Has this been shared? National Careers Service "Your Daughter's Future"...

I work in careers and the issues for girls wanting to go into STEM careers are very real. There is a particular issue around apprenticeships and the attitudes of employers in the construction and engineering fields particularly. I've sat through many a convention where men stand up and talk about how they want more laydeez in the field, and we need to remember it's not all 'dirty' or 'heavy' work. I've had girls unable to get painting and decorating placements because male companies are wary of taking them on in case it effects their business.

Just 3 weeks ago I took a year 11 to an open day at an Engineering company. When she told the MD she wanted to be a welder, he said 'why? We have loads of work going in the office.'

I've had stand up arguments with employers who've stood in assemblies and referred to the audience as 'lads' all the way through. When pulled about it they honestly couldn't see how off putting this would be for girls wanting to aspire to work in the industry. That particular man said 'well the girls will have to toughen up if they want to work in our industry, they'll get called much worse than that'

I agree with your points about the publication but when it came out we were happy that it was at least a start. I can't help feeling their work would be better placed with the employers rather than parents.

almond To try to answer your points. There is risk and there's risk. Women have to do something with their lives and have the freedom to choose. Women have found their way in to professional areas that were once 100% male dominated. In some areas, women dominate and are positively over represented. This is the triumph of the feminist movements of decades ago. I dont really know why patterens change neither do I know why it is that boys show up more at the high end of the scale for maths (for example) than girls do. But it certainly isn't because girls are somehow discouraged or denied the educational opportunity, quite the opposite is true. Its boys who have fallen and continue to fall behind, generally speaking. A possibility is: different interests. ( Sorry, I realise I'm repeating myself here so this will be my last post).

Also I'm not suggesting that women will abide by those findings every time. Far from it. There are many gifted females that thrive in maths, computer science for example. Despite the fact that the pool is smaller.

madwoman
I think you must be squinting extremely hard to get to that interpretation. I suppose that's all this matter comes down to in the end, interpretation? Prosperity and equality IMO bring opportunities for men and women to be who they are. Gay lib', civil rights, equity between the sexes, has thrived in advanced nations where we enjoy opportunities to express our identities. As for the expected gender personalities you mention, 'expected' by whom exactly?

ToysRus question – Are you suggesting that little girls that love pretty, pink toys and clothes will end up too 'conditioned'' to choose to be engineers or quantity surveyors someday? Pink, sparkly toy shop aisles exist because when you give customers what they want you make a profit and that's what ToysRus are out to do. I completely reject the idea that they're engaged in some kind of secret, Orwellian programme to re-engineer the gender preferences of girls.

To deny that biology plays a role in children's play preferences is entirely wrong IMO. Females are attracted to dolls, and males to gadgets, this is true cross-culturally and even across species. Of course parents should encourage their children to play with different types of toys and be tolerant if they show an interest in them and if they're toys that are generally associated with the other sex. But the same has to go for those children that prefer the more conventional types of play. We must not fret over girls who want to play princesses. A unisex, gender-neutral toy shop might sit nicely for the self appointed, gender-monitor adults amongst us, but I'm pretty certain very few children would care much for it.

Goodness this is time consuming!!

I'm not just talking about hands-on care work though. I mean all through everything in the world, compassion and care is needed. Not just focussing on competition business, money etc. Arts are good for the soul, or the mind at least - for everyone, not just the artist themselves. And when you look at the rates of mental illness, for example, you can see that we're doing something very wrong at present.

Things that make the world a better place, and are needed in the world, are not valued equally. My original point was that girls are only being "left behind" if they don't choose STEM subjects* if we don't qually value the subjects and roles that they do choose. And it seems to me that those areas are of equal value to STEM subjects - more so in some cases.

*although if nursing, sociology and psychology count, then they are choosing STEM subjects...

The world does need a lot of people to participate in caring work, but there is nothing intrinsically nurturing about an arts degree.

There are plenty of people with STEM degrees who raise children, look after elderly family members, volunteer for charities etc.

Sustainable water supplies don't work like that.

We don't just have a one size fits all technology and then dump some sociological solution on it.

