To complain to Sunday Times on "UK girls flop" headline

[Duckdeamon]

Today's Sunday times (can't link as they have a paywall) has an article about the UK having one of the biggest gender gaps in science at age 15 of 67 countries (upcoming OECD/ Pisa report). Article is interesting: through quotes it discusses sexism, science and maths and technology leading to well paid job opportunities, that girls are being prevented from doing, gender imbalances in science, and evidence that girls are as good at maths and science as boys.

But why use the headline "UK girls flop in science league"? Which suggests that the girls are at fault!

The results are shocking, and girls are being let down.

I guess it would depend how tight you make the groupings. You might set it up to force someone like your DD to select 2 theoretical and 1 more practical or applied subject for example. That would still allow you to specialise but would reduce the overlap in approach to the subject

On balance though I suspect that being pushed to take 1 non-STEM subject in addition to 2 STEM subjects would be unlikely to put off someone who was fairly sure they want to be an electronics engineer, but being pushed to take at least one STEM subject at 16 might open up more career options to the undecided

I say that by the way as someone who still resents being forced to take Higher English which I only managed a D in and which pulled my geography results down by at least a full grade

I remember reading some years ago that the Central Committee or perhaps the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party were all engineers.

ManofSpiel
Are you serious Moniker?

I was making a suggestion as to why there are more engineers in other countries. I am not an engineer so do not know how many female engineers are abroad.

I had previously made the point that engineering is not a respected career in the UK, or not as respected as law or economics (see above) or medicine which women do do.

I would say the problem in that case, if there are many more overseas due to engineering being respected, then the problem is our lingering class system. Eg someone who spends thousands educating their DCs privately probably wants them to have a career which involves lots of pay and a smart suit and office, preferably in the city, and does not envisage them on a construction site.

Another point - perhaps the number of engineering students at Oxbridge (which many DCs and parents aspire to) is very small, so Oxbridge students naturally move to other fields. Perhaps the main engineering unis are not Russell Group so perceived as not good enough. I don't know the answers to this just wondering.

There are good universities (Russell group and others) offering engineering degrees (and most certainly science/maths!) - I don't think that can be it (though oxbridge seems a bit anomalous in some ways)

The 'status' of a career can affect things in more than one way. As discussed, the relatively low status of engineers in the UK (based on ignorance I suppose of people who think it means 'mechanic' or 'tv repair man') won't attract people who are ambitious in terms of money and power. On the other hand, there's the well-known phenomenon of the gender divide in computer programming. Early on there were lots of women - well, the dears could type already and do desk jobs requiring attention to detail - but then it became geek-cool (and easier in many respects) and the balance radically shifted as males started to want to do it.

There are about 300 places a year for engineering at Cambridge (excluding chemical engineering) - compared with about 200 for law, for example. So I don't think it's that per se.

I am a woman working in STEM, and to my mind one of the biggest problems at all levels is 'not seeing people like me'. In my field at undergraduate and PhD level the numbers of women and men are now about equal, and have been for a long time - long enough in theory to filter through to the higher positions, but this simply hasn't happenend. The people who are most visible - to me, to school children, to parents and teachers - are overwhelmingly men.

The results of the judgement on this divorce (judge says divorced women of children over 7 should be expected to find work) is the sort of thing which might make faster changes in the female uk workforce.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11429864/Divorced-wife-told-to-get-a-job-and-stop-living-off-her-ex.html

I doubt it - that strikes me as a pretty exceptional case, given the sums involved and the fact that at least one child is at boarding school. The vast majority of women in that situation are hardly likely to be able to walk into a STEM job, most of which require considerable education and training, unless they already had that background pre-children. And given the entire subject matter of this thread, the likelihood of that is far lower than it would be for a man in that position. Plus that's without getting into all of the issues that primary carers face when trying to return to work after a significant time as a SAHP...

It's really difficult to deal with the 'people like me' problem. There's a low proportion of women in STEM careers, but we need them to be visible following those careers but also for lots to go into teaching. Someone upthread mentioned that primary teachers were predominantly women so the problem of girls being put of stem couldn't be arising there ... but wait a moment. Many of those will be women who themselves suffered the insidious myth of 'maths/science is for boys' - lots of primary teachers are really not confident in those areas, and so the myth can be inadvertently perpetuated. My DD was (again) fortunate that they had a female specialist maths teacher in their junior school who had a maths degree and a science teacher with a science degree.

Well, I meant that women might be more inclined to seek better paid more secure jobs. There is a shortage of engineers in the world, don't think there is one of lawyers.
Don't envy the wife, getting a job in your 50s after years as a sahm won't be easy.

Something has just occurred to me. A few weeks ago there was a piece in the Times essentially saying that some of the 'get girls into STEM' initiatives were ineffective because they focussed on the (few) really high-flying women - but that doesn't necessarily engage girls because they're not sufficiently achievable role models. I also seem to remember a thread on here about a school having some sort of special science day to which dads were invited (I didn't imagine that did I?). I wonder if anyone has thought of trying to get 'real women' (mums!) in STEM-related jobs (which would actually be quite diverse, I think) involved?

