Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field? | Hacker News Reader

Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field?

hbr.org

51 pointssaycheese65 comments

I think it's a little unfair to single out engineering. A lot of jobs with large salaries tend to skew towards men:

Women are only 16% of mergers and acquisitions lawyers (the big time money guys): https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/bclbe/Women_in_M_and_A(1)...

Women are still only 32% of physicians in 2010, despite "large advances": https://thinkprogress.org/despite-growing-number-of-female-d...

Women make up 5% of stock traders, hedge fund managers: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/06/19/would-more-...

Women are only 14.6% of CEOS, 8.1% of top earners, and 4.6% of fortune 500 CEOS: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2014/0...

Question, is that money a guarantee for you, or you risk to lose everything by entering these fields?

Now the question is: do these fields discriminate against women? Do women just not prefer these fields? Or do men crowd into high-paying fields?

One claim I've seen mentioned all over the place is that pay goes down when women enter a previously male-dominated field [0]. Sure, that's one way of looking at it. Was the question asked that men are actually leaving a field because the pay is going down?

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over...

Anyone who has studied at a university knows that on average women do not in fact prefer those fields.

Especially male tech students are still mocked and looked down upon by females in prestigious subjects like law and medicine.

The emperor has no clothes here (though only children can say that with impunity).

I'll take (e) All of the above.

There is strong evidence that women do not prefer these fields. There is also strong evidence that high pay is much more important for men than it is for women, so men will take less fulfilling jobs (and push harder and take more risks).

There is also some evidence of discrimination, though I haven't seen any evidence that it is stronger than in other fields, that it is systematic rather than individual. Certainly a lot of what is currently being claimed as horrible discrimination in tech doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Women also make up a low percentage of janitors, coal minors, construction workers, and landscapers.

I don't know where to find data supporting it but my hunch is there is not a great divide between women and men employed as janitors (aka custodial workers).

There isn't we just call them maids.

Granted it's usually less labor intensive than some custodian duties.

As far as construction, land scaling and mining well for the most part it's due to sexual dimorphism.

The average women has considerably lower upper body strength than they average man.

Jobs that involved throwing 60lbs bags of cement or fertilizer over ones shoulder aren't going to bode well for most women.

Interesting though.

If a women isn't a CEO or engineer, we assume women are unfairly being discriminated against. If a women isn't a low value job, we assume they aren't biologically ideal for it.

It might be that they are not biologically ideal for both for different reasons.

That said it doesn't mean there is no discrimination either.

Good point. I got the data from here: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf

34% of janitors and building cleaners are women but 89% of the maids and housekeeping cleaners. 34% is a little lower than I would've guessed but I suspect cleaners in hotels are categorized as housekeeping rather than building cleaners.

>Women are still only 32% of physicians in 2010, despite "large advances": https://thinkprogress.org/despite-growing-number-of-female-d....

Important difference between engineering and medicine is that they seem to be graduating at similar level [1], is this low number is due to a similar phenomenon of women dropping out mid-career. Given they seem to be graduating at similar level [1]. Pay can be attributed to women choosing to pursue less specialization. why is this the case?

1. http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/medical-school-graduate...

Babies. The reproductive division of labor is real. Whether it is good or bad can be debated by childless students in sociology classes across the globe but, in the end, parents make the decision that seems right for them. This often puts the childcare with the women and income generation with the men. This is more efficient than an even split.

Many couples decide to have children in the late twenties, early 30's. This is prime time for specialization in medicine. Hard to get ahead when you're balancing childcare with your career, it's basically like having 2 careers. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's a pressure.

Of course, as things get less economically scarce, there are things like daycare, nannies, etc. that help with childcare and make it easier for women to work.

Even women that want nothing to do with childcare often have to leave work for 12 months or so, some take even a longer break.

Multiply it by 2-3 times and on average a woman has 3-4 years less than a man in her resume at 35-40 it can amount to 25-30% of your career since at that age it's likely not to be much longer than 15 years at that point.