It requires an understanding of the specific ecological system and how people interact with it to design appropriate solutions. That's why the vast majority of STEM fields involve interdisciplinary training and work that involves knowledge of both social and material systems.

almond Ok if sociology and psychology are part of STEM why re people talking as if they're not? Why the worry as girls tend to choose those subjects?

noblegiraffe STEM isn't anything to do with willy-waving war-mongering.
I didn't say it was . I was pointing out what's actually wrong with the world and the skills needed to fix it...

almondpudding How is sociology going to give people clean water? How is clean water even measured or demonstrated using sociology? Are you seriously suggesting water treatment for your area is tested and approved by sociologists?
Of course I'm not suggesting that. I'm just pointing out that we already have the technology to provide clean water to populations, but the reasons we don't is sociological. Human greed. Not sharing stuff.

And I didn't say STEM subjects were irrelevant. Just that I don't see why they should be valued so much over the subjects that girls tend to choose. I think the world seriously lacks nurturing, so why is that undervalued?

I won't bother contributing again. I'm not mentally/emotionally up to it. As you were.

And actually (because apparently I can't let it go), some parts of Sociology are also part of STEM!

Elementofsurprise, I believe that

a. masculine things are not better than feminine things, but people often claim they are.
b. Most essential work that humans have to do to survive is unpaid work that is done by women. This is hugely, massively undervalued.

But the idea that global problems can be sorted out by 'just learning to share a bit or by sociology (rofl) is complete and utter bollocks. Sociologists barely even touch upon food production or distribution. Global food systems are incredibly ecologically complex. The response to that is not one of genetically engineering crops but of understanding ecosystems and the consequences of human actions within them.

How is sociology going to give people clean water? How is clean water even measured or demonstrated using sociology? Are you seriously suggesting water treatment for your area is tested and approved by sociologists?

It never fails to amaze me how people who know nothing about a STEM subject assume they can judge it to be irrelevant. I would never for a moment say we don't really need psychologists and the whole issue of the human mind can just be resolved by theatre studies or Physics or some other subject that doesn't specialise in that area, but you seriously think that farming, famine or water supplies can be dealt with by sociology?

You know we already have numerous scientific disciplines that deal with the interaction between people and natural resources, geography, human ecology, behavioural ecology...

And much of psychology is a STEM field!!! As is nursing! Surely you know nursing is STEM?

Amazed by your post.

I graduated 13 years ago from a degree in maths and computing science. In the maths part around half of us were women, in the cs part there were 4 women out of 200 on the course. I had hoped it would be better for my dds generation, but it isn't.

Dd1 is currently doing her GCSEs and is likely to get A*s in computing, maths, physics. Those are the subjects she's taking for A levels. She will be the only girl in the computing class, and one of only 2 girls in physics. There were other girls who were interested in both, but decided against them because they didn't want to be the only girl in the class. I've seen that happen with GCSE options too, one year there's only one girl doing computing (or engineering, or electronics) then the following year's pupils hear about that and quite a few girls who are interested decide not to do it because they are worried about being the only girl, so only one or two choose it that year. And so the cycle continues, not necessarily because girls aren't interested in the subject but because they don't want to be the only girl in a class full of boys. It happens the other way round too, every year I see at least one boy choose childcare, only to be dissuaded by comments about being the only boy. The boys in childcare one is more obvious, the comments from other boys are more openly "boys don't do that, it's a girl subject", but the girls comments about computing etc are just as hard to stand up to " you're so brave being the only girl in the class, I couldn't do that ", they make it sound so scary.

STEM isn't anything to do with willy-waving war-mongering. There's nothing intrinsically male about the skills needed to be a programmer or accountant. The first computer programmers were female. Like a pp said those jobs could be seen as more suitable for women as they are clean and don't require any heavy lifting.

There's something about all this that I'm struggling to put into words, but I will try...
It's broadly to do with the idea that in order to suceed, women are expected to "become like men" (that is, adopt traits traditionally ascribed to males) rather than their own feminine traits being valued. (*Leaving aside the nature/social conditioning issue.)

So... almondpudding But if it is the case, and the rate of girls going into STEM careers remains low, and they continue to follow arts/humanities heavy educational routes from 14 onwards, then women as a group will be left behind in economic, political, social and cultural spheres.

