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...years, researchers have struggled to understand why so many women leave careers in science and engineering. Theories run the gamut, from family-unfriendly work schedules to innate differences between the genders. A new paper by McGill University economist Jennifer Hunt offers another explanation: women leave such jobs when they feel disgruntled about pay and the chance of promotion. In other words, they leave for the same reasons...
That's not simply because women are exiting the workforce to raise families: even women who continue to work leave engineering at a higher than expected rate. About 21% of all graduates surveyed were working in a field unrelated to their highest college degree. That proportion held steady for both men and women. Yet in engineering, there was a gap: about 10% of male engineers were working in an unrelated field, while some 13% of female engineers were. Women who became engineers disproportionately left for other sectors...
...surveys Hunt analyzed let respondents indicate why they were working outside their field, suggesting options such as working conditions, pay, promotion opportunities, job location and family-related reasons. As it turned out, more than 60% of the women leaving engineering did so because of dissatisfaction with pay and promotion opportunities. More women than men left engineering for family-related reasons, but that gender gap was no different than what Hunt found in nonengineering professions. "It doesn't have anything to do with the nature of the work," says Hunt. (See iPhone apps for new moms...
Nonetheless, she concludes that focusing on making engineering jobs more family-friendly - by offering flexible work schedules, say - misses an important part of the mark. If we desire to keep women working as engineers, whether for their sakes or society's (since engineers tend to be useful to the U.S. economy), then a better focus may be creating work environments where women feel more able to climb the career ladder...
...promising. Commanding General Stanley McChrystal promised a "government in a box" that would unwrap itself as soon as the Taliban were tossed from town, but several U.S. civilian aid workers told me that the Afghan ministries were slow off the mark and hadn't yet arrived. The real work of winning Marjah hadn't really begun. (See pictures of Person of the Year 2009 runner-up General Stanley McChrystal...