A quote I'd like to highlight from the article:

However, women, more often than men, add that they want to become socially responsible engineers, working to solve major problems and making a difference in people’s lives—which is consistent with other research showing that women are significantly more likely than their male counterparts to be interested in engineering work that is “socially conscious” (i.e., specializations such as environmental vs. electrical engineering).

This seems to be reflected across a lot of different gender-skewed occupations. Women seem to be attracted to fields that are either focused on the environment or care work. Fields that are either heavy industry, financial, or environmentally damaging tend to be male-dominated. It seems to me like men simply place a higher priority on making a lot of money than women do.

Is this a difference in mating strategy?

An alternative hypothesis - it's a difference in socialization, where women are taught that it's not okay to be ambitious for ambition's sake, and so they need a "purpose" to justify career success.

I definitely think there's something to your hypothesis that people are suspicious of women who are ambitious for ambition's sake. But then, I think we're suspicious of men for the same reasons. We expect a certain level of ambition out of men as part of their traditional role as a provider. When they stray too far beyond that they run the risk of being branded greedy or even sociopathic.

I don't think we can get around the fact that women simply don't need to earn a lot of money in order to attract a mate. Sure, lots of men can attract mates without making a lot of money but it's not as easy.

Socialization behaviors are often heavily skewed by human sexuality and mating motivations, though. Whether we like it or not, men and women DO have different body parts and different reproductive roles, and that DOES effect social behavior.

Serious question: Wouldn't it be less sexist to just stop caring and reporting on this stuff?

If I were a woman and I saw that only a low percentage of people in the field were women... I think that'd be discouraging for me. So, at this point, what's the benefit of reporting on it? I don't think we gain any actionable data from the data.

I'd be more in favor or just saying, "Whoever you are... just do what you're good at, do what you enjoy, and do what pays well... it'll be a struggle to find the combination of those things you can live with in the jobs that are available... so really just focus on yourself and don't worry about anyone else."

I always figured this sort of problem would be better solved in primary school. When I was 5 I was under the impression women were Teachers and shop workers etc. And that women don't like computers. Anything related to computers was nerdy and geeky. Had school had broken down those barriers maybe more girls would have gone down different paths in life.

I wonder if generational wealth has any affect on CEO/physician/hedge fund manager rates. And if there is a gender bias in generational wealth to begin with.

Yes, there is. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/5768075...

One of my coworkers, when he thinks people aren't doing a good job, calls them ladies or girls. He also doesn't listen to the women on our team, insists on pair programming with them if he has shared assignments with them instead of splitting those assignments into subtasks like he does with the other guys, and is in general a nice dude to the other guys and treats the women like they're junior. If the rest of the men on the dev team behaverd like that, I honestly bet there would be no women on our team. I'm not sure how to approach him about it, but the women we work with don't seem to want to take assignments with him or interact with him, for fairly obvious reasons I guess.

sexism aside, that's textbook un-professional behavior and i wouldn't accept it from a female calling people little boys as a pejorative, either.

tell your manager about it. it's part of the manager's job to deal with stuff like this. if your manager refuses to do anything about it, either tell your coworker yourself or leave.

Trouble is, we are a fifteen person startup and my boss is a friend of that guy's from way back. I honestly would feel odd mentioning it. There's no way to couch it in "what if a hypothetical person..." because he's known this guy for longer than the company has existed.

By passively accepting this situation your are part of the problem. Morality aside, your coworker that denigrates employees by calling them girls is opening your 15 person startup to justifiable lawsuits (discrimination and hostile work environment) that could easily shut it down.

The fact that the main problem source is friends with your boss makes it a more challenging conversation, but in no way alleviates your responsibility of having it.

Sit down and talk with the boss. Sure, he may find it harder to intervene when it's a friend, but he may also have a lot more leverage over a friend than he would over an average employee - namely, the threat of shaming among their shared friends.

The problem I'm having with it is he has to know this guy does this. It's not exactly subtle or I likely would not have noticed. He's been in the room before when it happened, and the two of them go out for drinks on Fridays and such all the time. I think it is not a problem for him or he would have pulled the guy aside and told him.

You should probably find a new startup to join/start.

That's my plan actually. Once I have nothing to lose I'm going to tell the guy he's being an asshole to the women engineers and ask if he'd consider not doing that because it's a shitty way to treat anyone. Preferably with boss present.

