Why do women leave engineering? Maybe it’s their male colleagues

I’ve got a story up on Time.com that’s proving pretty popular, so I thought I’d mention it here, too. It begins:

For 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 men do.

But here’s the real kicker:

The question then becomes why women engineers feel so stifled when it comes to pay and promotion. Hunt ran a slew of statistical tests to see if she could detect any patterns. She did. Women also left fields such as financial management and economics at higher than expected rates. The commonality? Like engineering, those sectors are male-dominated.

You can read the rest of the story here. You can also read the entire paper here if you’ve got an NBER log-in or don’t mind paying $5. I’m working on finding a link that doesn’t lead to a pay wall.

There’s also a pretty interesting discussion that’s popped up over at the Freakonomics blog. A lot of engineers are ringing in with their thoughts.

I talked to my college roommate, who is an engineer, about the paper’s findings. Her experience in the field has been great, she said, and she actually works with a lot of women. I should also mention that she’s about to have her second child—go Jen! It’s a nice reminder that when we talk about these sorts of trends, there are always plenty of exceptions.

jpersonna

Do women have increased ability to leave the field? Burnout is common, and I see a lot of people taking second careers (male and female). Some of the best computer programmers I’ve known have just decided that they’ve programmed enough.
deconstructiva

Barbara, thanks for this insightful story …and the chance for me to mention construction / arch. (again) as a relevant example. I had worked for many companies in many cities and alas, that industry is also clearly male-run, esp. contractors and engineers. Go to any construction site and look. Architects and landscape firms are slightly more diverse with women and minority companies. Indeed, my state requires some minorities for public projects. Yes, the field should be diverse enough as to NOT need quotas, but it still happens. Not good.
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But as you’ve noted, there are exceptions. In construction this is interior design, which is mostly female. At college my arch. class was about 2/3 male, 1/3 female, but the parallel interior design class was almost entirely female. Then again, I wonder if gender stereotyping is subtly played here: are women being pushed into this niche and NOT, say, electrical engineering? If so, I don’t like it. We need diversity from all groups / genders in construction to create fresh ideas from different backgrounds. Otherwise we keep dealing with the same old people (literally) and building the same old crap. That happens where I am. Hopefully New York is much better at avoiding this. Thanks for your thoughts, Barbara, and have a great Easter weekend.
bacotawordpress

I bet a husband is more likely to stick with a job he doesn’t like in order to support the family than a wife is.

Just a thought.
bacotawordpress

I didn’t mean that to be sexist by the way. I know families where the wife is the main breadwinner. But in every case but one I think the wife would quit if she could. I listened to sob stories from one about how hard it was to come back to work after having a child and being overwhelmed with maternal instincts.
deconstructiva

…what about single moms? What do YOU think they want to do?
http://japan-russia.jimdo.com/freedom/?title=forex parakori

Women’s Destiny is no matter of chance.
It is a matter of choice.
It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

http://docstoc.com/docs/32156615

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bacotawordpress

what perfect timing …

“In working couples, women’s career still takes a back seat”

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6303GQ20100401?type=lifestyleMolt

So when both spouses are too overworked to take care of the kids, the woman tends to stay home and the man keeps working. The title of the report implies that this is a kind of a discrimination against women. But it might be more a reflection of different social expectations of each spouse.

And if one spouse has to cut back on work hours the biological inconveniences of motherhood might be the tiebreaker.
curmudgeon57

I wish I had an insightful answer to this. Let me suggest two possibilities. First, engineering is a boys’ club. Women rarely built clubhouses in their youth, but that’s what engineers do – build things. I can’t say why women take a different direction in their youth, but even if a woman enjoys the underlying math and physics enough to pursue engineering, they may miss out on the socialization aspects of that club.

Second, engineering is a meritocracy. While most projects are team-oriented, it is an individual competition, and the outcomes can be brutal. If you don’t understand a concept, there is usually no inherent support structure; you are reassigned or fired.

Both of these possibilities can apply equally to men or women, but they may be more distasteful to many women.