flexibility to raise children or prefer less math-intensive fields of science, reports a new Cornell study..."A major reason explaining why women are underrepresented not only in math-intensive fields but also in senior leadership positions in most fields is that many women choose to have children, and the timing of child rearing coincides with the most demanding periods of their career, such as trying to get tenure or working exorbitant hours to get promoted," said lead author Stephen J. Ceci, professor of human development at Cornell. Women with advanced math abilities choose non-math fields more often than men with similar abilities, he added.

Women also tend to drop out of scientific fields -- especially math and physical sciences -- at higher rates than do men, particularly as they advance, because of their need for greater flexibility and the demands of parenting and caregiving, said co-author Wendy M. Williams, Cornell professor of human development. "These are choices that all women, but almost no men, are forced to make," she said.

The study, published in the March issue of the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin (135:2), is an integrative analysis of 35 years of research on sex differences in math. Ceci and his Cornell co-authors reviewed more than 400 articles and book chapters to better understand why women are underrepresented in such math-intensive science careers as computer science, physics, technology, engineering, chemistry and higher mathematics...Women today comprise about 50 percent of medical school classes; yet women who enter academic medicine are less likely than men to be promoted or serve in leadership posts, the authors report. As of 2005, only 15 percent of full professors and 11 percent of department chairs were women. Non-math fields are also affected: For example, only 19 percent of the tenure-track faculty members in the top 20 philosophy departments are women.

The authors concluded that hormonal, brain and other biological sex differences were not primary factors in explaining why women were underrepresented in science careers, and that studies on social and cultural effects were inconsistent and inconclusive. They also reported that although "institutional barriers and discrimination exist, these influences still cannot explain why women are not entering or staying in STEM careers," said Ceci. "The evidence did not show that removal of these barriers would equalize the sexes in these fields, especially given that women's career preferences and lifestyle choices tilt them toward other careers such as medicine and biology over mathematics, computer science, physics and engineering." The analysis, which also was conducted with Susan Barnett, Ph.D. '04, a visiting scholar at Cornell, also found that "Women would comprise 33 percent of the professorships in math-intensive fields if it was based solely on being in the top 1 percent of math ability, but they currently comprise less than 10 percent," Ceci said.

Science, technology, engineering and math are not the only professions affected by women's career choices, said the authors. Women are still underrepresented in the top positions of such fields as medicine, law, biology, psychology, dentistry and veterinary science.

The authors recommended that universities and companies create options for women with math talents who want to pursue math-intensive careers. These could include deferred start-up of tenure-track positions and part-time work that segues to full-time tenure-track work for women who are raising children, and courtesy appointments for women unable to work full time but who would benefit from use of university resources (e-mail, library resources, grant support) to continue their research from home.


YEAH, LIKE THAT WILL HAPPEN, RIGHT AFTER THE PRIVATE ROOMS FOR NURSING MOTHERS IN THE ON-SITE DAYCARE.

[n2doc]

1. Right now I would advise anyone with talent to stay away from academia

10x the work for 1/2 or less the pay. As long as the US views education and science as a burden and not a priority, this will be the case. Who wants to work hard to be the best in school, spend 5-10 years gaining their doctorate, then have to compete with 100 others for a position were they will be expected to work 80+ hours a week for 40K in salary? And if they do so, their job security is largely up to the whims of peers who have long forgotten how hard the process is?

And yes, I am an academic scientist, 20 years in the field.

[Demeter]

2. It's not like Tenure is an option anymore, either.

[n2doc]

3. Of course not

Heck, in Florida they are eliminating entire departments. Department gone-Tenure gone too.

[pnwmom]

4. Engineering profs earn more than that.

I know a young married couple, both engineers, who are each making $34K -- as graduate students. If either obtains an asst. prof. position after receiving a PhD, s/he will make considerably more. Their friends made up to $75K right out of college, and universities have to compete with industrial employers.

[hedgehog]

12. I earned a good salary as an engineer right out of school , enough to stay home with my kids

when I chose to have them.

But - I had to deal with terrible sexism from both males and females at the small plant I worked at. Male managers barely spoke to me while female clerks cut me off cold because I was neither fish nor fowl. Imagine eating lunch alone for 3 years!

When I went back to work, I had a difficult time getting even an interview because I was out-of-date. I did find work after six months, but it was at a company with a very dysfunctional management. When I was laid off six years later, I was relieved. I had been looking for another job the last 4 years I worked there.

So I've had a couple odd jobs since then, and now have a work from home gig that's very good, but I've never made the same salary as any other engineer with my level of experience.

I hope things are better for women entering the field today. I'm afraid that what they experience will depend very much on where they end up finding work.

[pnwmom]

13. Based on the anecdotal evidence I've heard, there are plenty of problems

remaining. I think there is a supposition on the part of some of the men that successful women engineers had an edge since they were female -- when it was actually the other way around.

[hedgehog]

16. I'll tell you one thing, my experience really gave this white woman

an insight into Affirmative Action. Yes, I did benefit at times for being a female in a "man's profession". But I paid back ten fold for every advantage I ever received!

