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?

Do you know what is hard on your mental health? Financial troubles, no choices, working long hours for bad pay, no self esteem....

Earning loads can mean long hours and hard work but lots of people do that for no money. I don't think good, well paid jobs equals a higher likelihood of mental health problems at all. Which is what PPs are implying.

I’m not saying all high-paid jobs equal bad mental health. What I meant was there does seem to be a constant push for young graduates to get the highest-paid jobs, which implies that earning as much money as possible should be your top priority, above anythingelse. It’s a symbol of our materialistic society where earning hundreds of thousands/millions of pounds and also spending loads is seen as an ideal.

And what about a job with OK pay? Not shit pay, but not squillions of pounds either.

Ditto, I’m not implying well paid jobs equals poor mental either and you’re absolutely right that social/housing/financial problems correlate with poorer mental health. The article I linked to in fact reports a study that showed the lower ranked employees were more unhappy than high flyers.

Money can undoubtedly make a shit life better.

But I stand by the view that investing in a job that makes you happy has to make sense long term - both for mental health and to aid progression/ sustainability etc. Pay is not necessarily correlated to how happy you are in a job, therefore overall disagree that money should be a driving force.

Absolutely money can make a shit life better. I was more responding to UnitedKungdom. I was more making the point about the narrative that earning as much money as possible should be a top priority/is an indicator of success. If you come out of university and end up in a job with OK pay (I don’t know what would be seen as decent, maybe £25k?) but you see that others around you are earning more than that, you may feel bad that you’re not earning as much as them, which can compromise your mental state. Even if you feel you’re earning enough (for now, anyway, you wouldn’t mind a promotion but you’re not desperate) and feel satisfied in your job.

*the narrative that earning as much money as possible is an indicator of success/should be a top priority is a bad thing.

But subjects that have a male slant are generally better paid. Jobs that are traditionally female are lower paid such as caring and childcare are lower paid purely because they are historically taken up by females. That difference needs to be addressed.
Think about it a bin man or brick layer gets paid way more than a carehome worker or nursery worker. The same applies as you go up the skill level.
Why should women go into science and maths subjects if it doesn’t suit them. We need to start valuing what are traditionally female traits as much as we do male traits.

The main reason I didn’t go into STEM is because I wasn’t good at science. I found it interesting, but my grades were bad. I also didn’t enjoy them as much as I did languages, which I also got good grades in. Languages are just as important as STEM but much more shafted.

Havent RTFT. I'm picking up on first few posts about other countries. It is good to raise the status of science and engineering for women and explain the careers they can lead to but it can definitely go to but it can go too far.

My parents are from India and certainly 20 years ago arts were seen by our middle class family as what you did if you failed. Engineering and medicine had "status". When on holiday in India I told people that I was going to study linguistics and Chinese one relative just said - "ah you didn't get the grades for medicine or engineering then".

Ken

I totally agree, I'd have been bloody bored, miserable with no self esteem giving pounds of flesh to an employer who expected my life in return for what some would call a well paid career.
Sod that, I wasn't put on the earth to be a hamster on a treadmill and I pity those who go for well paid careers and hate the job, conditions, people etc.

Money only helps if you are happy to begin with, obviously we all need enough to pay our bills, but imo we need to tell our daughters choice comes first, something that you love doing.

I did English Lit and after years of hating being an English teacher, i have just sent off my UCAS form to study radiography at uni.

I should have done it years ago...a vocational science degree with a well paid job at the end.

I have done the work experience and it was facinating. Luckily i love science .

Although i also studied art and lit, they do not pay and now i must be practical.

I am a mum of a 16 yr old DD. She wants to go to uni ,& tbh I'm really surprised to read that girls see uni as life experience & not a stepping stone to a career. I thought the current thinking is if you don't need to go to uni for your future career wants then don't. Just go to work. If you want to go to uni then make sure its because you need to for your career. Life experience of course it is. What isn't though at that age? That's a general thing nothing to do with gender though.

I think the “girls see it as a life experience” is a massive overgeneralisation. There are plenty of girls who go who know it’s necessary for their careers.

