Economists weigh in on gender gap issues
Papers at the American Economic Association explore which would be more likely to lure women into male-dominated professions such as the sciences: altering public stereotypes or hiring more female faculty in those specialities? I won’t spoil the surprise found in Inside Higher Education. And then there’s the issue of whether mentoring women in academia works. Again, I won’t spoil the surprise.
January 5th, 2010 at 12:06 am
The common thread is motivation. The ultimate question is, given total freedom of choice of major, why aren’t women choosing STEM fields? For instance, the article mentioned that the number of women in engineering majors did depend to some extent on the presence of female faculty. I would be curious to know the underlying psychodynamics. Since you make more money in STEM fields, and the pay gap is such an issue, you would think that women who are good in Math and Science would be drawn to these fields. Yet they are not. Why not? And why does the presence of more female faculty make a difference? Would these women naturally choose STEM fields, but the presence of so many male faculty is a turnoff? After having predominantly female teachers in K-12, do they look down on either the ability or the prejudice of male professors and so bypass a major they would actually be interested in? Or are their “druthers” outside of STEM fields but they are willing to major in STEM only because of the pay they can get when they graduate? In that case, does the presence of female faculty make them feel less like they are selling out? And since so many boys are minimally motivated in K-12, if we understand the psychodynamics that affect the choices women make, could that knowledge suggest ways to encourage more boys to strive to do better in K-12 and graduate?