He may be in denial about other people's perceptions. You talked about bringing it up after you have an escape plan - make sure you're bringing it up with the boss too.

I have handled situations similar to that. I took them aside and pointed out which behaviors were inappropriate and that they risked accusations of sexism if they continued. I didn't have to in my situation but if it were necessary (e.g. they didn't alter their behavior and management wouldn't step in) I wouldn't hesitate to do a little public shaming. For example at assignment time or when you see him insisting on pair programming calling it out right in front of everyone: "You only seem to insist on pair programming with our female colleagues. That behavior appears sexist and reflects badly on the rest of us and you need to stop."

Low pay,shitty benefits, demands to work long hours.

My wife makes HALF of what I make at the SAME employer. She does semiconductor and microelectronics back-end process engineering. I do RF/Microwave circuit design.

She transferred divisions a couple of years ago. In her old division (mine) there were TWO female engineers out of probably 100.

It's not constrained to woman though, as 80% of those who graduate with an engineering degree are no longer practicing engineering by 40 years old.

She wants to quit every day. We can easily live off my salary, but the additional salary is good for college savings (2 kids) and retirement savings.

She want's to quit and quilt full time; yes quilt. She is really good at that, applying all the engineering knowledge to CNC quilting, tricky geometry on piecing, etc.

May have to do with woman, in general, being more risk averse than men. Also less agressive for self promotion. At my employer, you must promote yourself and make your argument in front of a review panel.

What do you do?

> I do RF/Microwave circuit design

Thanks. (It was edited in.)

> Kimberly wrote, “Two girls in a group had been working on the robot we were building in that class for hours, and the guys in their group came back in and within minutes had sentenced them to doing menial tasks while the guys went and had all the fun in the machine shop.”

I see this all the time. Women don't feel able to confront men about things like this. Without speculating as to why, I'll say that when I've seen women hit back ("like a man would") it often works. It sucks but you sort of have to engage men on their level, which means meeting aggression with aggression. People are always going to try to take advantage of each other, and men respect aggression.

Note that this is a self-report. Without actual data, it loses a large part of its significance.

Here is my self-report (also admittedly insignificant) -- when I was at college doing machine shop projects, there would be few girls who would enthusiastically volunteer for the machine shop. So the guys would have some misguided chivalrous instinct to say "Okay, I'll do the machine shop work", because they thought they were expected to. Even most American men I know today would be diffident about saying something like, "Hey Jessica, I notice you've been signing up for doing reports for the last two projects; do you want to work in the machine shop for this one instead while I do the reports?"

The outcome of this is the exact same as your reported incident, but the motivations are different. My solution would be to make sure women know that they are expected and encouraged to sign up for tasks involving a lot of physical labor and possibly danger (a machine shop isn't the safest of places, even with all the precautions).

Social attitudes can make a lot of difference, and the traditional social attitude in the US heavily favors males doing physically demanding and "dirty" tasks more than women. This affects both men and women when splitting up tasks, but it is somewhat unfair to blame it on dated stereotypes of men.

Very well put! I see a lot of situations like these that certainly have multiple and nuanced interpretations being consistently interpreted (and vastly overinterpreted) in one direction.

I am little tired of this. The research is interesting but there should be more consideration for alternate hypotheses.

There is lot of evidence that girls are biologically wired to prefer people jobs, while boys prefer jobs with things. I really recommend Steven Pinker talk: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw

But even if this was cultural, who are we to dictate preferences of people? I think the whole nature vs nurture debate is a non-sequitur.

The article talks specifically about three reasons:

1. Self-doubt. It's well known that it affects girls more. But maybe it's how the brain presents risk-aversion to us? Or maybe it's actually needed for the job? Computers can be unforgiving.

2. Assholes. Sexism goes both ways. I label an asshole as an asshole, a girl might generalize it to "men are sexist".

3. Interesting work. Not much people in computing do world-changing work, you have to fight for it. It seems to me that there was a tacit expectation that someone will bring interesting work to you, which is IMHO false. The fact is nobody is preventing those girls to have a Github account.

