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?

The proportions of girls doing some subjects is very low, but if you look at the results (eg here), it appears that the ones who do the subjects (eg physics, computing) are somewhat more likely than the boys to get high grades. It may be - and this is a very gross generalisation! - that the genderised discrepancies will be greater for the less high-flying students. MN education-related threads have a tendency to suggest we reside in Lake Woebegone...

I would include Further Maths (along with the fact that unless girls are absolute stars of the top sets and intend to become Mathematicians they see little point in taking it to that level)

Not doing further maths doesn't just exclude mathematics at university. It makes engineering and physics much harder at university and harder to get into at the top universities. Increasingly FM is required by top economics degrees too.

Relative to other countries we have a smaller fraction of students studying maths, physics and engineering at university. Relative to many other countries we have lower percentages of women studying physics and engineering at university. This suggests that it is not just innate factors at play ("women are born not liking these subjects") but strong cultural biases and pressures. It is not an accident that women are substantially more likely to study physics and engineering if they were educated at single sex schools.

BTW it is seen as a problem that men are under-represented in biological and health sciences, and there are action plans to address this too.

Does patriarchal bias means women's work in STEM isn't valued? Perhaps, a little. I think the main issue with women leaving STEM is however the work-life balance.

It may be - and this is a very gross generalisation! - that the genderised discrepancies will be greater for the less high-flying students.

Around 85% of maths undergraduates at Cambridge are male. All the top courses in the UK are mostly men.

RG physics courses are around 15% female, if I remember correctly.

Boys and girls are different.
Mine when small played with the same dumper truck.
DD put things in it. DS turned it upside down and tried to take the wheels off.
The main thing is that their different skills should be equally valued.

We do not force men to equal up the numbers is some jobs.
Why should we force women into others.

Bricklaying
Ditch digging
Car mechanics
Scaffolding
Window fitting

Not *MN kids' earning lines but valid - and very sex biased ones all the same.

Generalisations though can keep people down. I have non identical twins (boys) and they are as different as differences between boys and girls that people go on about.

True.
That is why each individual should be valued for what THEY want to do without reference to their race or sexuality or gender

but we should also not pretend that everybody is the same and can be shoehorned into the same subject areas

But if for example 40% of applicants for a course are female and only 20% of those getting an offer are female shouldn't one be asking what's going on? If 20% of graduates in a given field are female but by the age of 30 only 10% of those working in the field are female, again, shouldn't we be asking what's going on? If the average salary of women with the same experience and qualifications as men is lower, isn't this something to complained about?

It's nothing whatsoever to do with people being valued for their own skills - this is about widespread discrimination against women still occurring.

Girls will succeed if they have it reinforced from a young age that they can do whatever they like.

Yes, I agree, but right now this is not what is happening. Girls are still being given the message that many areas are not for them. Women who work in STEM usually have to fight to get treated the same as men - every step of the career is harder.

Cauchy
Women who work in STEM usually have to fight to get treated the same as men - every step of the career is harder.

That applies to women in EVERY field.
STEM thinks its special, but its not.

I'm sure Jilly can regale us with tales of the glass ceiling in her field, and in accountancy, the top bods are still predominantly men
most top chefs are men
there are quotas for women on TV quiz shows
there are quotas to get women as news reporters
there are women's literary prizes to give them a chance

I know you love your stats, but Saturday's event shows that many of your assumptions are behind the curve.

For a start none of us has ever needed childcare as we take turns dumping our kids with each other

Cauchy Firstly the issue with women's position in every career is work / life balance. In my business career there was some messing about the edges to deal with it, career breaks etc. but still the fundamental model for career progression was long hours and particular sorts of networking often driven by political factors rather than those consistent with the long term goals of the organisation. The long hours culture in particular is bollocks, literally, as in originating in the hormones produced there. You are less effective in a 12 hour day, not more. As a woman you take that on the chin to get on, and work harder and more effectively to get to the same goal. STEM skills are a zero issue in that environment, I'm a History graduate but I went and got further qualifications and I am now a marketer with very strong skills in both statistics, modelling and analysis, alongside strategy development and planning. That I could change, the environment I could not.

I am now back in the academic world, slightly different culture but no less friendly to anyone's, male or female, work / life balance and there isn't even, in a very competitive academic world, any tinkering at the edges, in my uni anyway.

Accepting women are going to have children, then if society is going to make the most of the talents of 50% of it's members then something needs to be done to make the culture in all workplaces more enabling, not just with career breaks, creches etc, part time working but in terms of the fundamental culture that drives individual success within the organisation, making sure it focuses on the organisations aims, whether they are academic or commercial, rather than traditional patriarchal measures of effectiveness and success. Above all how do you enable people of whatever sex, who do have other priorities, calls on their time to make a contribution?

