Gender and Career Choice

This is definitely very interesting data. But there are several issues with the analysis:

> Using a statistical measure called r-squared, we determined that the male/female mix within a career is on average about 31% explained by the fact that men and women have different interests. What this means is that about two-thirds of discrimination is explained by other factors.

Not "discrimination" in that last sentence, but "difference". Perhaps this was unintentional, and "discrimination" is meant in some obtuse technical sense. But to most people "discrimination" means intentionally unfair treatment. The data they show - again, very interesting data - does not show anything about discrimination.

edit: a second major issue is that they don't normalize the likes, or at least don't mention that they do. The likes are not limited, in other words, one can like 1,000 careers, and work in just 1. That would appear to show that person wanted to work in all those careers, but didn't, showing a "gap".

A more normalized measure could let each person only like one career, say. Again, maybe they did this, but it isn't stated, and generally "likes" are not limited.

This post would be much more informative and useful if similar statistics were included for men. If the porportion interested in a subject, but not entering it (versus the porportion interested and entering it) was higher for one gender than the other, then it would suggest that one gender faced more difficulties in attaining success in that field than the other. If the proportion of one gender with (similar) credentials in a given field, but without employment in this specific field (which they have a stated desire for), then it would even stronger evidence that there were some obstacles with gender-specific impacts.

From what I can understand of this piece's evidence, it only shows that many women want to be civil engineers, but do not go into that field. Anecdotally, I know many men who would have liked to be engineers, and did not succeed. I am left wondering whether there are a large number of men and women who would have liked to go through years of agony in post-secondary education, to end up in front of a computer all day with few social interactions; if so, what are the differences in preferences, dedication, and outcomes for the genders (as there are likely to be many).

edit: It would also be interesting to see the impact of age on preferences and employment, to see whether younger women were more likely to achieve their preferred employment, and whether preferences varied with age.

edit2: It would also be useful to know how many careers each individual 'liked'. It is possible that (of the population surveyed) one gender 'liked' more jobs than the other, and so is less likely to be employed in any specific 'liked' career.

*I initially misunderstood the data presented in the article (see brighteyes' comment below), but would still like to see the gender separated data for interest, credentialling, and employment.

My daughter is a cook, working toward maybe being a chef in the future - or some other mechanism for creating a satisfying career in food. When she got her first job as a full-time professional cook, it took days for others working there to figure out that she wasn't front-of-house, dealing with customers, but was actually there to cook.

Professional kitchens are "sausage fests". Part and parcel with this is kitchens filled with rampant sexism, female objectification, and basically an uncomfortable working environment for the women who dare work there. And unlike a big corporate job with real HR, making a stink about the hostile and sexist working conditions puts your job, even your career on the chopping block.

I'm not sure they really went deep enough to look at the external factors. For instance, the difference as related to pilots can be traced back to the military where most pilots get their training.

Also, focusing on one section, here are some interesting stats:

  Job Stats
  2014
  http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm      total   women
  Preschool and kindergarten teachers      664 K   97.2%
  Elementary and middle school teachers  3,102 K   80.9%

In 2007, about a third of public middle school science teachers either did not major in the subject in college and/or are not certified to teach it.

36 percent of public middle school math teachers in 2007 either did not major in the 1 subject in college and/or are not certified to teach it.

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c1/tt01-08.htm

I still contend that those statistics combine to hinder young girls from desiring a career in STEM. If the teachers don't value the field enough to major in it when they will be teaching it, you are getting some strange signals. They also don't get the influence of male teachers and a demonstration of men and women working together. Shoot for 50 / 50 teacher ratios and push STEM degrees in teaching and the mix in STEM will even out. Its a little late in the children forming a self identity to try to fix it later in life.

Completely meaningless statistics without factoring in the experience and education of the people surveyed. It's one thing to say you're interested and another to go through the effort required [0].

I'm interested in being a pilot - but I lack any of the education or credentials to actually become a pilot. So my interest compared to the possibility of employment would be meaningless.

How many of the females are interested in Engineering but majored in Gender or Women's Studies and effectively slashed any chances they had of working as an engineer? Surveying for level of education and major (if applicable) as well as previous work experience would make the apparent disparity more meaningful. Now, whether or not their choice of education (and thus chance of employment) was due to a gender bias or gender discrimination is another question.

[0] https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/11...

Opportunities to pursue interests != career choice

A lot of things are interesting to a lot of people. That does not mean they are competent in it to make it a viable career.

In other words, even if I "think" I like something, doesn't mean I'm actually going to thrive in that occupation in the real world.

I used to play for local soccer teams. That did not translate to Ronaldo-level paychecks.

Another example: I used to be uber-good at math. Does that mean that I'll survive the stresses of HFT? I don't think that's a guarantee. Those environments are brutal, full of abuse. It is a necessity in those environments. If I (a person, regardless of my gender) cannot survive that environment, I should not be taking that job...and not be expecting to do so either.

I think many women completely miss the point that fairness is just equal opportunity to pursue your interests.

"Just because you are interested" is not reason enough to land those jobs/careers. You need to work for it....just like any other man. Welcome to equality!

>the correlation between the mix of men and women in a career with the self-reported interest in that career is 0.56

Low quality research detected. Self-reported interest in a trendy subject is a poor way to evaluate genuine dedicated interest in that subject.

This ignores the fact that discrimination in a career field deters women from being interested in the field to begin with, creating a self-sustaining vicious cycle.

Within broad notions of a career, for example a "career in law" or a "career in medicine", we see much more equal numbers for men and women, but when we look at the jobs women actually have, we see that women occupy low status jobs (like paralegal and nurse) while men occupy high status jobs (like lawyer and doctor), indicating that interest is not a factor in gender gaps for specific professions.

It's disappointing to read hacker news comments on any article related to feminism, and this isn't an exception. The goal of more than a hundred years of feminist struggle isn't to change the rules of society in some arbitrary way so deontological goals are adhered to, but women are not actually equal members of society. The goal is to create an actually equal society. Anything less is a failure, and if you argue for that, you are arguing against feminism.

In case it wasn't obvious, the word "female" is an adjective, and referring to a group of people by an adjective instead of a noun has a demeaning connotation in English, especially when it's primarily used for one group and not another.

Notice how the word "male" is only mentioned in this article as an adjective ("male/female mix", "male/female interests"), but "females" is often used as a synonym for "women" ("% of females", "people likely to trust females", "females in career", "likes from females"). "Female" is not a drop-in replacement for "women".

> Using "female" in this way is contrary to how we generally communicate. As noted above, "female" as a noun erases the subject—making "female" the subject of the sentence. In the most technical sense, it's correct, but by employing this word that is usually an adjective as a noun, you're reducing her whole personhood to the confines of that adjective. It's calling someone "a white" instead of a white person, "a black" instead of a black person, and so on.[0]

Not really trying to judge this article—it's been a while since I've dealt with research jargon, and I can't judge whether referring to groups as adjectives like this is standard practice in that field. And the Jezebel article I've linked to even mentions that "females" has a clinical feel, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's standard in this setting. But this bias is pretty prevalent in everyday speech and is worth being aware of and trying to prevent.

[0]: http://jezebel.com/the-problem-with-calling-women-females-16...

I question the credibility of this article. There are factors missing in this analysis, education for instance. I am also weary of an article based on `self-reported interest.`

Is there a way to see more of the data? I was curious to see what their data was for tech, but I couldn't find it.