Study find sexist hiring practices in STEM jobs

I don't agree with quotas or anything like that, providing supports and encouragement to explore different options is a different issue.

Its very hard to pinpoint how culture's change in society.

A good example is primary school teaching it had an almost god like status in Irish society at one stage I have even seen graves with ex NT written on the head stone, as the status of primary teaching fell in society the amount of males choosing it as a career fell and its become a largely female profession.

ectoraige wrote: »

By the time it comes to college it's way too late. Secondary level is probably the most important time to encourage female involvement, possible late primary education. Female role-models interested in STEM, and even more importantly female peers is what is needed. If there's one girl with an interest in, say chemistry, it's important for her to see other her age share a similar interest. There'll always be a certain number of strong-willed children who don't care what others are doing, but there's many more who do, and will ditch their fledgling interest for something more mainstream. It's not about making it pink, it's about allowing it to be something girls pursue.

I'm still struggling with a big why here though. I posted a link a few weeks back that showed that in pretty much every subject bar STEM women grads heavily outnumbered men. There's also a significant, well documented and officially ignored gender achievement gap in favour of girls at second level. To take it further, based on factors including academic prowess, for young single people, i.e. grads etc, the gender pay gap is 17% in favour of women.


So why exactly are we focusing just on stem again?

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

They allowed Margaret Thatcher to study Chemistry at Oxford and look how that all turned out.

I'm just saying.

Just fine, the sun comes up in the morning and sets in the evening.

Same as it ever was

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Psychology, and also Biology, used be heavily male-dominated. Now they are almost exclusively female. And that been a change over my working life (30 years).

What has brought about that change?

Change in status maybe? Apple plus computers and IT in general have changed the perception of what are status jobs, what careers pay the best.

That is never talked about because the narrative is that student choose what they study because of a passionate interested never because its the route to a middle class income and lifestyle.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Why shouldn't there be gender quotas in politics? They are a representation of the population so surely it should reflect that

Voting for someone just because they are a man or a woman is sexist.

I don't agree with every man and I don't disagree with every woman.

mariaalice wrote: »

Although I don't believe in quotas politics is different you are not guaranteed to get the gig people have to vote for you, therefore if there is a quota of female candidates all you are doing is giving a more balanced representative to vote for nobody would be forcing anyone to vote for them.

In the last election, the group with the least representation of women wasn't any of the parties, it was the independents. Parties are already putting more females than would run 'normally'. Trying to force the parties to up their quota of female candidates even further isn't going to help when (like STEM) theirs simply a shortage of females wishing to enter the field in the first place.

floorpie wrote: »

The pay gap between genders in Ireland is almost entirely down to career breaks for child rearing, according to the ESRI. It's funny though, because commonly cited causes of the pay gap are discriminatory hiring practices, and because of women being less likely to pursue higher education. OP's study contradicts the discriminatory hiring practice suggestion, and your pdf contradicts the higher education theory, with women apparently being more likely to pursue masters and PhDs in engineering in the UK and Ireland.

Ironically, a lot of the issues around child rearing (and the related pay gap) would be solved if there were better policies for paternity leave and shared parental leave.
The OP's study shows that there are indeed discriminatory hiring practices, but discriminating against men. The company I work for uses them in their internships, which automatically lead to graduate jobs and are therefore an easy way for women to get in and become permanent employees in a few years. It's ridiculous, really.

The lack of women in engineering essentially comes down to not encouraging girls to study engineering. In my school (yes, Catholic convent all girl school) we were encouraged to become teachers, nurses and beauty therapists. Four girls in my year applied for engineering, including myself, and I was heavily discouraged by my careers counsellor, who tried to convince me to apply for medicine instead. :rolleyes:
The same could be said about the lack of male nurses, I'd imagine.

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

I think you are missing what the problem is. It's not that some people want to choose one thing and others want to choose another, the problem is the why of it. Why do teenage girls not want to study STEM subjects and why do teenage boys not want to go into nursing or teaching.