I totally agree that we need to be asking questions and taking initiatives to improve teaching in Physics in particular but I think you underestimate the inbuilt bias to the subject that puts girls off, maybe the attraction of other Sciences and straight and applied Maths focuses on their more apparent immediate practical uses (and I don't underestimate that a practical / pragmatic bent on life has a cultural bias) rather than setting out on some higher theoretical quest? Personally I think the false, and increasingly irrelevant disciplinary boundaries between the Sciences (and indeed the Humanities) should start to come down since modern Science does not happen in bunkers and my DDs research involves knowledge of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, maths and recently they have been involving gaming software developers to develop new approaches. Just as art, history and literature do not happen in isolation , neither does what happens in the Natural world, part of the point the link made. If it is happening in the academic world then filtering it down to schools could give the Sciences and indeed Humanities more relevance and interest, and disinvest themselves of any gendering that has attached itself to defined disciplines.

Girls are choosing Engineering in increasing numbers, and my friend equated the encouragement and enablement not just from unis but via national competitions etc. her DD had to brainwashing, but competition for places on top courses, especially Oxbridge must be absolutely phenomenal given the quality of some of the girls applying. If 5 A*s easily achieved, a track record in national competitions etc. etc. can't get a girl to Oxbridge? I wonder how much of the statistics are accounted for by the skewed percentage of highly qualified boys applying from overseas?

My point is that both in general and in relation to STEM tinkering at the edges but assuming the pervasive effects of patriarchy can stay the same isn't going to solve the problem.

Of course, all the factors we've discussed... it isn't one or the other, it's a combination. Anachronistic stereotypes, discrimination and the biological constraint that men can't bear children all work together to yield less women visible in many desirable roles, and therefore less role models and so it tends to perpetuate. It will take time and effort to change this to allow each child in successive generations to fulfil their potential - be it the woman who wants to be an engineer or plumber or car mechanic or cabinet minister, or the boy who is perfectly suited to being a care assistant, family carer, classroom primary teacher etc etc.

You've certainly got a point about the artificial divisions between various disciplines, poisonwood. As to why 'girls don't like physics' - this is something my DD and I have puzzled over a bit, because we have no idea but it's her observation - in a girls' grammar school - that while a minority such as herself see it as by far the most interesting subject (along with maths) - the majority say it's boring. Part of it may be how it's taught - they do triple science, and she reckons the most interesting stuff is in unit 3, where they're getting deeper into it.

I do find pigeonholing and stereotypes annoying at times. I like money, power, love winning over others. I like being the best. I like my subject. I don't think those thins are male things as some people suggest. They are just homan things. Most people whatever their sex aren't ambitious particularly and I am one of the few who can just as much be female as male who slightly unusually does like those things.

We used to think in England circa 1880 that women just did not have a brain which could possibly do medicine - we tend to have found a lot of those stereotypes are just wrong and yet they remain prevalent in some countries abroad. A client showed me his brochure very proudly featuring every member of staff. It was 100% female even in the office - they were in Saudi where I think women have recently for the first time been allowed to work in women's underwear shops.

Those of you who think that stem qualifications are encouraged and there is no peer pressure stopping girls pursuing the academic subjects- why do
you think they don't? particularly in mixed schools?

I think it is not necessarily the same issue as why women don't pursue certain careers or why they drop out of certain careers.
I think there may be an overlap - some careers primarily recruit from certain degree types etc but not necessarily.

Poison doing double maths is potentially an easier way to get good grades in that effectively in studying for the further maths the maths one is just a interim step...

Women couldn't comprehend law back then either, and as to voting ... . Amazing just how quickly we've managed to evolve since then, isn't it?

All stereotypes annoy me every time I see one. It doesn't matter whether on average men or women really are better at one thing or another (and increasingly we're finding that other than baby growing and brute force, they're not nearly as inherently different as it might appear) - that should not affect the opportunities available for each individual.

Same here although I certainly would never censor debate and I am happy people like Baron Cohen do research into male and female brains. There are differences but there is also conditioning too.

Errol Jilly I do agree about stereotyping and pigeonholing BUT there is a huge amount of research (yes peer reviewed) that does show that there are certain tendencies to the way in which the genders behave in a business environment. It does not apply to every woman or indeed entirely to any one woman but they are there. It is hard to disentangle the cultural and potentially innate factors but as TP says and every mother knows you can buy your DD all the garages and Meccano you like it does not mean they will love cars . Business is interested in that research because it does need some of those traits eg a greater orientation to the team, task and long term goals. They are strengths in terms of the effectiveness of an organisation in a way that an emphasis on winning and short term success are not (for most anyway). As I said before a management culture and structure that emphasised the importance of those qualities in investment banking, and didn't instead downplay the importance and status of the parts of the organisation such as Risk Management and the back office processes where they are most prevalent (and women better represented) might have helped avoid the banking crisis. Of course in the particular it is all rubbish, but in terms of making business understand why it should be changing it's culture taking into account the fundamental pervasive nature of dysfunctional patriarchal values, it is important.