... Why do STEM subjects matter more to economic, political, social and cultural life? Is it by any chance because the world as we know it is designed and run by men? When you look at the world, and think about how to solve its problems, isn't nurturing, gentleness, co-operation etc. what is clearly lacking? Figuring out how people tick, doing something to reverse the increasing numbers of mentally ill people (psychology, sociology), caring for the increasing elderly population (care, nursing, communities looking out for each other), not willy-waving warmongering...

It strikes me that where science and technology are important, is in solving problems originally caused by masculine competitive overconsumption, and other problems that could be sorted out from a sociological point of view (eg. why the hell certain places have various diseases, don't have clean water, food etc. - they could do, it's just power and money that is the issue. Do we need drought-resistant crops, or do we just need to learn to share?).

It all just seems to lead back to the issue of what's valued, and it strikes me it's usually not the valuable stuff!

Olivia, I find your take away from that study mind-boggling. Your rationale of the research is that highly developed countries provide the freed on to highlight existing authentic gender personality differences? I read it totally differently - in my opinion those highly developed countries actually inculcate the different gender personalities and are absolutely the least likely countries to produce any 'authentic' personalities. We are all products of lifelong cultural bias.

You believe that these results are pure of bias and highlight 'true' gender personalities. I believe the absolute culture of these 'freedoms' produce and replicate very specific expected gender personalities, which ultimately forms the absolute belief that 'girls just aren't interested in STEM subjects and why should we force them into them?' Well of course they aren't. We've spent a good 15 years by that point insidiously training any interest out of them and replacing it with all those culturally desirable 'feminine' traits.

Olivia it's fascinating that you think that women have more freedom to grow according to their own preferences in western society and that their choices represent innate tendencies rather than social conditioning. Have you been to Toys r Us lately?

Girls are intensively channelled in certain directions from birth in our western society! We even know that people speak differently to babies if they think they are female than make.

Olivia, I am not saying that you are wrong. I am quite open to the idea that men and women may be different from each other. I also don't think a lot of STEM areas are 'hostile' to women.

What I'm struggling with are the following parts of what you are saying...

1. the attributes you think men and women have. If women are less prone to risk taking, why are they doing university courses which have a much higher likelihood of low paid, insecure employment at the end of them? Also, if women are more co-operative, why is computer science, which is more based on team work and collaboration than any other STEM discipline, not mostly women?

1. Why are you so certain that right now is the time when the choices men and women are making are based on natural preferences? You talk about women being well represented in health fields, and yet a generation ago they were not and most girls opted not to study Chemistry post 14, an essential qualification for many now female heavy health professions? And at the time people claimed girls were not naturally interested in Chemisty, but were naturally suited to typing and shorthand courses, which have some similarity to computing?

I can't see the link between the interests women supposedly naturally have and the subject choices girls are making. I can see a massive link through time between areas that frequently lead to poor pay and unemployment and girls' supposed natural inclinations.

Your idea of women's interests explains why women choose child care, primary school teaching and counselling. It doesn't explain why they choose Media Studies over Artificial Intelligence, or Biology over Engineering.

CaptainW Very interesting and illuminating post there..

EBear Yes it is absolutely essential and right that boys and girls are fully aware of what jobs and career paths are open to them. This is up to the school and if this inst happening then the school is at fault. What I reject completely though is the notion that here in the UK, the low numbers of girls at school taking up STEM subjects is down to gender bias or that girls are facing hostile environments in these areas. Girls/ Women tend to gravitate towards and flourish in, different subject / professional areas. Not because they have no choice. Quite the opposite IMO. It's because they do have the choice.

Women are interested in different things depending on the society which they live in, which suggests it's social conditioning.

I remember reading a study about 5 years ago, (so this data is checkable and I can, if you're interested, try to find it), looking at gender personality across 55 different nations. It found that women were generally more cooperative, nurturing, risk averse, emotionally communicative. Men were much more risk-taking, competitive, emotionally stoical. What was most fascinating I thought, was that the differences were more profound in industrial, developed societies, like ours. The more education, freedom, the more healthy human development exists, the greater the variation between the sexes is. So in rural Africa (for example) the sexes are more alike than here in the UK, The Netherlands or Spain. How so? Couldn't it be we have more freedom to be who we are to embrace our own gender identities and to be who and what we want to be, than in countries where women have to be agricultural labourers, and miners? I believe that in the pursuit of happiness, women and men tend to make different career choices? There's a stack of evidence that men and women, taken as groups, have somewhat different propensities and aspirations. And so they take slightly different paths.

