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?

Also I think women are fed a line of 'you'll have to work all hours to earn anything like a man'. Not always the case. But I can tell you I know many women who work very bloody long hours for a pittance. So fucked both ways in the end anyway.

If you really want women to succeed, you have to stop training girls to be compliant and nice

Ironically, you are right. If you remove the social welfare net and the divorce laws written centuries ago you end up treating women like you treat men. This is why women in my country and all the other places I've mentioned make ''male choices''. They have to.

Or as Tim Allen once said : "Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work or prison."

Yeah because it's a great balance when you can't afford to work because childcare is more than you make and your DH is a bit of a jerk but you can't really afford to leave.

TBH, I think that's an argument for having heavily subsidised childcare for anyone who wants it rather than an argument for forcing all bright girls into STEM careers or highly competitive careers not of their choosing.

Too many, I actually think you have it right. You set yourself up so you can flex either way when it suits you. That is what women should be aiming for.

Well let's be realistic. At the top level of school aged education gurlsjust don't get the same quality of education and are well, in comparison to their male counterparts a bit stupid. Education for girls is very much geared towards academic success and nothing more, that is why they often are ill equipped to cope with the demands of university or highly competitive careers. As for girls who don't have parents able of willing to pay for a top notch education, well their best chance in life is to marry up. Only the Ines who are naturally bright or who have parents who went the extra mile are able to hack it in a country where men are educated to be top of their field professionals, successful businessmen or politicians while girls are educated with the sole aim of attaining better grades at A levels.

Yes I think more subsidised childcare would be good as many women want to work but are priced out. My husband pays the childcare bill so I can work pt & keep what I earn.

Also more flexibility in hours would be a good thing.

I think the issue is that there is no support for parents. If you want to have children you need to be prepared to take care of them, as the support system in place isn't adequate. If you're a single parent, male or female, chances are you're not going to be able to take on a high paying, high demand job and be with your children. If you're part of a couple, one of you needs to make a sacrifice. In my case, it's DH. Equality is there, it just sucks because you can't actually have it all.

Or as Tim Allen once said : "Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work or prison."

Well that's nonsense.

Men can be married/unmarried, with or without children too.

What I don't see is fifty percent of SAHPs being dads or half of all childcare being done by men, or very many single dads at all (90% of lone parents are women).

The extra choice men seem to have, or exercise more is to slack off in the childcare or walk.

restinggrinchface

I can't even

Yes childcare should be subsidised more but at the end of the day, women need to stop choosing work that will never pay them enough to also have children (if that's what they want).

Battleaxe, I think that was the point of that comment....men don't need to make any choices/trade offs around marriage or children because neither have any impact on their working lives.

united the nursery (only one open 8-6) my eldest attended when I was trying to juggle my career was 1.7k a month

Well it started off that way, then it went all backhanded "western women have been spoilt by divorce law and welfare states". Which seems somewhat untrue to me.

strengthandhonor
If you remove the social welfare net and the divorce laws written centuries ago you end up treating women like you treat men.

LOL! you think men cant claim welfare?

I'm off, you are being disingenuous.

It's hard. I do feel I have failed in promoting equality sometimes. Society isn't set up fairly.

What do you mean ''fairly''? Women make different choices in life and isn't doing what makes you happy the end game instead of conforming to social engineers' ideas of a perfect world looks like? And like you, most women would hate being the main/sole breadwinner.

women need to stop choosing work that will never pay them enough to also have children that pretty much leaves certain sectors of finance, law & tech.

Many men are happy to work all hours and do little else for weeks. Women continue to want to be mothers and sisters, friends, getbtheir hair done, wrap gifts and bake birthday cakes. I railed against all that caring, self maintenance and emotional workload for years. But actually that is what life is and I actually feel sorry for men who can put their focus in one or 2 things. And for what's it's worth, I adored science with all my heart and did it in university because it was the live of my life. I still have s frapnjob with crap pay and it's even more crap since I decided the 70 hour working week was no longer for me.

So what is stopping western girls from studying these degrees when not only they live in the most gender equal societies on Earth but they can also take advantage of female only scholarships, programs, company quotas etc

We could ensure that as soon as they stop studying they have a forced marriage, that would keep them in education longer.

We could also have female only universities where it is normal for a female to study STEM.

I am sure that as shown here there are plenty of well informed parents and their offspring who have knowledge of study and career paths.

There are however still people who think any degree is going to improve their job prospects. If 50 % are going to university (Read this recently is it true?) then getting a degree for some might even be detrimental to career building! The classroom isn't the only place to learn nor is it the best for everyone.

The OP' s advice would be wise for some young men too.

*Jasmin "But it's much more important (and better for your mental and physical health) to be in a job you love, regardless of what it pays.
As a society, too much value is placed on having lots of money and little to no value on being happy."

this is the kind of statement made by people who are so well off, their children will never be in a mouldy bedsit. Otherwise there is no way you could say that!*

@Snowdrop Just not true. i followed a job I loved and was very poor for a decade or two, watching people I'd been at uni with develop sernsible careers and get houses and stuff. Yes I was miserable being poor, but I adorted my job and got really good at it and branched out and suddenly found I was earning well, had a house - maybe not as stunning as those owned by the high flying lawyers I knew - but I'd never have reached that level. And I was still doing what I loved. Still am. I have never done a job for more than a few days just to earn money. I've always worked hard at stuff I love and have had a number of high earners admit they are jealous of DH and my lifestyle because - as they see it - they didn't have the courage to try and succeed at somehting they loved.

LOL! you think men cant claim welfare?

Allen was talking about the US. Try living on welfare as an american man. Even in other Western countries women get far more charities, social benefits, healthcare funding (women use the system far more often AND live longer)... while men pay the vast majority of income taxes, mind you. Now that I think about it this makes the wage gap even more of a moot point if you count the money men spend on women either through being the family provider or the tax payer.

You're very angry and very biased. Are you a woman and what is your career?
I'm guessing it's not law because your argument is lacking in logic and/or direction. You refer to the theory of 'eliminating social barriers' as though that is a reality. Yet, we have a gender pay gap (regardless of whether women enter traditionally male roles eg the BBC China correspondent); we have a society that tries to enforce gender stereotypes (through marketing, advertising and education) even more rigorously than it did in the 1980s; we have had successive governments who have implemented policies that unfairly affect women, and on and on and on.
Come back here when the social barriers have been removed. When equal pay is a reality. When men provide at least fifty percent of the primary care to their children. And when that status quo has been in existence for hundreds of years. Then tell us if women aren't meeting your expectations.

Regarding the lack of women in the UK/Sweden going into Stem related careers compared to countries such as India/China it is known as the gender equality paradox.

If you’re interested in that sort of thing then here is a video of it being explained quite well.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=JUxY_5-N81Q

You're sounding like an MRA.

I agree and I wish I'd done that. I was given bad career advice at school and bad advice from parents about nearly everything. At 18 I don't think I was really making choices for myself.