Girls who DON’T study STEM

[Ippagoggy]

As a woman in STEM (I work as a quant for a hedge fund and I studied maths for my undergrad and computer science for my phd), I am often dragged into discussions at work about “why there aren’t there more women in our field?”

while there are a number of hypotheses put forward (I won’t bother repeating them), one thing that is generally acknowledged that the phenomenon starts early, with fewer girls taking these subjects at school (at least in the west) and this then leads to a “pipeline problem”.

I therefore would love to ask the women on here — both of their own experiences from
their school days and what they might observe of their daughters. Why have you or your daughter NOT chosen a study path or career in STEM? Was it simply that there was never any interest (and fair enough! Different people like different things)? Was there a lack of exposure in some way? Or maybe their interest in your part was but you felt discouraged from pursuing that interest for one reason or another? And what would those reasons have been?

By the way, to be clear, I am not passing any judgement on the value of STEM subjects versus non-STEM. We need both. I am just genuinely curious to understand how people are wired.

for me, when I was about 11 years old and has access to a computer that I was allowed to play with — I could not believe my eyes. This box was basically like magic and the thought that I could actually learn to make it do things was intoxicating. I became a nerd overnight.

I have two STEM degrees and encourage my daughter in STEM. She is good at it 8s and 9s at GCSE. But she loathes it she enjoyed history, drama and English lit at GCSE again 8s. But her passion is to sing, dance and act - she took grades and got distinctions and won regional competitions.
She is good at lots of things obvious, but her passion is performing arts and it is her career. She is clear that it is volatile and she may need back up plans. But STEM was never going to be for her.

No @Walkaround it doesn't imply that. In the nineties and noughties, companies were willing to train non-specialist grads in the skills they needed. But at the same time, they were lobbying the Government for changes to the HE system because they were fed up with grads not having basic skills. Now those same companies are starting to get what they need from the apprenticeship system - why train a history graduate when you can be subsidised to train a school leaver instead, or employ one of the increasing number of more numerate/ tech literate STEM grads on a try-before-you-buy internship programme? Also, many big name employers who used to insist on a 2:1 from an RG uni would now rather have skilled grads from any institution with a lower class degree if they have relevant skills, experience and aptitude.

The graduate job market is changing, pure and simple. A lotbof parents and teachers are stuck in the past.

I couldn’t agree more. Kids are being massively let down by schools and by society in general by being encouraged to go to uni to study degrees that won’t help their a career prospects. The job market is so competitive and degrees are so expensive that it makes no sense to just pick a subject that you like for the sake of getting any old degree.

Except you are agreeing with me, not disagreeing, @elimental - you don’t need a degree for those careers, as training on the job is eminently possible. As I pointed out, most students would rather not get into debt doing a degree they don’t enjoy. Employers always could have offered apprenticeships. Huge numbers of careers used to be built that way. Apprenticeship was the norm. What employers wanted was the cheapest, easiest option for them, not the student.

Perhaps we are agreeing. The trend is that there is more competion for the best STEM jobs - a history student/graduate will struggle to convince an employer that they suddenly have a passion for e.g. data science and are worthy of a coveted internship or graduate job - yes they can re-train in data science via a number of routes, but they will probably have to invest their own additional time and money to do that, or else start at the bottom on an entry-level apprenticeship that they could have got onto straight from school.

I have one dd in a stem role (very male dominated and was no females at all until a few years ago) and one artsy one, same parents, same upbringing ... it's choice pure and simple these days. Back when I was at school it was different, I was told secretarial college was a good option! (I got good GCSEs and ignored them doing a levels and a degree, business and economics so borderline in the stem debate)

@elimental - if there is more competition for STEM jobs, why would someone not that interested in STEM waste their time doing a degree they may do not do very well in because they have little interest in it? In doing this, they will just have 3 or more years of losing confidence in their abilities and then lose out on the best graduate jobs to people who actually enjoyed their STEM degrees and did well in them, anyway. Seems pretty pointless to me.

Nobody is forcing them to if they hate it - but many decisions to drop STEM dubjects are much more borderline, and swayed by ill-judged comments from teachers, parents and friends.

