Recently, the Globe and Mail sought readers’ opinions on getting more women into male-dominated professions, the sciences in particular. According to the article, more Canadian men than women pursue a career in the sciences. While the numbers are closer for those who study science in university (“less than 40 percent” are women), after graduation the discrepancy widens when it comes to employment (“less than 22 percent”).
The writers don’t offer any explanation for this gap. However, the piece’s title, “How can we encourage more girls into science careers?” suggests a tacit assumption. “We” (whoever that is) are not doing enough to promote science careers to young women.
Education, parents, media, marketing, and whatever else constitutes “we” might very well be guilty of persuading women that science is for men. It’s hard to say; the article provides no evidence, which is to be expected considering it never states the claim explicitly anyway.
Since we’re in speculating mode, I can come up with a few other reasons for the gender difference in employment. Please bear in mind that we’d need actual research to substantiate any of these.
- Older people have more of a gender gap than younger people
- It wouldn’t surprise me if accounting for age or length of time in the field changes the way we understand the data. If recent numbers show less of a gap among science graduates, it’s likely that we’ll see less of a gap in employment once the older generation retires.
- Women have babies
- Yes, I know. More men are staying home with their kids these days, and that’s great if that’s what both partners want. However, I’d guess it’s still more common for women to stay home out of choice and/or tradition. More importantly, many women get pregnant, which requires at least some time off. Creating a human being is hard work, but not the kind you can put on your CV (unless you’re creating a homunculus in a lab). Even with the most supportive family, childbearing can put women behind in their careers when compared to their childless counterparts, including men. The more children you have, the further behind you will fall. A male commenter on the Globe article made this point quite well.
- Employers are sexist
- Not all employers are sexist. Obviously. But unless things have changed drastically since 2012, many employers have an implicit bias that they might not even be aware of. One study gave potential science mentors the exact same student application, but changed the name from male to female on half of them. They discovered that a gender bias really does exist: “Results found that the ‘female’ applicants were rated significantly lower than the ‘males’ in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.”
These are just a few possible roots of the gender gap. Luckily, it does appear to be shifting. So yay.
Now here’s an issue nobody talks about in these discussions: why is no one encouraging boys to enter female-dominated professions? Where are the articles decrying the lack of men in nursing, social work, counseling, event planning, or teaching?
To be fair, earlier this year, Business Insider did note which jobs tend to employ more women than men. However, the brief article was bereft of the sense of alarm so often used to highlight the relative lack of women in traditionally masculine fields.
So why the paucity of interest in getting men into traditionally feminine careers? Let’s speculate some more.
- Work traditionally viewed as masculine is more highly valued than work viewed as feminine
That’s the only reason I can think of. The work that women have done traditionally just doesn’t garner the same level of respect, as evidenced by the higher salaries often received for many masculine jobs.
The respective valuation of traditionally masculine and feminine work may be the real crux of ongoing gender inequality in the labour force. Today’s movement encourages women to be like men. On a large scale, “we” still tend to value masculine things over feminine things. The goal is to raise women up to the level of men, because women’s work does not have the same social standing, no matter how much it contributes to our health and economic function (e.g. social work or primary education).
In other words, it’s great to encourage women to do the same work as men. But we won’t have true equality until men can do the same work as women, without losing their social standing.