Ah I see - I misunderstood your point! I guess it depends on whether the general perception of, say, engineering is that it is well paid and secure. Most people on the thread seem to think that, one way or another, perception is the problem. Without cultural shifts in that area, I doubt sensible factors like the ones you cite will hold much sway, especially with the average 16 year old!

Errol - I think I'm glad I didn't see the 'Dads science day' thing, I don't need my blood pressure to be any higher

moniker - if that case affects women's career choices at all, it would be to think in terms of ones which can be easily recommenced after a long break. That's more likely to discourage women from STEM if they want a period as SAHMs -unless the longterm plan is, do this before kids, then retrain to teach it after. (because school curricula/exam syllabuses evolve at a slower rate than what happens within the technical disciplines themselves).

I didn't imagine that thread.

What a weird link to post moniker, are you implying that the reason young women don't do STEM is because they plan to find a rich partner, be a SAHM, divorce them and live off the settlement?

I'll be back later, when I am not on my phone...

I have a friend who is a very high-achieving woman, a professor in a STEM subject. I know she is likely to be held up as a role model for girls and young women, and I admire her for what she's achieved. However I don't think she's great as a realistic role model. She is someone with out-there genius levels of intelligence who has been trained to achieve since childhood, who's had exactly the right levels of support and encouragement and financial resources at exactly the right time, and I feel that she has been sheltered to some extent from the vicious emotional pressures that affect so many other women's choices in this area.

To put it bluntly, her success is that of unbelievably hard work, yes, and intelligence and talent, yes, but built on a foundation of luck and privilege. Her mother was of the generation which thought nothing of giving up a career to concentrate on the children (which included a lot of extracurricular education). They were well-off enough to afford private schooling I think. So what does her example tell a young woman today? If I were 14, from an ordinary, not especially academically geared family, perhaps rather insecure about my academic ability and mulling over my GCSE choices, I could see how her example might scare rather than inspire me. STEM subjects are notoriously unforgiving and you have to go through a lot of mental drudgery before you get to the meaty stuff. I can see how English, art and drama are so much more glamorous and immediately rewarding, and how girls go for that wow factor inherent in the subjects instead of taking a more hard-headed approach and asking where those choices might take them. If they realised that a lower second in English and a librarianship qualification tends to lead to rather a lot of JSA and checkout work they might perhaps think twice.

wol - yes, that's the sort of example I was thinking about upthread. A woman but not 'people like us'.

I really do think that it should be possible to get rid of some of the 'mental drudgery' that seems to be present in gcses. Here's an example - DD was doing some revision for mocks this halfterm, and was complaining in the chemistry about having to learn a table of precipitates and their colours. I couldn't help agreeing... if you needed to know, you could look it up, but actually it's not the sort of thing that people doing real chemistry jobs use nowadays. Teach them about why some salts are soluble and some aren't; start to teach them about why some are coloured and some aren't (she was also wondering why they had to learn the colours of metals in flames.... I gave her a brief explanation of why they had characteristic colours and she said, well that's interesting.

Duckdeamon
No, but if after divorce you are expected to go immediately back to work and provide for yourself then girls should look at the career prospects and salaries they can expect. Perhaps engineering or computing might be a better bet than the NHS.

so you're assuming that girls and women make career choices on the basis of expecting their partner to support them financially?

No, I'm assuming most girl's expect to have a partner and/or to raise a family with a partner who is also earning (a few choose to be alone). If they are on their own following divorce then a higher salaried job would give them a better quality of life.

If they end up as effectively a single parent, then the best quality of life won't just depend on salary (actually this also applies to parents in couples too, but a bit less critically). Working practices and attitudes to parents in the workplace will be crucial (retention, retraining, working hours, flexibility etc). STEM type industries aren't exactly at the forefront of getting this sorted out (certainly versus State employment).

Moniker I do think that you can't extrapolate how you presumably felt when you were a girl like that.

I can honestly say that I never gave a second thought to settling down / having babies / getting married until I was well into my late 20s. Certainly those things had absolutely zero impact on my choices when I was at school!

So there's an alternate view which I can't imagine is uncommon. The idea that in 2015 most girls are making decisions when they are school aged based on a, what, a life plan of meeting someone and settling down and having children? And then maybe getting divorced? That's a pretty huge stretch isn't it.

And say they are. So, your average young girl in the UK thinks, well when I grow up I'll marry the rich prince and so I won't have to worry about money so I can do whatever I want. And your assertion is that whatever they want is non STEM subjects and according to you low paid roles to do with helping people. So even if that all were true (and again ) we still would need to ask WHY if girls think they can do whatever they want are they making those choices? Why wouldn't they think, well I'll have this fabulosly wealthy man to prop me up so I'm going to follow my heart, take sciences, and try to make it in high-risk but potentially high-reward and non-female-friendly world of robotics??? (For example).

I'm genuinely flummoxed by that post.

"No, I'm assuming most girl's expect to have a partner and/or to raise a family with a partner who is also earning (a few choose to be alone). "

I mean SERIOUSLY? You think that's what girls think when they take their GCSE options or whatever happens these days?

And that changing DIVORCE terms in some way will change things?

I mean SERIOUSLY?????

I'n genuinely gobsmacked.

It's a very odd view of teenage girls - that they are playing some kind of long game (decades!) and are calculating and somewhat avaricious, really. Yuck.