What's So Special about STEM? A Comparison of Women's Retention in STEM and Professional Occupations

Glass, Jennifer; Sassler, Sharon; Levitte, Yael; Michelmore, Katherine

doi:10.1093/sf/sot092

Cited by 234 publications

(221 citation statements)

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“…Even gendered divisions of family labor, a central focus of neoclassical micro-economists (Mincer and Polachek 1974), appear to have little power to explain differences in career trajectories between women STEM and non-STEM professionals (Glass et al 2013). In this volume, for instance, Sassler et al (2017) find that differential STEM persistence of men and women degree holders in computer science and engineering are unrelated to family factors, and Shauman (2017) shows that gender disparities in early career outcomes of STEM doctorates cannot be attributed to actual parenthood/marriage patterns, as is commonly presumed.…”

Section: Micro-level Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 In one Swedish information and communication technology firm, for example, requirements for travel and long hours away from home were found to restrict women's ability to acquire advanced technological expertise and resulted in their concentration in administrative roles (Holth et al 2017). But while workplace expectations for high temporal and spatial availability tend to elicit gendered responses (Blair-Loy 2003; Zippel 2017), they appear to affect advancement and retention in similar ways across different sorts of professional occupations (Glass et al 2013). They do little, therefore, to explain the extreme gender segregation of STEM fields in particular.…”

Section: Macro-level Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Segregation, Stereotypes, and STEM

2018

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Scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) occupations are strongholds of gender segregation in the contemporary United States. While many Americans regard this segregation as natural and inevitable, closer examination reveals a great deal of variability in the gendering of STEM fields across time, space, and demographic groups. This article assesses how different theoretical accounts accord with the available evidence on the gender composition of scientific and technical fields. We find most support for accounts that allow for a dynamic interplay between individual-level traits and the broader sociocultural environments in which they develop. The existing evidence suggests, in particular, that Western cultural stereotypes about the nature of STEM work and STEM workers and about the intrinsic qualities of men and women can be powerful drivers of individual aptitudes, aspirations, and affinities. We offer an illustrative catalog of stereotypes that support women's STEM-avoidance and men's STEM-affinity, and we conclude with some thoughts on policy implications.Keywords: gender; STEM; segregation; stereotypes; culture; work; occupations; science; inequality For more than three decades, American educators, policy makers, activists, and business leaders have engaged in research and policy initiatives to increase the presence of women and other underrepresented groups in scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) occupations and fields of study. These efforts have been motivated by interests in broadening opportunities in lucrative, high-status occupations and in ameliorating acute STEM labor shortages that are believed to threaten national prosperity, private profits and the public welfare.Despite wide-ranging research and policy efforts, STEM occupations remain strongholds of gender segregation in the contemporary United States. Women made up nearly half of the US labor market in 2015, but only 28% of all scientific and technical workers. Within STEM, gender segregation is also very strong, with women comprising 48% of life scientists and 60% of social scientists, but only 28% of physical scientists and 15% of engineers (NSF 2018, Appendices 3-12). 1 While some fields have integrated over time, others have become more segregated. Women's share of US bachelor's degrees in computer science, for instance, declined from 28% to 18% between (NSF 2018.While many Americans understand men's dominance of scientific and technical work as natural and universal, the gender typing of STEM fields varies a great deal across space, time, and socio-demographic groups. Recent comparative studies have shown that scientific degree recipients are disproportionately female in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Romania, and Georgia, for example, and that the gender gap in children's STEM aspirations is larger in more affluent societies (Charles 2011a(Charles , 2017 1 Even within engineering women and men tend to do different work: about 10% of mechanical and electrical engineers are women, compared to 20...

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Section: Micro-level Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Macro-level Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Segregation, Stereotypes, and STEM

2018

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“…The argument that women's choice to pursue family and child-rearing activities over career explains the underrepresentation of women in math-intensive fields (Ceci et al 2009) has been raised. It has also been refuted by evidence that the decisions to leave STEM are influenced more by dissatisfaction with discrepant institutional and personal priorities than family factors (Glass et al 2013;Levine et al 2011). …”

Section: Gender Difference Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chilly Climates, Balancing Acts, and Shifting Pathways: What Happens to Women in STEM Doctoral Programs

