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(Caveat: This post is all terribly subjective and refers largely to my own experiences and perspective, and those of my peers. Feel free to fold, spindle or mutilate at will. Given the topic, I've concentrated on the problems faced by females who move into traditionally "male" subjects, but I'd like to make it clear that I recognize the equivalent difficulties faced by boys and men trying to move into "female" roles. Oh, and this is all about the way things are in limeyville, okay? YMMV.)
I'm going to take the matter of why women leave these industries as read, since it has been addressed by previous posters (and they've done a better job than I would have anyway). Instead, I'm going to concentrate on looking at some of the reasons why women fail to enter the industries in the first place.
1: Who wants to study this crap anyway?
Science and technology, in general, suffer from huge image problems. Engineers all wear greasy overalls, computer scientists are all comic-reading, overgrown teenagers, bio-technologists all want to turn us into huge luminous tomatosheep: not sexy. This is due in part to the woeful state of science and technology reporting (or mis-reporting), which in turn is due to a deep and unnecessary schism between arts'n'humanites folk and science geeks. (But that's a whole 'nother rant.)
2: Boy's toys, boy's games.
Girls are not encouraged by society to take up science subjects. Gender stereotypes start in the maternity ward, and then they get worse. A girl may face strong, even violent opposition from her family. Even if her parents are scrupulously nonsexist, others are unlikely to be so even-handed. Many adults, even complete strangers, will go out of their way to criticize a child or young person who they deem to be straying outside their gender role. The girl may also face ostracism and/or bullying from her peers. (She's playing boy's games! Eurrghh!)
It's also worth pointing out that while girls are doing better and better at A-level, this is not reflected at university entry.
3: Wot-- no teachers?
The school system is not oriented towards science-based subjects. There is a lack of people to teach these subjects, or the mathematics that underpins them. This means that fewer youngsters will go on to a tech-oriented career. Even if a child shows an interest or aptitude for hard science, it's all too likely that the careers officer won't know what the hell to do with them.
4: Use it or lose it.
Fewer people going into the sciences at school means that fewer people will go into these subjects at degree level. Fewer people going into a subject means less money for the uni. Many universities have either downsized their technology departments, or closed them all together (excluding the ubiquitous Computer Science, which seems to have permeated every subject).
5: Your oscilloscope or your life.
A science & technology based course, particularly at degree level, is tough. It is stressful in the extreme, and requires an enormous amount of investment on the part of the student. This is not to say that other subjects require less work, rather that science & technology courses have their own very specific set of problems. They tend to rely very heavily on either lab-based practical work requiring expensive, high-maintenance equipment, or on computer-based work requiring expensive software. In either case, highly skilled technical staff are needed as well as lecturers.
These courses are expensive for the educational establishment to run and are not always lucrative in the short term. The budget for vital equipment is often inadequate. Staffing levels are generally well below desirable levels, even skeletal: more and more key lecturing staff now work on a part-time basis, technical staff tend to be overworked and undermotivated. Consequently, students have to compete for resources-- a piece of equipment, say, or the attention of a technician. This may sometimes put some females at a disadvantage: for instance, they may not have the forcefullness or confidence required to negotiate a fair share of avaliable resources, or they may be oversensitive to accusations of staff favouritism. Staff may tend to allocate resources more favourably to the gender that is "supposed" to be studying a given subject, and this seems particularly true of science and technology.
There may also be a tendency for staff and fellow students to regard a female student's success as less of a serious matter than her male collegues'. One often encounters a certain sense that a female student is less a priority than a curiosity.
6: Just one of the boys?
A female studying such a subject will almost certainly be in the minority, possibly even a minority of one. This can lead to feelings of isolation.
7: Who wants to study this crap anyway? (Part 2)
Your fellow feminists (and if you are a female pursuing a science and technology degree then you'd bloody better be a feminist; your second choice is probably "that chick who flunked out in the first year") might not be quite as supportive as you have previously supposed. While feminists will fight tooth and nail for the theoretical right of a woman to study, say, engineering, some feminists appear to view women who actually do move into a hard science with anything from polite bewilderment to outright hostility.
Sadly, the old stereotypes of male = thinking/science/left brain, female = feeling/intuition/right brain have been internalized by many. These ideas have become so ingrained that in the minds of a lot of people that they are accepted as axiomatic.
Now, if we've decided for the sake of argument that male = thinking/science/left brain, female = feeling/intuition/right brain, then it follows that feminist thought must oppose itself to any structure where empiricism and the scientific method are paramount, and must insist on structures based on the supposedly female traits of intuition and feeling. If you were any kind of a real feminist, the argument seems to go, you'd be doing women's lit. or gender studies, right? Something more right-brain, more intuitive. Not that hard-science stuff. That's so left-brain, so rigid, so... male. (She's playing boy's games! Eurrghh!)
However, I would put it to you that these perceived divisions are not based on fact. They are based on outmoded cultural assumptions propped up with the worst and laziest kind of pop-psychology. Sure, there are certain gender-related tendencies and aptitudes which are hard-wired into our brains, but that's all they are-- tendancies. Men and women are far more similar than they are different.
Well, that's how I see things anyway. I do hope any young women reading this won't be too horribly discouraged; however, if you're serious about a high-tech career, my dear, then I strongly suggest you learn German. I hear Munich's quite nice. |
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) and also to what she sees as a vast difference in the personality types of the people she works with here.