Thea wrote:
“A follow up study of highly mathematically gifted women who had decided on careers in engineering/physical science (classically “male” fields) found that a large fraction of them had quit by the age of 35 to pursue “more personally satisfying careers” in administration, social science, etc.
[...]
These two studies tell me two things: 1) we (both men and women) are responsible for the work-gender stereotypes, and 2) we are far from having dealt with the social causes of discrimination at work, to declare that small number of women in certain professions is a result of “personal choice”. Both make me think that a woman today needs to have a strong will (thick skin and confidence) in order to overcome these and be really “free” to choose.”

I agree with those two things, but I think there are other things to be learned or pondered here: 3) women moreso than men find satisfaction in working directly with people, and 4) women moreso than men feel it is acceptable to switch from “hard” science to social science. The way you have “personal choice” in quotes, and the way you talk about women needing to be brave enough to choose traditionally male careers, make me wonder if you think it CAN’T be truly a matter of the woman’s preference because, like, everybody knows physical science is a more serious, real, intelligent profession than social science, so everybody would stay in it unless driven out by sexism.

I think it is high time to increase men’s freedom to choose traditionally female careers, both to give men the same wide range of options that women are beginning to enjoy and to fill the vacancies in teaching, nursing, and childcare created by women choosing other careers.

Why are so few men interested in social science? Why is it considered unmanly to take a pay cut in order to do work that helps people? What can we do about the workplace culture of traditionally female professions to make men feel welcome? Is the small number of men in certain professions simply a matter of personal choice? I think those are some interesting questions that don’t get enough attention.

You might be interested in the story of how Carnegie Mellon University’s computer science department increased its female enrollment.

I have no solutions, but it’s nice to read others worrying at the same problem!

Regardless if son or a daughter (I have a son), I want my child to be able to think, to follow a logical argument, to try to understand the other person’s point of view (to empathize), to be nurturing. I do not think I will be able to protect my son from the stereotyping of the outside world (TV or no TV) – it seems that above the age of 7 kids are more influenced by their peers rather than parents. So the ability to think could come in handy. No idea now to nurture self-confidence though – I seemed to have been born with it, and some people claim that the ability to develop into a self-confident person is largely innate (that is if you don’t have it nurture makes little difference).

If I do have a daughter, I might try to make her stronger (either in the “thick skin”/”self-confidence” sense or the “look-at-life-philosophically”). It takes many years for change to really set in, and even today, even in the western world, women need to fight against at least subconscious stereotypes.

As a woman scientist, two findings made a big impression on me:

1) If you take a journal article and ask scientists to evaluate it, both men and women would rate the article higher if the name of the first author was male rather than female, irrespective of the actual merit of the article.

2) A follow up study of highly mathematically gifted women who had decided on careers in engineering/physical science (classically “male” fields) found that a large fraction of them had quit by the age of 35 to pursue “more personally satisfying careers” in administration, social science, etc. A similar study of women opting out of information technology jobs (again a typically male field), found that one of the reasons quoted was “interest incompatibility” – among them the fact that women felt excluded from the general culture at work.

These two studies tell me two things: 1) we (both men and women) are responsible for the work-gender stereotypes, and 2) we are far from having dealt with the social causes of discrimination at work, to declare that small number of women in certain professions is a result of “personal choice”. Both make me think that a woman today needs to have a strong will (thick skin and confidence) in order to overcome these and be really “free” to choose.

And finally getting rid of job “discrimination” (being able to tell apart or distinguish between people) is not what I want. I want parents (regardless of weather mothers of fathers) to be treated differently at work — explicitly to be allowed to take more time off to take care of their children, part or full time, over those important first few years, without penalty of loosing the job or forgetting about any career prospects …

Sorry for the long (and somewhat tangential) arguments.

Thea

Those are great recommendations for raising boys – and for raising girls, for that matter.