Cabay¹,

Bernstein

Rivers

et al. 2018

Social Sciences

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Women in doctoral programs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) leave without finishing at higher rates than men and, as with men, turn away from academic and research careers. This qualitative study examines the day-to-day influences on female doctoral students during their third or fourth year in physical science and engineering programs. Ethnographic cognitive interviewing and online incident reports document the specific experiences and reactions of 28 participants over a six-month period. The data were analyzed to identify key incidents, categories and recurring themes. Some incidents contributed to women's growing sense of competence, recognition and identification of oneself as a scientist. Others fit a model of microaggressions and gender barriers in a predominantly masculine culture. Problems of work-life balance were demonstrated for some women. Incidents generated responses by some participants that they would disengage from a research-intensive career trajectory toward alternate career interests outside of academic research. The findings provide information about the lived experiences of women in doctoral programs and suggest that the metaphor of career pathways may be more useful than pipelines in explaining the direction of women who are advanced doctoral students in research-intensive fields.Keywords: women; graduate students; science and engineering; STEM; gender inequity Gaps between men and women persist in the pursuit and outcomes of degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) (Shauman 2017; Turk-Bicakci and Berger 2014). In the life and social sciences, women have closed the gap in undergraduate majors and admission to graduate programs and now exceed men in completion of doctoral programs (National Science Foundation 2017). Yet women are awarded fewer than 25% of the doctoral degrees in the physical sciences and engineering, and hold disproportionately fewer tenured faculty positions in STEM and far fewer positions of prestige and power (Bernstein 2011;Handelsman et al. 2005;Fox 2001; National Science Foundation 2017).The "leaky pipeline" metaphor commonly refers to the disproportionate exit of women from STEM at transitions from one educational or career level to another, the consequence of which is fewer and fewer women remaining in the "pool" for subsequent advancement in STEM ). The pipeline metaphor relies on a somewhat linear conception of careers with certain specified outcomes, such as moving from an undergraduate major in STEM, through PhD degrees and postdocs, to faculty positions, to tenure, and eventually to full rank in research universities. Previous research on why women leave STEM fields at a greater rate than their male counterparts has examined the motivation of women to pursue STEM undergraduate degrees (Beyer 2014;Griffith 2010;Grunert and Bobnerb 2011;London et al.

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“…However, even among women who held degrees in STEM fields, employment in STEM jobs continues to lag that of their male counterparts. Women who graduate with degrees in STEM majors are less likely than their male counterparts to enter STEM occupations, or remain in them (Glass et al 2013;Ma and Savas 2014;Mann and DiPrete 2013;Sassler et al 2017). Historically, women were often discouraged from pursuing employment outside the home, particularly in jobs-such as those in STEM-typically thought of as "masculine" (Robinson and McIlwee 1991).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tale of Two Majors: Explaining the Gender Gap in STEM Employment among Computer Science and Engineering Degree Holders

2017

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Abstract:We examine factors contributing to the gender gap in employment in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) among men and women with bachelor's degrees in computer science and engineering, the two largest and most male-dominated STEM fields. Data come from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT) from 1995 to 2008. Different factors are associated with persistence in STEM jobs among computer science and engineering degree holders. Conditional on receiving a degree in computer science, women are 14 percentage points less likely to work in STEM than their male counterparts. Controlling for demographic and family characteristics did little to change this gender gap. Women with degrees in engineering are approximately 8 percentage points less likely to work in STEM than men, although about half of this gap is explained by observed differences between men and women. We document a widening gender gap in STEM employment in computer science, but this gender gap narrows across college cohorts among those with degrees in engineering. Among recent computer science graduates, the gender gap in STEM employment for white, Hispanic, and black women relative to white men is even larger than for older graduates. Gender and race gaps in STEM employment for recent cohorts of engineering graduates are generally small, though younger Asian women and men no longer have an employment advantage relative to white men. Our results suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach to increasing women's representation in the most male-dominated STEM fields may not work.

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What's So Special about STEM? A Comparison of Women's Retention in STEM and Professional Occupations

Cited by 234 publications

References 28 publications

Segregation, Stereotypes, and STEM

Segregation, Stereotypes, and STEM

Chilly Climates, Balancing Acts, and Shifting Pathways: What Happens to Women in STEM Doctoral Programs

A Tale of Two Majors: Explaining the Gender Gap in STEM Employment among Computer Science and Engineering Degree Holders

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