I am all for removing barriers, but at some point, when we just can't see any, we will have to declare that it is a matter of personal preferences. If people are indeed happier in some other job, why not just call it a day?

By the way, research shows that guys think they are more intelligent while girls think they are less intelligent than they really are. I would like to propose a theory of why intelligent girls have more doubts about their intelligence than intelligent guys.

High intelligence is an asset. You don't want your competition (in social situation) to know that you're smart. So it's generally better for you to believe you're not that smart, yet be in reality.

However, for males, this is different; they need to show off to attract females. So they need to display their intelligence (because it's a desirable trait) despite the above. That's why they act as they were smarter than they really are.

It's similar to why in many birds, males are often wildly colored, while females have masking similar to the environment.

> it’s been estimated that nearly 40% of women who earn engineering degrees either quit or never enter the profession.

Fantastic! That's much, much better than the 73% rate of college graduates not entering the field of their major https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/...

Of course, maybe men in STEM have an even lower rate. IDK, and this article certainly doesn't seem to know that important piece of data either.

Comparing engineering-only numbers to all-graduates numbers is not useful. All-graduates numbers are strongly affected by the very low number of jobs available for most humanities and (to a lesser extent) social sciences majors.

This article doesn't have numbers on men leaving the engineering workforce, but this one [1] does. The numbers aren't exactly comparable, since it doesn't count people that never even start working in engineering, and is from 2009. It claims about 10% of men leave engineering by age 30, compared to around 25% of women.

[1] http://machinedesign.com/editorial-comment/more-women-leave-...

Here is a short story about this. My wife has a computer science degree, but has since left the field to become a teacher. She worked at Foxit in software test before we got married. When we got married she moved to live with me. She doesn't like working with computers much, so she got a job at an after school program as a teacher. That went well, now she is going to school to get her teaching credential. For a while she talked about staying in software since the pay is better than in teaching. I like engineering and make enough money for both of us to have what we need. I think everyone should have a job they enjoy.

Why would someone who doesn't like working with computers much get a computer science degree?

Perhaps she was interested in computer work more like what she did while pursuing her degree but isn't interested in it if it means more of the QA-type work she did at Foxit. But if she finds teaching engaging, that's certainly also good for society, the field needs more engaged teachers with a STEM background and mindset, even if they're not teaching a STEM class per se.

She didn't know what to study, and one of her friends was studying computer science.

I found it fascinating that the question we're asking is wrong. It shouldn't be "Why do women leave engineering?" it should be "Why do men stay in higher proportions?". It seems that being arrogant makes working as an engineer more palatable. I know I suffer from this problem and many of the men I know in engineering do too. So between dealing with self-doubt (the imposter syndrome) and being around a bunch of oblivious ego maniacs, why would anyone stick around?

Honestly, this article just fed my confirmation bias. I have (ashamedly) believed that the reason there were so few women around me in engineering (specifically software engineering) is because they were too smart to be lured into the mind-numbing, sedentary, OCD-laden field by money alone. Leaving the number of women in the field approximately the same as the number of men who genuinely enjoy it. The rest of us are just out for a paycheck that most women deem "not worth it" (especially if the pay is not equal -- separate but related issue). I know that there are many cases that are not this simplistic, but in my experience, I have only seen women leave teams I was on for the same reasons as men (better position/pay elsewhere). I have never seen or heard of any Mad Men style harassment or the like in my immediate environment. I'm not sure if the coloration I have of normalcy is skewed by my experience or if the coverage of the gender gap has colored everyone else's. I'm sure this is what we're all asking ourselves in this industry the more this topic is covered. Regardless, it seems that we can't have these kinds of conversations as a country until pay is equal.

Here's a question: Which sex of all the sexually dimorphic animals on the Earth can give birth?

Answer: Females.

The simple answer to all these bait questions is that women can and do have children, which is time consuming and whether people deny it or not, mothers are far more integral in raising a child than fathers.

Naturally, spending less time in the workplace leads to them falling behind even though they might have started on equal or greater footing as their male counterparts.

IIRC, there's a study that women 20-30 make far more money than their male counterparts.

