How can I encourage my daughters to consider traditionally male dominated careers?

[meinus]

I've been trying to expose my daughters to career areas that are traditionally male dominant. I wanted to share this video because I like how it simply shows a young woman 'as' an engineer and they liked the fun machine setting: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XppH0LJ7c4E
Has anyone seen any other good videos like this that I could show them?

Math - well, maybe growing up being told 'asian students tend to outstrip others' tends to be a self-fulfulling prophecy in the the same (but positive rather than negative) way that stereotype threats can act against girls doing maths? And/or parental expectations/support.

I think it comes down to a home culture that believes in working hard.

It's very simple as my very laid back children know - if you work hard you do better. Not everyone chooses to work as hard as they might at school and then they pay the price.

math not exclusively so, that would be a stereotype, plenty do go into humanities, but where the cultural values persist then there is an emphasis on hard work and STEM subjects. I have seen my DDs best friend, part of the Chinese diaspora suffer as a result. I am sure she would have got As in Humanities A levels and be at a good university now rather than had a pretty uninspriring two years struggling with Sciences and Maths and getting disappointing grades, and that was from a through school where many many girls are inspired to go into Sciences and excel. I highlighted earlier the SCMP ran a story recently on a boy going to Cambridge to study Humanitoes and the comments from the Chinese English speaking market were basically, this is a non story, of course our children should, and do, go and study the subjects they want to study. Of course many of those parents would have sent their children to western schools either in China or abroad, and indeed, another cultural feature, are more receptive to being guided by the teachers, the professionals, in deciding future direction.

Fragile I can assure you it is a common attitude in the older bankers that have survived in the industry. Tell me how many women do you know still in banking in their 50s? Once we reached forty all my peers in management, banking or Law started to drop out if they could not negotiate more a humane working experience from a family point of view. Even the one I thought would stick it out having worked straight through five pregnancies with no maternity leave and the eldest reaching teens, finally felt the toll on her life and family life was too great.

Now they are running their own businesses, acting as non executive Directors, working as judges or on tribunals, retraining to practise in areas like nutrition (strangely popular) or hypnotherapy or like me are back in academia. And they are advising their children especially girls of the disadvantages of those career choices, because they regret them.

Even when we did negotiate part time arrangements it was a slog to be recognised even if what we achieved in each day far exceeded what our male colleagues did, and that was with a brain still whirring when at home, even in my case, sending in things in from the changing room at the school sports day. Indeed my friend when other partners in her law firm were sniping that no partner should be part time discovered that in three days she was heading the league table for chargeable hours. The defence was that they needed the non chargeable hours for schmoozing clients, well as a client I wanted someone to tell me in clear terms what they were offering and the budget not "scmoozing" As I say it is cultural. And implicitly misogynistic.
After I had proved it could be done we started a policy in my function of bringing women back part time and they all without exception got their heads down and outperformed expectations with a grounded approach that, less worried about career progression, meant they were more willing to stand up to bs that was getting in the way of getting things done. It was working very well until my health suffered........

And I love the implication in your post that a forty hour week, I was talking about 8 hour days, was part time.

One of the reasons I never went back to work for a firm after having kids was the hours culture.
Leaving the office before 7pm was for wimps.
In an audit run up, 9pm was normal and not helping out on Sundays was deemed rude.

The Partners did not seem to correlate that with their 100% divorce rate
They did not seem to realise that having the partners' lunch at the Lodge might be a tad discriminatory.

It did not occur to them that short notice (48 hour) of audit work that involved staying away for two weeks only worked for

• the young and childless
• those heading for the divorce court

so strangely enough there were no senior women.

It has improved, but not much.
I still find breakfast CPD meetings to be a PITA as they clash with school run actually Yoga now in my case

Talkin - it's all webinars these days.

I wish!
And actually nope. I'm just looking at the Budget 2015 CPD sessions in my area and two are evening, two are breakfast and one costs a blerdy fortune and is all day
because they want us all in a room sharing ideas

Well, I don't know about tax. Audit though - it's all webinar either before or after the fact. Webinars are the new paradigm (allegedly).