In the opinion of someone who likes STEM. 😉
Tbh, it is extremely hard to make most people feel excited about the idea of a career in data science. Maybe it’s more a question of getting people to lower their hopes and expectations in terms of achievable careers and how much pleasure they should expect to derive from work if they want to be paid well.

It's at least partly to do with a change in 'valuable' jobs isn't it? And a huge expansion in industry centred around tech/computers.

The skills that humanities degrees really need and teach, so things like comparing sources, looking at reliability, constructing a persuasive argument are actually very useful in a lot of more 'traditional' jobs when you're working with humans. Not so much when you're working in coding with an incredibly logical computer.

The skills that humanities degrees really need and teach, so things like comparing sources, looking at reliability, constructing a persuasive argument are actually very useful in a lot of more 'traditional' jobs when you're working with humans. Not so much when you're working in coding with an incredibly logical computer.

But computers and programs are made for humans, who are not always very logical, and will often use the very logical things in ways that are unexpected. There are loads of jobs in suff like user experience these days, which didn't really exist 30 years ago (though we did study human computer interaction even then.) You might design an application to be used in a particular way, but there's no guarantee human users will do as the developers planned, and better analysis before you get going can help improve how things actually work, and that often takes people who haven't spent years thinking of little else other than computers.

As a professional programmer I'll have to disagree with you there. Programming is a craft. Even something simple as splitting a string, there's more than one way to do.

@Walkaround There are three things to note here:

A) there are plenty of tech jobs that don't involve programming, especially now that technology permeates practically everything. Lots of graduate programs for things like project management, service management, governance, data protection officer etc.

B) For technical roles,a strong sense of logic and formal proofs can be very useful which is why companies used to prefer STEM graduates. Furthermore, many STEM courses (such as Physics) include programming anyway.

C) HOWEVER ... having said all that logic is something that many people inherently have regardless of their degree course. Philosophy and linguistics are 'humanities' but they are the foundation of all science.

Maybe 'data science' is boring to you because you don't understand it, but a lot more 'humanities' students are capable of precision, pattern finding and enjoying it, than you think. All the materials are available online, so nothing stops any humanities graduate from self-learning in their free time and getting a graduate job. Maybe not a data scientist straight away but a data analyst, reporting and building dashboards.

I have recruited many, many people from many different backgrounds for various technical and non-technical roles. And actually coming back to @LauraAshleyDuvetCover comparing sources etc is incredibly important.

As a more 'senior' developer only 10% of my time is spent writing code and a lot of that is largely automated. Most of my time is spent researching, persuading people as to technical choices, explaining things to stakeholders.

The classic 'super logical' programmer who is a lone genius won't have an advantage for the 'majority' of technical roles. They wouldn't survive a hot minute in the modern environment. My first boss picked me from a non-technical role because of my other skills, I did one programming module at uni (not really a STEM degree) and then did Code First Girls + Udemy courses to self-learn. That impressed him and I have gone on to deeper more technical roles.

@OleMioSole - yet more ammunition for my argument that you don’t need a STEM degree for most of these roles… Yes of course there are plenty of historians perfectly capable of being logical. Most of them would far rather have studied history than physics. Hence being history graduates. Universities are supposed to be academic institutions, not places where lazy employers go fishing for people they should have trained themselves.

I think how degrees are seen has changed though.

In the past having a degree showed you had/could learn skills that would suit you for a graduate role and that you could be trained in it. Now companies have so many more graduates to choose from, so chances are that tech companies will go for ones who have some experience in coding. And that typically doesn't come from the humanities degrees, because it isn't a skill they focus on.

The classic 'super logical' programmer who is a lone genius won't have an advantage for the 'majority' of technical roles. They wouldn't survive a hot minute in the modern environment.

I flat shared with one for a long time. He (and I think many others), did well up to a point in terms of promotions and then got a bit stuck because they really didn't want to manage other people. He was once praised for his "elegant coding" so I do understand there's a creative side (and I do enough LaTeX to know you can get the same result in different ways).

I don't think the degree necessarily matters but the exposure. If you studied history but did your own self-learning I can't see any recruiter ignoring that.
I agree that universities are academic but at the same time it's expensive. It's not a question of employers being lazy, but it is graduates that want the jobs.