Also, accounting is classed as a STEM field. I don't think people should be led to believe that choosing a particular STEM discipline will always get you a job within that specific discipline.

Which I know isn't much comfort after the hell of a PhD.

CW, I think that is a hugely important topic, and the kind of thing I want DS to think about before going down a research route.

This is sort of off topic, but I am utterly fed up with this 'shortage of girls (people) in STEM' narrative - I mean its probably true, but it's so galling to hear as a woman with an M.Chem and a PhD who couldn't get a job in STEM for all my trying. I trained as an accountant in the end just so I could pay my rent when my grant ran out - it was literally the only job I even got an interview for.

Where did I go wrong? I think a PP had something when she mentioned society's message that while women are good at working hard, eventually that will fail them and that they need some innate special talent to do anything in science. And it's only now I'm in my thirties that I have any kind of self confidence- I had no belief in myself at all when a student. I remember spending a lot of time during my PhD hiding in the disabled loo near my lab for an undisturbed cry!

Which is going to create a skills gap in computational biology!

Almond, I cant see a connection. One of the projects of my daughters software design class was a database made up of all subjects the students in the class were studying. Physics was highest, a few did chemistry, nobody did biology.

I find it difficult to understand why computer science is so different to biology that a person can be naturally inclined to one and not the other.

Women are interested generally in different things IMO and we shouldn't necessarily see this low take up in STEM as a terrible and worrying phenomena.

Women are interested in different things depending on the society which they live in, which suggests it's social conditioning not anything innately female. We should see this low take-up of STEM by girls as concerning while there is a huge STEM skills shortage in the country, and talented girls who could fill the gaps are taking English or History or whatever instead and then finding it much harder to find employment. We should also be concerned because STEM careers tend to be more highly paid on average, so girls who are conditioned out of STEM subjects are also lowering their average earnings potential.

not enough women are naturally drawn to science and engineering.

Because they're put off by it. In some countries, girls are encouraged to take jobs in IT, because it's clean work, unlike agriculture or cleaning, which are the other main opportunities open to them. It is a cultural issue, one which is a biggest issue in the UK, north-western Europe, Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand.

Making people aware of the range of careers is one of the main ways to attract people. There was a programme on the BBC last autumn - Girls Can Code - and most of the young women on the programme had just never considered any form of IT as a career. It wasn't that they'd thought about it and rejected it, but that it had never been something they'd considered at all as any sort of possibility. That's a big gap which needs to change, and I hope with the curriculum changes which came in about 18 months ago, we will see more of a change there, as it has longer to bed in.

There have been women involved in IT in particular (it's my field, it's why I know more about it) from the very start. You may have heard of Ada Lovelace, maybe Hedy Lamarr (the actress - also did important work including lodging a patent responsible for much of our wireless technology today.) What about Grace Hopper, the ENIAC girls, Jean Sammet, Stephanie Shirley, Radia Perlmann, Anita Borg, Wendy Hall, Karen Sparck-Jones, Margaret Hamilton, Adele Goldberg, the Estrins, Martine Kempf, Susan Landau, Shafi Goldwasser, Rozsa Peter...

Most branches of STEM will have lists of important women - just because they're not widely known about doesn't mean they weren't there.

Sue The world is beyond my remit really, I'm talking about here in the UK. I'm very sad and miffed about what that girl said to your DD. I suspect its coming from the same place as my nephew telling his Mum that cooking is only for 'girls and poofs'. There is, I admit, so much to be done..

I really don't know the answer, but I'm guessing its because not enough women are naturally drawn to science and engineering. Some are of course and that's absolutely fantastic. The talk of 'attracting more women' to these fields, I find perplexing as I just cannot for the life of me, imagine what actual, physical mechanism could be used to do this. Quotas just don't work in my experience.

We mustn't forget, women are dominant in very fulfilling professions, and are way ahead in BA's / PhDs in humanities, biology, social sciences, health sciences. Women are interested generally in different things IMO and we shouldn't necessarily see this low take up in STEM as a terrible and worrying phenomena.