This difference reverses later in life

Link? I'm really interested in learning more about it.

Then why is this trend so different between disciplines? And why does it impact STEM and higher-salary jobs more? What about in other countries, like Malaysia, where IIRC there are more women in engineering (or at least computer science)?

You might want to revisit your thinking.

Most women I know with professional jobs hire nannies as soon as their leave from work is up regardless of field. This isn't about kids.

Did you read the article? It's about a study that found persistent issues that started happening while the subjects were still in college.

Yes, career trajectories can be impacted by childcare. But that doesn't explain everything. Other cultures where sexism isn't as prevalent (e.g. Soviet Russia, which despite all of its failings did impressive engineering), we don't see these kinds of statistics.

Why is it so hard to accept that sexism exists, and that it has a negative impact?

I am from Czech Republic and I assure you, the feminist ideas here are much less prevalent than in the West (i.e. sexism is more prevalent). I think it's also true for Russia, India, etc. It's probably because women have less good options in those countries why they put up with being in IT.

I think it should be considered that all the talk about sexism in IT causes confirmation bias in people and they are more likely to falsely attribute their decisions to it.

While I think the article is primarily a collection on anecdotes the number describing the issue are amazing:

> Women make up 20% of engineering graduates, but it’s been estimated that nearly 40% of women who earn engineering degrees either quit or never enter the profession. Clearly, some elementary and high school reforms are working, but those at the college level are not.

There is obviously a mismatch. I'm wondering however to what extent the issue is at the receiving engineering job market end and what can be attributed to the pushing school side? A lot positive can be said about scholarly achievements of women but we all know there always has been limited correlation of grades with any genders success in job. Maybe some women are directed towards engineering, succeeding initially when they are faced with school type exercises? Maybe the selection at university is tuned to be hard for men and works indirectly as a selection for other traits than math?

In any case considering the magnitude of numbers I'd like to see a breakdown of where women exit. University, first year at job, 5 years and after first child. The article does not help here.

There are obviously many factors here, but one major one is

> women, more often than men, add that they want to become socially responsible engineers, working to solve major problems and making a difference in people’s lives—which is consistent with other research showing that women are significantly more likely than their male counterparts to be interested in engineering work that is “socially conscious” (i.e., specializations such as environmental vs. electrical engineering).

Electrical engineering and computer science and similar fields are, for the most part, just not a great fit for people with such aspirations. There are some nonprofits in the area, of course, but overall the industry is very profit-oriented. Most of us optimize ad revenue or something like that. We spend most of our days writing code instead of interacting with people whose lives we improve.

And yet, a significant portion of the comments on HN when this topic comes up:

  * Claim that there is no problem, and/or
  * Condemn any action to address this as anti-egalitarian because it treats men and women differently

I do my very best to treat people equally. For me, that is done simply by to focusing on what it takes to get the job done, trying to not be an asshole, and expecting everyone I work with to do the same. Is there more to it than than?

If some people don't want to put any effort into making society more just, that's fine. Just so long as they don't get in the way of people that do, or take pot shots from the sidelines without offering any alternatives.

I think the topic about equsl pay is much more heated than why women arent into engineering. To be honest, engineering is a lie. You are hired as a upgraded mechanic and they want to pay you as cheaply as possible. Nobody cares if your talented, creative or have a great personality. The ideal programmer shutsup, is efficient, is free and provides more than the customer asks.

The reason why women dont get into engineering is probably associated to their disgust with that kind of work. "Intelligence" means nothing when you only have enough power that your boss gives you. Aka, enough power to do your work or get replaced

Any studies looking at the career trajectories of self-taught developers? Not to equate web development with actual engineering or whatever, but I think it would be interesting.

My initial impression is that if you have the motivation to self-teach you have the motivation needed to breeze past anyone going to university. You'll see a higher rate of acceptance into the job market vs college grads.

On another hand I don't think you'll only be looking at web-devs. Self study is everywhere: machining, mechanics, and other engineering like low level firmware work.

No colleges teach "important" skills like "how do I make this 300k line C program compile into a binary under 512k" or "how do I write this program so that it can run on this 50kHz CPU".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com