Can We Find a Match in a Math Career?
Hi friends of women in science,
Back on March 20, Chad Brooks of Business News Daily online resource wrote an article entitled, "Math Careers Just Don't Add Up For Women." He based the article on a study published in Psychological Science by researchers from Universities of Michigan and Pittsburgh. They found women did not choose mathematics because they had more choices that are more attractive, compared to men considering this option. Ming-Te Wang at University of Pittsburgh, a coauthor of the study, said, ""Our study shows that it's not lack of ability or differences in ability that orients females to pursue non-STEM careers, it's the greater likelihood that females with high math ability also have high verbal ability. Because they're good at both, they can consider a wide range of occupations."
The study considered data from 1490 US students surveyed both in senior year of high school ad later when they were 33 years of age. If students showed that they felt more able and more successful in math than in verbal abilities, they were more likely to go into STEM fields. If they were good at both, in their perceptions, they made much more diverse choices. That category included more women than men. So what should the savvy STEM recruiter do? Wang says, ""Educators and policymakers may consider shifting the focus from trying to strengthen girls' STEM-related abilities to trying to tap the potential of these girls who are equally skilled in both math and verbal domains." What we have been doing is to try to increase women's comfort with mathematics, but not addressing the fact that women who also excel verbally need to see more reasons to choose science, since they have more options.
Does this finding ring true to you? Do you think women students tend to excel at both verbal and mathematical abilities and thus have too many choices and are harder to entice into STEM fields? I would say my women students who go into science excel over-the-top in mathematics, regardless of their ability in verbal areas. I would guess that women with stellar math abilities get a lot of encouragement in liberal arts colleges like mine. I'd be curious to hear what university profs think about this issue.
cheers,
Laura
OK this isn't really new news, is it Laura? Didn't we always know girls got better grades in English, etc, but somehow that got discounted? And on SAT Verbal too, but again, in the excitement about a small difference in overlapping distributions that favors boys in math, we ignored the difference favoring girls in Verbal? So now, we rediscover this trend and voila! A new scheme to attract girls to science by (gasp) making it look more attractive rather than by providing assistance in math. Hmmm. Is this a career move by people who are looking to put on workshops, perhaps? Sorry for the cynicism!
FBP
Laura--
I think this is spot on. Women are much better writers and analysts in non-mathematical areas, so they are offered a lot of inducements to go in other directions. Math and Science need to offer more than barriers you might be able to overcome in order to increase the number of women choosing those fields.
LM