[VermeerLives]

19. Kudos to you for choosing to stay home with your kids!

Women are encouraged to "achieve" outside the home, but often when they make those choices they are criticized. Stay home, you're criticized. Try to make it in the workplace, you're often criticized. But your reward is the satisfaction that you made a conscious decision to raise your children yourself. I commend you for that.

[GoesTo11]

8. I would temper that advice

Academia seems structured to eventually have an over-supply of labor in most fields. But it takes a while to get there. If you are considering grad school, the job prospects depend on the field and on the program you go to. Look at the numbers of the area and program you are considering. If there's more openings than applicants, that's a good sign. If the program seems to be placing almost everyone on a decent career track (either tenure track or strong post-docs), and if it seems to be a field that isn't going away in the next few years, then you can consider it as an option. You stand a good chance of getting a traditional academic life, and that really is a good life.

But if you don't have strong evidence that the area you are looking at is one of the really good areas to get into, then n2doc is right - stay away and don't waste your life. It's screwed up that so many areas of science are now ones where some of our best and brightest go to waste the most productive years of their life.

[Captain Hilts]

18. That happens the most in English, Sociology, and the languages. They do

teach full classes, at a fraction the pay then get the boot after two years because there isn't enough room for all of them in the phd program.

[GoesTo11]

5. The primary source article is worth a read

Here's it's abstract.

The underrepresentation of women at the top of math-intensive fields is controversial, with competing
claims of biological and sociocultural causation. The authors develop a framework to delineate possible
causal pathways and evaluate evidence for each. Biological evidence is contradictory and inconclusive.
Although cross-cultural and cross-cohort differences suggest a powerful effect of sociocultural context,
evidence for specific factors is inconsistent and contradictory. Factors unique to underrepresentation in
math-intensive fields include the following: (a) Math-proficient women disproportionately prefer careers
in non–math-intensive fields and are more likely to leave math-intensive careers as they advance; (b)
more men than women score in the extreme math-proficient range on gatekeeper tests, such as the SAT
Mathematics and the Graduate Record Examinations Quantitative Reasoning sections; (c) women with
high math competence are disproportionately more likely to have high verbal competence, allowing
greater choice of professions; and (d) in some math-intensive fields, women with children are penalized
in promotion rates. The evidence indicates that women’s preferences, potentially representing both free and constrained choices, constitute the most powerful explanatory factor; a secondary factor is performance on gatekeeper tests, most likely resulting from sociocultural rather than biological causes.

***
Some of this is structural, but (b) and (c) as well as (a) to some extent aren't necessarily bad, they're just they way things are. Note, (b) is reported in many studies cited by this article; the general finding is that there is little difference in mean performance, but there is greater variation among men than among women, so there are more men at the high end of the range and more at the low end of the range, and the effect gets to be pretty strong when looking at the top 1% of the range.

[Captain Hilts]

6. Women still have a hard time getting mentoring in the hard sciences and mathematics. nt

[GoesTo11]

7. Contributing factor, but needn't be a barrier

Some institutions have consciously developed excellent mentoring systems for women. Statistically it may be a problem, but I don't think individual women should be deterred by this. They should know about the problem but also know about possible ways of overcoming it.

[Captain Hilts]

9. Completing a dissertation has a strong personal element. In these cases...

mentoring is everything. It affects your fellowship, grant monies, who you publish with, etc.

It's everything at the graduate level.

[GoesTo11]

14. So only go into it if you know there will be support.

Grad students don't know to think about these things before making their decision. You can figure out a lot about how likely it is that you'll get good support by asking some questions. I think the best data is the overall experience of the students who have gone through the program - and not just the success stories. It also helps to know the person you are likely to work with, and to know what they are like from talking to their grad students. Same with post-docs, although Ph.D. advisers will usually pressure you to go to the highest prestige placement (because it makes them look good), you really have to make sure it is a good place to be. The power dynamic can be pretty intense so you should aim to work with a very decent person and to have clear communication all along. There are books about how to succeed in grad school that talk about this.

[Captain Hilts]

17. You don't know your cohort, profs - like coaches - are different once you're locked in, etc. nt

[Stargazer09]

10. My dream was to be an astrophysicist or a mathematician

But just trying to balance college and motherhood was too difficult. Young children don't understand that Mommy needs time to do the mountains of homework required for advanced math and physics courses.

I can't imagine trying to do research in those fields while trying to raise a family, and it sounds like I'm not alone.

Even if I had started my career young and then had children, I don't see how I would have been competitive. My male peers could work longer hours and most likely wouldn't need to miss work to care for a sick child. In addition, there's still a gender bias in those fields, so even if I had no children, the perception that I can't do the work would still be there.

It would be nice if our society expected men to play an equal role in raising children. Then it wouldn't be necessary to ask ourselves why women are underrepresented in so many career fields.

[Recursion]

11. Women dominate the life sciences and social sciences

I work at a bio lab; the staff is 3/4 female.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. I once had a graduate school housemate who was in cell biology

Her professor and the post-docs were just brutal on any grad student who wanted to have a life. She even got grief for taking the day after Thanksgiving off. This was when she was a first-year student and didn't have primary responsibility for any on-going experiment.

[caraher]

20. I'm a bit confused by the article

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.