Errol It has been a lifetime's frustration that I wasn't allowed to do History, English, Physics and Maths. Physics and Maths were even my best subjects, but Chemistry and Biology my worst, and maybe one day when I have time I will do the A levels to prove the point. I have a mind that likes to model things, and that works for both human and natural phenomenon. I even don't have a nervous breakdown at theories of deconstruction in literature, though draw the line at filling in every O. But now that would not be a problem at all, with a lot of humanities students already keeping Maths up to A2.

The actual qualifications we all have are no defence against pressenteeism

I know of no career that has got rid of it.

Until its gone, women will only progress by setting up their own businesses and running them properly - and yes, I know Jilly's views on mat leave

let alone lazy arse part time workers like me - but I had fun edging my lawn this afternoon

so presenteeism is only bad for women? women want to be absent from the (physical) working place? women will only progress by setting up their own busines.ses? slightly sweeping generalisations and stereotypes there.
And i don't think thats the point of this thread- the cultural work issues are a different issue.
And Risk Management and back office are still male dominated - just less so and less alpha male- which can mean they get overridden more when dealing with the front office

Presenteeism though can be a good too. If you do 50 hours of eperience or surgery or in court you are often half as good as someone who does 100 hours. My daughter had a new joiner to their department - same level of qualification but had worked about half the number of hours and genuinely was not as good for that (although I am sure she will catch up). The presenteeism is not just sitting there filing your nails - it can be doing the work. it is no surprise I do rather well because I've worked for 30 years without breaks and without maternity leaves. Presenteeism can rule okay and do well for wiomen - leave men do do dull domestic stuff at home and life can be good. Think yuou need to be home changing nappies and on one thanks you for it.

The internet is making some careers much less presenteeist. I work from home - part time now, but was FT before DD started school. Most of my team are in california, though some of the QC people are in India. No-one knows exactly how much time I'm at my desk and whether I'm working or MNing. What they know is whether I get the job done. Quite a few of the california people do a fair amount from home now - a webex call will have some people in a meeting room but usually a few others dialled in. Obviously there are always going to be careers which require physical presence, but there should increasingly be more flexibility for working smart rather than long. It doesn't require that women be running a company for this to happen - it requires enlightened self-interest by the management if they don't want to lose knowledge and experience.

poisonwood - what a shame, I'm sure that combination would be no problem at a lot of schools now (unless it was banal timetabling reasons) and would be a very acceptable combination for a lot of courses.

Jilly - what you describe isn't 'presenteeism'. Presenteeism is putting in long hours even if you're not working effectively - the jacket on a chair thing.

Jilly I don't agree, you may get a greater quantity of work done in 100 hours rather than 50 but it won't be twice as effective, and if you are talking about Law I have spent enough time with the cannon fodder junior lawyers putting in the hours on behalf of the senior advisers on flotations, sales and acquisitions to know that from a client point of view this is certainly true. You really do not need some exhausted twenty something being the one who is supposed to be in command of the drafting and detail. There are ways of structuring a task / organisation to get effective output from everyone whatever their hours, and nobody should be working more than 8 hours a day except in exceptional circumstances, when that 8 is is up for grabs as well. Some of us aren't functioning at 9 but whoa, the ideas at 3am, which dovetailed quite nicely with being a working mother

I was really pleased when, way back before I had DD, my company ran a project management training course in which one of the things that was stressed was that the evidence is that while occasional blitzes,eg pulling all-nighters that software people are wont to due in the final throes of a release are fine once in a while, this is absolutely not a good idea regularly. Companies which where people work normal 9-5 type hours will get more work done than those indulging in 'presenteeism' - the long hours aren't just less efficient per hour, they are less efficient in absolute terms. For most occupations, long hours==poor management. The next boss after that was one of the best we ever had (ie the company flourished under him, bottom line not just employee satisfaction) - he always left at 5pm to get home to his family, and was supportive of people who wished to do likewise.

One of my friends went to work for a world famous tech company that had so many meetings about meetings and expected people to be in the office for stupid hours on pointless projects
their home life suffered, their health suffered
they quit and went to work for a uni

that friend is a childless bloke BTW : but one who could see that stupid work practices stop efficiency.