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Women With Both High Math & Verbal Ability Appear Less Likely to Choose Science Careers | 167 comments | Create New Account
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Women With Both High Math & Verbal Ability Appear Less Likely to Choose Science Careers
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 08 2013 @ 02:38 PM EDT
Choosing careers in science or mathematics is only part of the story. There is
also the question of continuing the career, and in that respect women suffer
disabilities which men do not.

First, there is the well known problem that women have children.

Second is a disability which very few people understand or expect, except for
increasing numbers of people who have lived through it and suffered terrible
consequences. This is the problem of academic couples. It probably affects women
more than men because more women with advanced degrees and an academic or
research career will want to marry men with similar careers. The problem is
often called in academia the "two body problem."

This problem, even if temporarily solved or postponed, can hit at any time in
one's career. For example, in my own case, my wife married me after already
having established her academic credentials, earned the rank of associate
professor, and having produced internationally known research. Her only problem
was that she moved to my town, a small university town, so that we could live
together as a family. That was in 1989. She has never been allowed to work at
professorial rank since that time, and last year she retired from a position as
"Instructor" which the department had finally given her in 2005. The
retirement was due to health reasons brought on by years of unresolved stress
and tension related to the workplace issues, and the determination of a bunch of
male colleagues never to recognize her contributions to the field no matter what
evidence was submitted to them.

An administrator in my university told her way back in 1992, "The letters
of recommendation that you have do not matter. They obviously do not want to
hire you. Why don't you go and do something else for a living?" Nothing
changed in the years since, except that all of her efforts to change the
situation did nothing but to stiffen necks and harden hearts.

The point is, this kind of thing still happens. Universities are the last
bastion in the society for naked sexism. And the professors can cover it up by
swearing on all that is holy, that they are only interested in furthering the
worthy goals of research and teaching. And the administrators, often as ignorant
as the man I just quoted, are of no help at all in changing the situation.

In view of what I have witnessed, I would even go so far as to say that the
current fad to encourage women to go into the sciences and to do research is
probably misguided. There is a problem. No doubt about that. But to try to solve
the problem merely by inducing more women to go into such fields is not the
cure. Too many of them will suffer cruelly, and quite undeservedly so, and with
legal protections which do not protect, and facing university administrators who
do not even understand the problem and would not care even if they did.

Perhaps the women who do not enter these fields understand something which those
do not understand, who want to lead them on with fair words and promises.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

People with high verbal skills have other options
Authored by: Steve on Monday, April 08 2013 @ 04:30 PM EDT
If you have high verbal and high math skills, you can do anything and be the
best at it -- most respected, most highly paid, etc. If you have only high math
skills, you're going to be a techie and your pay is likely capped under
$200,000. Your prestige is also capped -- pure techies don't make it to the
executive suite.

---
IAALBIANYL

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Women With Both High Math & Verbal Ability Appear Less Likely to Choose Science Careers
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 09 2013 @ 11:32 AM EDT

Article is at pubmed but not open access (yet?) http://ww w.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/23508740

Actually would rather have the actual data publicly available because, in my view as a stats person, it is not a good paper. There is not much description of what the jobs actually were. Also the analysis is biased to the people that followed up in the second period. Also, some of the factors are completely or partially confounded that diminish the value.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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