Poison Not entirely sure what you are saying- i don't think I implied anywhere what was or wasn't part-time?
what you appear to be saying is that professional jobs (lawyer/management/banking) are incompatible with family life? I think it comes down to what you view as being needed for family life ? I can't do school pickups/dropoffs - but other than being truly part-time and working locally - i am not sure what career is compatible with that?

I am saying that in certain companies, particularly Law firms, banking and other companies in the City that the traditional culture and organisational structure does mean that the family life of those working there suffers if they do what is required to be successful. It affects both genders of course but it is predicated on the assumption that one partner in the family is there to pick up all the pieces, although as Talkin points up that may not be for long. It is self evident from the high rate of marital break up and the number who turn their back on it, not to mention the effects on health. One male banker emailed the whole bank with his announcement of leaving with the William Henry Davies poem "What is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare" (so yes bankers can have literacy skills)

Other companies would see the failure to hang on to the experienced talent you have invested in developing (or indeed putting them in an early grave) as short sighted and not in a businesses long term interests. If the businesses were to stand back and really think it through in terms of their activities and resources and how to organise them around their long term aims they would see that it is not only possible, but actually beneficial to do things in different ways.

A lot of companies are now grappling with the issue that 'millennials' are apparently going to be even less enamoured of the Gen X work all the hours culture than Gen Y currently are. It's slightly annoying sitting in meetings discussing how 'people won't put up with...' what I had to put up with when I was young - but there you go, such is life.

And plenty of women found their own companies and many of those choose to work very hard. Whether you have children or not we all have to decide how many hours we put into the work (the very few of us who have these choices - most people have no choice and ow pay).

Some work requires you to be there - you cannot stop an operation 5 hours into it because you think 5 hours work a day is your limit or leave a court hearing in the middle of it. Other jobs it's easier to work around your leisure time and family. I must say now having teenagers how easier it is. I feel almost like a childless person must sometimes - there is an awful lot more time (and 1 in 5 women never have children by the way - not all women are wrestling with work and children issues).

An Apple executive (male) did a resignation letter recently which was published saying he was off to climb mountains and the like now his children had left home. A spectacularly insensitive letter - 1. that he will only make time for himself and only be around at home once the children aren't there needing hours of clearing up after. 2. that he is rich enough just to cease work which is not a choice most people have 3 . he said he was just biding his time until something else comes along so not really resigning at all.

Poisonwood, if there is not hard work involved, do Chinese students succeed because of some genetic advantage?

Should everyone else just throw in the towel?

(I was posting about second and later generations of ethnic Chinese families in contexts other than China btw so a response that describes Chinese students in China may not address the fact that ethnic Chinese elsewhere tend to score better than their peers in both reading and maths all through school. The reason I mentioned this notable achievement of ethnic Chinese students in American schools was your detail about the Chinese writing system and its impact on learning to read in Chinese, in China. The students I was talking about were learning to read in English, using the Latin alphabet and tackling English orthography and they were still doing a better job of it than other ethnic groups.)

Now they are running their own businesses, acting as non executive Directors, working as judges or on tribunals, retraining to practise in areas like nutrition (strangely popular) or hypnotherapy or like me are back in academia.

Interesting. As an academic myself I don't think I know many academics who work less than 70 hours a week, including weekends and evenings. I definitely wouldn't recommend it to somebody who wanted a good work-life balance. But I do work in a subject area which is dominated by men and for which part-time working is almost unknown.

Math My point was that second and third generation diaspora (that means not living in China) may or may not have a continuation of the cultural influence that promotes hard work and STEM subjects, but it is pervasive enough to assume it would account for average differences. And that whether it is China or the diaspora you do get students who study other subjects.

I don't know what the mix is of genetic make up / cultural in determining an individuals make up, I have said that, but what I know of Chinese culture, be it the use of characters or the most pervasive non religious ideology in the world going back 2000 years or more is that it accounts for a lot of the differences in behaviour, attitudes and perceptions in Chinese and western society.

Cauchy I have already said I find the academic world even less forgiving.