If it's personal choice then that's that, there is no problem, in that case it could easily be just how people are built. But that's not very likely, it's much more likely that it's a societal influence, and if that's the case then it's wrong. That means it's not personal choice and people are being pressured by society to make the choices that conform to their gender stereotypes.

I think you're actually not giving young people enough credit for the fact that they have minds of their own, and even though you say you're an anecdotal example, you're an example that completely disproves your own assertion that young people are being pressured in any way by society at least career wise. I mean, you say it's not likely that it's personal choice, and yet, below, you yourself are a perfect example of how it is indeed ultimately personal choice. You admit it could be "just how people are built", and then you say it's not very likely, because now, ten years later, you're suggesting that you were pressured into going down another career path at the time, but you didn't?

You're basically contradicting your own point?

Either that, or I really am missing something!

When I was in secondary school talking to the career guidance councillor was a nightmare. He made me feel bad for wanting to do boy stuff. Conversations with him would always start with him asking if I wanted to do nursing. He was never mean or really negative about it, but it definitely made me feel like an odd ball, I can easily see how others could be turned off at that level. I know it's anecdotal, but it's the same anecdote you'll hear from the thousands of kids of have gone through that particular school with that guidance councillor throughout the years. That was only 10 years ago, not in the 1950's or anything.

I can't say for sure what the issue is, and it's exactly what these types of studies are trying to nail down. But if it is societal pressure then it is something we should be trying to address.

Your experience in this regard is actually far from anecdotal. Unfortunately in far too many schools in this country we don't have enough careers guidance counsellors who are actually committed enough to inform themselves sufficiently to be able to advise students properly. Career guidance is usually given by a teacher in their free period who just happens to be the only one in the staff room familiar with a computer. They're insufficiently trained in giving career guidance to students, and it's a shame that most schools don't have the resources to get in someone with experience in the HR and recruitment industry.

If you think it was bad that your options were limited to nursing, I had to sit across from my biology teacher (I took biology for the leaving as well as physics, meant I couldn't do history, 'twas the way the blocks were structured), a good five minute silence before he takes a big sigh and says -

"I don't know what you're going to do!" :pac:

I knew what I wanted to do though since I was 12 years of age and I told my mother that "computers are the paper and pencil of tomorrow", she laughed before she said "you could join the priesthood, or be a doctor, or a teacher?"... :pac:

Nope, I was pretty set on what I wanted to do from an early age, and that was 25 years ago when I was 12, and IT was really in it's infancy, whereas now STEM is so much more vast and there are numerous careers available.

You only had to visit the Young Scientist Exhibition a few months back to see that both girls and boys are pretty much equal in terms of their interest in all areas of science from Agricultural to Social and Behavioural Sciences, not just STEM.

The problem really isn't so much down to social pressure as these studies are trying to make out, but simply down to people choosing their own career paths. The only people who have an issue with that are the people who want to engineer a solution to a problem that actually doesn't exist, well, at least not externally anyway. The problem isn't "society", the problem is the handful of individuals within that society that aren't happy with other people's choices. You really didn't need a study to tell you that though.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

They're insufficiently trained in giving career guidance to students, and it's a shame that most schools don't have the resources to get in someone with experience in the HR and recruitment industry.

I agree with the thrust of most of your post but you're quite wrong here HR staff are invariably the morons who couldn't handle any of the company's actual work (it was even obvious in college that those majoring in HR were the ones who simply couldn't handle the Finance & Accounting, Economics, IS or Marketing streams...) and recruitment agents are, for better or worse, hard-necked salespeople so neither would be any use in career guidance. It's a fairly specialised skill and one best done by someone with a background in psychology / counselling rather than a HR drone or, as is usually the case, a teacher qualified in academic subjects.

Deleted User wrote: »

Why shouldn't there be gender quotas in politics? They are a representation of the population so surely it should reflect that

unfortunately we live in a democracy. gender quotas are decidedly undemocratic.

hopgog wrote: »

Intel have a place in Ireland and have gender quotas, why is that allowed, why is that not undemocratic?

fortune.com/2015/01/12/intel-diversity/

what does this have to do with democracy? I have no idea why it is allowed. but its not relevant to anything i said.