To think young women should consider future income and career prospects when choosing their degree?

[strengthandhonor]

I post on a student forum and I see the same discussions again and again : boys talk about how much income and prospects a certain career will provide them with or what is the future of that industry while girls are all about following their passion and treat ''uni'' as a life experience with little or nothing to do with future employment prospects. No wonder the gender wage gap is still here and shows no sign of going away.

Countries like India, China and even Iran have far better results in getting girls into science, engineering and other lucrative degrees than say places like Sweden or Norway . So how can countries that year after year are trumpeted as the most gender equal societies on the planet have such awful outcomes especially when compared to medieval type patriarchies ? Why does reducing the social factors cause such imbalance in outcomes instead of equalizing them? What are we doing wrong as parents and as a society?

"historians follow family trees using software for analysing genetics"

speaking as a historian who has used software for some of my publications, that seriously, seriously didn't mean humanities wasn't the most important part of my training or that I could have done any of that work without a solid background in the humanities

just saying

The reality for most women is if they decide to have children their career and income is likely to suffer to some extent. The impact is less if you have a partner or family who can share the load, if you are in a job that pays enough to cover full time childcare costs or a job that allows flexibility.

The reality is you simply cannot compete with a male work colleague at the same level if he can stay late and put in extra hours while you have to race out the door for nursery pickup. You cannot compete if you are seen as the difficult one who calls in and misses a meeting as your child is off school with yet another bug. You cannot compete if working part time is seen as sciving - even though you do the same work as a full time job in less hours.

It's simple women can't compete with men in senior roles if they have dc and most of the responsibilities.
Whilst men are more likely to continue with their career and are able to progress if they have a sahp or family help, so can women.
It's up to women to find a man who is happy to support their career at the expense of their own, not expect the workplace to change to accomodate them and their family needs.
If your job dictates that you have to fulfill obligations that don't fit into family life, then find a man to take over the family responsibilities.
It isn't rocket science.

They need to do with engineering what they have done with medicine : make it accessible to women.

I think a lot of people could have amazingly successful working lives if they had good childcare. But the problem is that I want to kiss an injured knee and read the bedside stories etc. And I also want to use my skills and brain. I won't earn the huge bucks but wish someone somewhere could appreciate good solid input from me for less than 60 hours a week. Many GPs work part time hours. But this is certainly NOT true of engineering.

Lots of full on career jobs can be done as jobshares, it frustrates me that for a lot of well educated, highly skilled people the choice is work flat out and never see your family or take a part time role for peanuts. It would surely be a great benefit to the whole of society if both parents could work say, 3 days a week and earn a decent salary. Or people with other caring responsibilities. Entrepreneurs setting up a business. Older people. People with health issues. Students. Anyone, really.

I have always tried to put money first. It has worked very well. I am female. If I can financially support the children everything flows from that. Get that right and things tend to go well.