In light of the protest that greeted my revelation that I am very loathe to encourage the humanities track for my DCs, and also in light of posts defending the humanities track by highlighting the fact that students can still get into banking and finance, etc via humanities degrees, it is interesting to note that women in law and (investment?) banking are telling their daughters about the pitfalls and finding those fields exact too high a toll on family life or on their own emotional health. Iirc, there were even some posters who were happy that students can start in Law at 18 and be out there practicing their profession three years later, with some pooh poohing of the American model of a BS first followed by graduate school for Law.

I would never encourage any child of mine to go into law, which is the obvious next step for many a bright spark with a history/politics/English/Latin/classics/psychology degree. I know a good few female teachers who are former lawyers, and they are women in a system that afforded them the chance to think long and hard about Law and had the chance to do other things, but eventually found the profession was taking over their lives. I think it's a shame that teenagers have to make a major career decision in the UK, and in Ireland too for that matter.

Billing 3000 hours a year means spending 60+ hours per week in the office and the expectation that lawyers will also bring in business means a heck of a lot of networking that can cut into the little family time that remains. A 40 hour week would be very much part time in the macho American law firm scene.

Unfortunately many firms are run with filling the ego needs of those who run them as their primary objective, and little or no attention is paid to the positive impact on the firm of better management and a different culture. Those at the top have too much invested in maintaining the status quo to ever consider changing the culture -- membership of a club under alpha male leadership of the 'toughest' and the least 'family oriented' (i.e. not wusses) and most ambitious and money focused individuals very possibly makes up for childhoods spent being teased for wearing glasses and sucking at sports.

It is so nice to have the options that STEM offers.

Jilly That is the exact point I was making, if you look at the exact activities, the way they are shared out and organised, how many need someone there 12 hours a day? And sorry are not Court hearings a case in point? Long organised around late enough starts, early enough finishes and ample breaks. And then as a Barrister or Judge you get to choose what you take on, case to case? Of course all the above is predicated on the situation of a small section of society, but they are a section of society with a lot to give in terms of their ability, skills, experience and talent. But many of us feel at the other end of our careers that what started out as a quest to earn a living may have got slightly too sidetracked by money and success, away from what really matters in life, not necessarily in a self indulgent way. Who is ever going to say at the end of their life they wish they had worked longer hours...............

Cauchy But I am lucky enough to not have to make a living in it, partly thanks to the pay out from constructive dismissal case (just before the law changed so I could have got them on disability discrimination).

Gently It used to be the argument with Junior Doctors' hours, that if Consultants had done it in their youth then they couldn't complain, it was part of the culture, needed etc. Then they noticed they were killing people....

Yes, well that's not really a consideration in the city...

Actually some doctors say if you have 50 hours of experience a week rather than 100 you are a worse doctor as you have less experience so have to work say 6 years not 3 to get the same level of experience.

It is a free country. if women think they can run businesses with different structures they can and do.

What I always say though is don't give up work to run your caef or make cup cakes or run a pub without a lot of thought - often you end up mired in low pay for life, working just as long hours and hating it. Better to leave work and double or treble your pay as I did - much more fun. And I am going out at 4.45pm to a school thing.

I just think its not the hours per se that are the problem.
My biggest bugbear with my job is that it has to be London/city based - which means that I am stuck with a commute which hugely exacerbates any time issues.
Being required to travel/socialise doesn't bother me as I can manage this/say no. Face time - is tricky.
But if I had daughters I would say- i have loved working in the City- i have found it stimulating and challenging, i love the pace, I love that its intellectually challenging (and not just management ) and that i still have to stretch myself.
I'm hacked off at the mo BUT (given I need to earn some money) I can't actually see another job I'd do as frankly I'd like to be at home with DC really - so given I'd got to work I'd rather work here at earn shedloads!
I look around as well and know a number of people who have basically done their time in the city to then take it easy somewhere else - its another kind of work life balance- working til say your children are a certain age then giving up entirely

Jilly A pretty spurious argument when 90% of the things a doctor will ever see will be repeatedly seen in a 50 hour week but the difficult part of the other 10% they will hardly ever or even never see, or maybe once in a lifetime and those are the cases that are problematic. I don't actually want a doctor who thinks he knows everything, I want one that is open minded, listens and knows where to look in the book when he doesn't and/or where to send you to get a proper diagnosis and treatment. Or alternatively House.......