Research suggests women uninterested in careers in hard science, engineering and IT

This article discusses recent studies indicating that, on the average, women select themselves out of careers in the hard sciences, engineering and information technology.

For example, one study, published in the Journal of Economic Psychology in November 2007, found that "...personal preference was the single largest determinative factor in whether women went into IT." The study found that that "preference accounted for about two-thirds of the gender imbalance" in information technology.

Another study of mathematically precocious men and women found that men were "much more likely to go into engineering or physical sciences than women," whereas women "were more likely to go into careers in medicine, biological sciences, humanities, and social sciences."

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Comments

This may be true but let's keep pumping in more money and shutting males out because this is just plain wrong and sexist! We CANNOT have more men in these fields because it will put the woman down! Women do not excell in these fields of study because...wait for it...men are to blame!!!

Maybe in the real world men and women are really different? Men and women have different desires to do different things?

www.move-off.org

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"women were more likely to go into careers in medicine"

do they mean more likely than men are to go into medicine? Sounds like B.S., besides it would depend on the specialty area. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of M.D.'s in the facilities I use are still men. And I recently walked across a medical school campus, on my way to one of those facilities; it was almost all men walking around the campus (of all age groups, i.e. teachers and students, etc)

-ax

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I wonder if the "medicine" category includes pharmaceuticals. One in three people that go into that market are women. They also get paid more than men (but I don't hear any uproar from the feminists in their campaign on equality).

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Why is there a pay gap in that area?

From what I hear most of them get burned out within a few years, but of course the female ones can get married (like to a doctor), retire, and have a kid.
-ax

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