To think societal conditioning has a big influence on women more often choosing to study Arts/Law/etc. rather than Engineering/Mathematics/etc.

[Hmmtheplant]

To think societal conditioning has a big influence on women more often choosing to study Arts/Law/etc. rather than Engineering/Mathematics/etc. I ask because I often end up in discussions with male friends/family members about the extent of the role of nature versus nurture in all of this.

This is the reason I want my daughters to go to a girls school

You could point out that one tends to improve at some arts subjects - eg history - when one has a reasonable degree of emotional intelligence. There is evidence that teenage girls have the edge on emotional maturity and therefore might well be better at those subject than boys. However I doubt that the inverse is true so it doesn't answer your question.

@PinguDance now that is very interesting, re: choice of language

This is an interesting article www.ifs.org.uk/publications/13276

Boys and girls performance at GCSE maths and physics etc is similar. Less girls take it at a level because they are not as confident (I guess these subjects are perceived as harder) and because they dont want to be the only girl in their class at a level or uni doing these subjects.

Surely if it was genetic, it would show before they were 16?

I'm pretty sure it's never been proven that girl monkeys preferring dolls is the reason why adult human females dont work in certain environments

It's not just women that are under represented in certain industry sectors either. Ethnic minorities, overweight people, disabled people are all massively under represented in things like finance. Do your relatives think these people are genetically less able to understand science as well?

You dont have to be a psychologist to recognise that how someone is brought up, societies expectations and peer pressures etc must have a huge effect on peoples life choices.

I was one of two girls in my chemistry class at a level (didn't know the other girl at all and we were at opposite sides of the class). I got the best exam results in the class. I could never get a partner for experiments, no one wanted to double up with me, I always had to go with the teacher. It wasn't a social thing as one of these was one of my best friends and I socialised with a few of the boys outside school, and a lot of my friends were boys - I was quite a tomboy and used to play sport etc with the boys as well. They used to say they did it to wind me up. But it did mean that I always thought I was useless at the practical side of chemistry and as a result despite it being suggested by teachers I didn't study it at uni (I did other science subjects instead). I probably wasnt as great on the practical side as the theory (I'm clumsy and lose things) but in hindsight, might have made different decisions if I had been in a class with more girls or if I hadn't been treated 'differently' by the boys. I know some of the boys still (a couple went on to do chemistry degrees) and they would be absolutely horrified if they thought their 'running joke' had a lasting negative impact on me, they would not believe I didn't have the confidence to pursue it further given I used to get 100pc in most modules. And I went to a good uni and got a good science degree anyway and a resultant graduate job, so it didn't even matter...but it's easy to see situations where it could be the difference between making a decision that led to a career in law or a career in science a few years down the line

Sorry that was a bit of a ramble!

Jacqueshammer, I did contemplate single sex education for our girls for that reason.

I'm glad I didn't go that way, in the end, because they're both now very robust in their competition with the boys, and take any put downs etc as a challenge!

I'm glad I didn't go that way, in the end, because they're both now very robust in their competition with the boys, and take any put downs etc as a challenge!

So am I, I also went single-sex.

I hate the idea of mixed education to be honest, especially as the mother of a girl.

I don't think the Sciences are better than the Arts but I do think they are better paid, and sadly money tends to equate with power. Although of course we really should adjust what we value in society.

The sad thing is, as more women enter mathematical professions, the pay is likely to go down. And if more men decided to go into the arts, the pay would go up. The problem is sexism.

@amiright Good Point re: "It's not just women that are under represented in certain industry sectors either."

Also I totally identify with your experience of lacking confidence when being a rare female in a particular situation/area so-to-speak.

I think maybe boys are socially conditioned to think they will be good at maths and so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
DS is 3 and loves blaze and the monster machines and team umizoomi (kids maths cartoon on amazon prime) and will point out house numbers, bus numbers etc which he never does with letters.

No I think people study what they want to study. It's nothing to do with conditioning (if anything, there is major pressure on girls to study STEM these days and humanities/arts/MFL are being crowded out of the curriculum at GCSE level - I am still sore about the fact that my son was unable to study more than one language for GCSE).

@herculepoirot2 yeah as Fraggling mentioned it happened to some extent with medicine, which surprises me given the supply/demand curve for doctors. On a related note there are a lot of studies about women tending not to have the confidence to push for higher salaries, which I realise in some professions is impossible.

I’m an engineering lecturer of many years. The English speaking world is short of female engineering students, go to Portugal and you will find a much more equal uptake, Russia’s the same. I think, but I’m not sure, that Italy does better than the UK, Germany definitely does. I think partly it’s to do with the status of engineers here. We still labour under the image of greasy handed mechanics as engineers. We call the technician who fixes our washing machines an engineer. Many people don’t think of engineering as a professional career. I have found over the years that the majority of female engineering students have a parent who is an engineer, not true of the male students. The “tinkering with machines” image of engineering that non-engineers have is more appealing to boys. Actual engineering, which is all about using science to solve problems, appeals more broadly. Where engineering is seen as a profession, like the law, medicine etc, by society there is better uptake by women.

I find that the excuses of some intangible forces at work to be both demeaning and pathetic of those who claim to be victims of it

@berlinbaby but the question is why do they want to study that, when you are teenager you want to fit in. There may be pressure from teachers to study Maths, bit not from magazines, TV etc

On the issue of education, the world isn’t single sex. I don’t think we do girls any favours in keeping them separate.

Learning to deal with men in a competitive setting is far more important to their overall career success than exam grades as a teen.

An interesting counterpoint is Veterinary Medicine where vet schools struggle to recruit male students. They have the highest entry requirements in any university and female students hugely outnumber the males.

On the issue of education, the world isn’t single sex. I don’t think we do girls any favours in keeping them separate

Learning to deal with men in a competitive setting is far more important to their overall career success than exam grades as a teen

IME it’s a common misconception that single sex education renders women unable to deal with men.

IME it’s a common misconception that single sex education renders women unable to deal with men.

Well it undeniably limits their exposure at an early, formative stage.

Well it undeniably limits their exposure at an early, formative stage

I don’t believe you need exposure to be able to deal with a vast majority of people. Men aren’t a different species. There isn’t some sort of course one needs to be able to interact!

@chemenger Yes I see this in my industry (software), the gender association that programming is a male job does not exist to the same extent in other non-western cultures.

Engineering is a really popular uni choice for both sexes in Italy, definitely not just a boys subject (I have cousins of both sexes that studied it).

Also media studies is well respected there, but politics (my subject) is seen as an easy option. Just goes to show there's no objectively 'easy' or 'hard' subjects.

Men aren’t a different species. There isn’t some sort of course one needs to be able to interact!

Well on this very thread we’re discussing how their influences, conditioning, motivations and approaches might be different to women.

@chemenger I would argue that Veterinary Medicine is societally perceived to be a caring profession, and so girls don't feel out of place choosing it.

Single sex education keeps girls apart from boys at a time when boys dominate lessons and the teacher's attention, and it makes them think less that some subjects are boys subjects and some are girls subjects. Not to mention all the sexual harassment of girls by teenage boys in most mixed schools. No wonder girls do better without boys being there. And girls that go to single sex schools are more likely to go into male dominated fields, there is no lack of ability to deal with men.

Well on this very thread we’re discussing how their influences, conditioning, motivations and approaches might be different to women

You misunderstand. Of course conditioning is at play. One doesn’t need to be in a classroom with men to learn how to interact with them.