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We all know that gender is a major factor in education,
and that women are disproportionately disadvantaged within academia.
Actually, only half of that was true. Gender is important
in education, but by the numbers females outperform males on nearly every level
of academic achievement. For example, the US Department of Education reported
that while enrollment rates in primary and secondary schools are nearly evenly
split, 57% of all people in postsecondary education are women. While in high
school, girls are less likely to be held back, more likely to graduate, and
even outnumber boys in AP science and language classes (USDoE 2012). In the
post-baccalaureate scene, more degrees have been awarded to women since 1988 (Snyder
and Dillow 2013).
However, we still find a large gender gap at college in
many of the STEM fields. A 2010 report from the American Association of
University Women (Hill et al 2010) found that in 2006, 29.3% of freshmen males
intended on majoring in a STEM field while only 15.1% of freshmen females did.
At graduation, women received more diplomas in biological, agricultural, and
chemistry majors than men, but were outnumbered in all other STEM categories,
and at the doctorate level male PhD’s outnumbered female ones in every STEM
field, though not always by very much. In the workforce at large, women hold
less than a fourth of all STEM jobs (Beede et al 2011)
As such, there has been a significant push to get more
girls into STEM majors, but when it comes down to it we’re not entirely certain
why girls enroll less in those majors in the first place. There are several
different theories: Riegle-Crum et al (2006) found that the academic choices of
same-sex friends had a significant effect on what courses a girl would take;
others such as Bix (2004) argue that it is primarily a matter of gender norms
within the fields themselves; Sax (2001) affirms that there are structural
barriers to women in the STEM fields, but suggests that inherent differences
between the sexes might drive part of the gap; while Feldman (1999) found that
personality type and academic environment were the best predictors for major
choice. Conventional wisdom supplies the idea of gendered careers—hard sciences
and business for the boys, education and social sciences for the girls—and many
in the literature have suggested that this kind of socialization early on in
life could be driving the difference.
I would like to add a few words onto the idea of gender
expectations and career choice. As I mentioned above, conventional wisdom has
an idea of masculine and feminine career paths. In addition, our society has
preconceived notions of the traditional role of men and women in life and the
family—stereotypically with the man as husband, professional, and breadwinner
and the woman as wife, homemaker, and mother. I wanted to see what affect these
traditional notions had on my own peers and their career choices interviewed a
few dozen, both men and women. There interviews were loosely structured but
always included the following questions:
What is your major and why did you choose it?
Did your gender, in any way, affect your choice of major?
Does your major and future career fit into what society expects of you
as a man/woman?
Do you anticipate any conflict with your chosen career and your
personal life? How do you plan on balancing the two?
Do you think your family life or society affected your personal
aspirations?
Why is it important for a man/woman to get higher education?
While my small sample size and non-random selection don’t
allow for any external validity, the results are still interesting.
The respondents ran a wide range of careers for both
genders, from the arts to the sciences. Half of the men did not feel that gender
in any way affected their choice of major, and just as many of the women said
gender only had a tangential affect and other factors, usually family, were
more important. Only one male and one female felt that their chosen career fit
into what society expected of them—an aspiring medical student and medical
scientist, respectively. Surprisingly, some of the men in0 stereotypically
“masculine” fields felt that their chosen vocation did not fit with society’s
expectations, including a mathematician. The women who did not feel like their
career fit with societal expectations were usually aspiring for leadership
roles.
A fourth of the
women said that they had been encouraged or inspired by family members to go
for their chosen career, something which only one man reported. Every person
anticipated a conflict between professional and personal life, though slightly
more women than men had put much thought into balancing the two. Two-thirds of
both genders said that education was important for both men and women.
Perhaps most interestingly, personal interest was
overwhelmingly given as the reason for career choice. While gender was a
consideration for several of the women, none of the respondents reported
choosing a career because it was appropriate or proper for their gender—to the
contrary, three of the women said that they wanted to prove that they could be
successful in their chosen field as women.
Furthermore, the only person who said that they would sacrifice their career
for family was a man, and the only person who said that the career came before
family was a woman.
What are we to take from this? While this says nothing
about the US population, at least among my peer group personal interest was the
primary motivator of career choice, above all other considerations. Gender and
upbringing may have very well shaped those interests—and several of the
respondents suspect that they did—but none of those I interviewed mentioned
societal expectations, family pressure, peer groups, or the gender stereotypes
about their fields as a deciding factor in their choice of major. As such,
among people like those I interviewed, the presence of the gap in STEM fields
is primarily a lack of interest.
And perhaps we should not find that so surprising. There
are many fields where women outnumber men, both at the collegiate and
professional level, but we are quick to attribute those gaps to a lack of
interest on part of the men. Might at least part of the STEM gap be explained
the same way? Whether or not the genders should
have an equal interest is another conversation entirely, but I for one find it
comforting that both men and women feel that they can pursue careers which they
enjoy, whether or not those careers fit into gender stereotypes.
Beede, David, Tiffany Julian, David Jangdon, George
McKittrick, Beethika Khan, and Mark Doms. 2011. “Women in STEM: A gender gap to
innovation.” US Department of Commerce: Economics and Statistics Administration.
http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/reports/documents/womeninstemagaptoinnovation8311.pdf
Bix, Amy Sue. 2004. From “engineeresses” to “girl
engineers” to “good engineers”: A history of women’s U.S. engineering
education.
Feldman, Kenneth A. 1999. Major field selection and
person-environment fit: Using Holland’s theory to study change and stability of
college students. Journal of Higher
Education 70, no. 6 (November/December): 642-669.
Hill, Catherine, Christianne Corbett, and Andresse St
Rose. “Why so few? Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.”
American Association of University Women. Washington DC.
Riegel-Crumb, Catherine, George Farkas, and Chandra
Muller. 2006. The role of gender and friendship in advanced course taking. Sociology of Education 79, no. 3 (July).
Sax, Linda J. 2001. Undergraduate sciences majors: Gender
differences in who goes to graduate school. The
Review of Higher Education 24, no. 2 (Winter): 153-172.
Snyder, Thomas D., and Sally A Dillow. 2013. Digest of
education statistics: 2012. National
Center for Education Statistics.
US Department of Education. 2012. “Gender equity in education: A data snapshot.” Office for Civil
Rights. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equity-in-education.pdf
Photograph from UMass Ahearst website: http://www.umass.edu/researchnext/selling-stem
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