The bigger problem is why people with degrees that pride themselves on research skills seem to produce graduates with no clue on how to do basic research on graduate careers. The sheer number of people posting on here saying 'My DC has graduated and has no clue what to do'.... usually in humanities. Or maybe, they have, and its their mothers panicking and being overly anxious. Who knows.

I hate maths and science at school so no chance of me ever following a career in that field. My sister did a biology degree and works in a hospotal lab now

@Insommmmnia I do kinda get where they are coming from as of more women enter It the supply of labour will increase, so wages will go down ceteris paribus. Obviously this doesn’t mean women shouldn’t go into IT, but the concerns of some people are justified, as people ultimately are only concerned about themselves not others.

That's a very self-indulgent argument. The bulk of students are investing in higher education in order to get a decent, useful job, not for the privilege of delving into academia for its own sake. The crime is that many adults tell them that doing the latter is the best way to get the former. It works for some, but many are wasting their time, getting into debt for an "experience" that won't get them a graduate-level job.

No it is not a self-indulgent argument. Don’t encourage people to do an academic degree if they are not academic. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Not all jobs in IT require you to code.

In fact most jobs now require you to interact with humans which is why some more numerate humanities degrees are better suited to tech careers. Plus those that have a design focus.

Just seen this and actually l couldn't agree more. Languages were my passion. Was in France last week explaining to my dd how when you book a room or a table in French or German you don't say there are 5 of us, it is we are 5. Or you aren't hungry, you have hunger etc. And how there is no word for the number 90 - fascinating. In my opinion anyway!!

I was good at maths and science and never once felt like they weren't for girls but I just wasn't as interested in them as I was in humanities and languages.

As an adult, I have realised that I am not very interested in how things work which is really the crux of STEM subjects. So for example I love reading novels but I am totally uninterested in finding out more about authors I enjoy. I love art galleries and museums but always skip the sections about "the making of the xxx". I have a medical condition but don't care when the consultant tries to explain what causes it, I just want to know what fixes it etc etc

The first part is true, and that's what I also said. You will have to self-learn, like I did, compared to having done a degree in it. But it wouldn't stop you.
'Why' would someone do a humanities degree you ask, and not STEM, if they were so sure?
Maybe because some of them have dreams and want a shot at them. I know many people who wanted to be historians, architects etc and then retrained in a 'technical' role. They don't regret it, because they gave it a shot. But they knew the trade-offs.

If you know for sure that you want a plum technical graduate role then don't do humanities. I do think I was a special case. I loved both equally and had I not been poor (got a partial scholarship on full fee as an international student) I'd have done some more 'fully' STEM and humanities. You know you can do Spanish and Computer Science????

But I know many others, especially women. Told that STEM was not for them and pushed out, later returning to it as their passion. By the way, I can manage people, but nothing gets my adrenaline pumping like solving a knotty problem. The spark of discovery.... it was certainly the same feeling I got in my humanities modules when I found a reference that proved my point exactly after many, many hours of digging.

I did not look at STEM vs humanities I looked for patterns, how it made me feel, and I found what I wanted in the vocation I have chosen. I need intellectual stimulation, I cannot just do a job which is just practical planning and organising, .

The second part - that was true in the past but not really now. With practice you can get 70% elegant code, and that's enough. ChatGPT can write better code, most modern IDE's have prompts and there's even AI like GitHub Co-pilot.

What's missing is people who can create a map in their head. Beyond their code, linking everything that happens all of the systems and translate that into code. And neatness, not of code but for the entire system so that an issue in any part can be detected....

Also @LauraAshleyDuvetCover probably not relevant but if one were to ask my true passion is probably languages. I speak 4, and I love knowing why things are the way there are.
I'm curious and nosy about everything though I want to know how they work. I'm stubborn and not satisfied with surface answers.

I find that people who have this trait regardless of degree do well in my role. There are plenty of STEM people who aren't scientists. They aren't curious and don't enjoy discovery.

Degrees do not “pride themselves” on research skills. Degrees are not people capable of feeling pride, nor are they nationally standardised professional qualifications. “History” at one university may be a completely different experience to “history” at another, and one history graduate will be very different from another. As for job hunting - I somehow suspect that some universities have better careers advice centres than others when it comes to advising how to compete for the more lucrative graduate jobs.