Unfinishedkitchen: I know right? And unfortunately that's exactly what I view some of these subjects as associated with. Which is possibly unfair but you have no idea the lengths* to* which some of these areas, especially those associated with military-industrial complex, will go to or ignore just so long as they get their funding . In my family, focus has generally been on the arts and music because we've faced a lot of social discrimination and only a certain 'old boys' type seems to get ahead in many of the more lucrative established careers.

I think some girls do see it as life experience because they don't know what they want to do, but so do some lads.

I've had two who have either not had a clue/ done something completely unrelated to their degree, both lads.
Whereas dd has been planning her career since being about being little, seriously from 11. She has it planned down to where she'll take PG study. Has even managed to be seen/ informal chat with the present teachers on the courses, and friends with current students. at just 14.

My degree was a waste of time. For years everyone told me to go for it as I was clever and academic, and very supported. People meant well, but the world has changed. I would love to have my time again and go into sciences/medicine, although I didn't have much aptitude for it. I wouldn't encourage dd to necessarily go to uni, you can still have good experiences in other ways, e.g.sharing a house when young. You just don't need to fork out £££ to do it!

I studied a BA, MA and DPhil in a humanities subject about which I was passionate and now earn 6 figures as a professor in that field at the top of my game - considerably more than some of my friends who did STEM subjects and are now in professions such as engineering and medical research. If you are excellent at what you do, determined, and savvy about career decisions (moving for promotions, applying for pay rises every year, being confident about self-worth, etc) I believe any university subject and graduate career path can lead to financial security. I think the problem is that girls are not socialised to be good at those things. Somehow I was bolshy/ narcissistic enough for that socialisation to pass me by, it seems.

OP there are WAY too many science graduates compared to jobs atm

imo we need to tell our daughters choice comes first, something that you love doing

That's all very lovely but a degree is for 3 years, your career is the rest of your life. Most people don't do a lovely degree = lovely job, hard degree = hard job, it's more likely they'll end up in an unfulfilling, underpaid job with low prospects and low wages.

I studied a female-dominated arts subject, which doesn't lead to a specific career.

I now work as a secondary school teacher. I understand why some people are leaving teaching, but I love my job. I love my subject, and I love teaching teenagers. I'm not going to become a millionaire, but I have a reliable income.

I went to secondary school in another country, where we had to study more subjects until 18. The only STEM subject I didn't mind was maths, and I got much better grades in arts and social sciences than in STEM (from the age of 12 or 13, once I started getting meaningful grades). In theory, I could have chosen to study maths at university but 1) I wouldn't have got as good a grade, which would have made my early career harder 2) I wouldn't' have enjoyed my degree or my future career as much.

I think that girls and boys should both be able to choose freely between all fields, and should think about their future prospects. That doesn't mean that they all need to choose the best paying course, or that girls should all be forced towards STEM.

your career is for the rest of your life
No it isn’t. You can retrain later in life. I’ve seen many threads by MNers wanting to change career.

Also, many jobs don’t require a specific degree.

I think that self esteem is important in enabling ‘choosing’ of well paid subjects and careers in a highly gendered society with careers and working styles which are seen as heavily gendered to aspire to. For women to aspire to and work in these high pay high status careers requires a certain amount of faith in yourself to get there and be there.

Looking back I have never been able to see myself in a position of power and responsibilities at work; i have low self esteem and I felt that I ‘wasn’t that kind of person’ cut out for serious work and anyway my parents drummed into me that making money in any way was kind of immoral. They brought me up to be chippy about ‘rich’ people who didn’t care about others.

Needless to say I have not gone into a high pay high status career and I wish I hadn’t ever taken my parents’ thinking on board. The economy has completely changed since they were picking careers and they gave terrible advice!

I wouldn’t choose a specific career based degree because it might lock you in.

I’d go for a subject I enjoyed. Plenty of careers don’t require a specific career. I’m an accountant and studied sciences at university. Plenty of my (very) able colleagues studied various subjects like geography, history, economics etc. They had no problem with the accountancy exams.

I will encourage my children to go for careers which relate to what they enjoy. My son and my daughter.