Out here in Silicon Valley, you can't cross the street without bumping into an engineer. And what you find is that three our of four of them are men. As Shankar Vedantam once reported in Slate:
The gender distribution of engineers at top Silicon Valley companies is similar to the gender distribution of the audience at your average strip club.
One theory out there suggests that women opt out because of the perception that careers in engineering, by their very nature, are not compatible with future mommy-hood.
Another one, most odiously put forth by erstwhile Harvard president Lawrence Summers, former head of President Obama's National Economic Council, is that women, by nature, just don't have the mental chops for science and math. Ugh, right?
Turns out, neither of the above are true. According to a new study published in the American Sociological Review, one of the crucial reasons women opt out of careers in engineering before they've ever opted in is confidence. Or, more precisely, lack of same. It's not that these women can't make the grade, the study found. It's that, when it comes to venturing out into the workplace, they don't think they'll fit.
You don't have to be an engineer (and odds are pretty good that you're not) -- or ever have had dreams of being one -- for the study's findings to resonate.
The researchers surveyed 288 students who entered engineering programs in 2003 at MIT, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, and Smith College. They found that the women students took the same classes, took the same tests and earned the same -- or higher -- grades as the male students. And yet, they ended up feeling less confident in their abilities -- or in the idea that a career in engineering was right for them.
One thing that's interesting to note is that the prospect of parenthood had nothing to do with it, at least for the women. "We find that women's desires to have a family do not influence whether they continue in an engineering major or plan to go into the engineering workforce," said the study's lead author Erin Cech, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research. In fact, she told us, "The study found that men, rather than, women, were more likely to perceive that engineering was likely to interfere with raising a family."
That settles that. What undermines the female students' confidence, and persistence, Cech says, is what she calls micro-biases, or those subtle stereotypes about what men and women are naturally good at. "In engineering, for example, men are often thought to be "naturally" good at the "technical" aspects of engineering, where women are through to be "naturally" good at the "social" aspects of engineering, like teamwork and communication. If men engineering students are subtly thought to be more competent at engineering tasks than women, then men and women engineering students will be treated slightly differently by their peers and their professors." All of which snowballs in women, leading to a gradual erosion in confidence that they'll ever fit in.
This new study seems to be right in line with an older one on that we've riffed on before. That one suggested that women avoid math and science, not because they lack the aptitude, but because they don't feel welcome. Call it identity threat: women may avoid situations -- like math or engineering -- when they feel outnumbered. Researchers Mary Murphy, Claude Steele and James Gross found that when women math, science and engineering undergrads simply watched a video that pitched a fictional conference where men outnumbered women, the women showed the physical signs of threat -- faster heart rates and sweating -- and reported a lower sense of belonging, and less desire to participate in the conference at all. The researchers also found that the women who watched the gender unbalanced video were more vigilant of their surroundings overall.
Point being, it's the threat, as much as the reality, that often keeps us out of the game. And not just when it comes to science or math.
A recent Harvard Business Review post on the new study noted that confidence was likewise one of the issues that kept women out of the corporate suites. As writers Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, and Mary Davis Holt -- nationally recognized experts on women's leadership -- wrote:
Having combed through more than a thousand 360-degree performance assessments conducted in recent years, we've found, by a wide margin, that the primary criticism men have about their female colleagues is that the women they work with seem to exhibit low self-confidence.
Ouch.
All of this confidence gap comes at a cost. (Seventy-seven cents on the dollar, remember?) That which keeps us out of the labs and out of the boardrooms, often keeps us out of the money, right? But back to Erin Cech and her would-be engineers.
"The root of the problem are biases that are deeply embedded in people's cultural beliefs about of gender and the nature of the work in science and engineering professions," she told us. "The ultimate solution would be to change those beliefs. Such cultural change is maddeningly difficult and slow. So, perhaps the next best thing is to actually talk about the way that science and engineering fields are gendered within engineering and science classrooms. Such talk is considered "political" and thus "irrelevant" in most science and engineering classrooms, and so is never discussed. But, what could be more relevant than the retention of students within those very professions?"
Or, for that matter, any others. (Oh, for the record: It wasn't lack of confidence that prompted me to change my major. It was calculus.)
Follow Barbara & Shannon Kelley on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@undecidedbook
Many big companies are looking for managers who are sure of themselves - even when the situation is unclear and there is not enough information. I left my last employer after being told that I did not have enough self confidence. While I have no problem making decisions without enough information, I know the uncertainties and adjust as more information come in. This was viewed as a weakness. I don't trust or respect organizations that select for arrogance and self delusion.I left.
The failure of the organization will be no surprise to me. I have seen this pattern before.
To be fair, they all do it. Girls shirts are about looks....boys about action.
If we wish to encourage women to enter these fields, we need to provide them with some good role models. We need to let them hear from some of the great women in those fields--science and math teachers can easily do this through youtube videos from conferences like ted or inviting local female engineers, physicians, and researchers into the classroom for brief presentations and Q&A. We need to let young women know that scientists and engineers can look just like them and that they are capable of having a career in science or math if they really want to!
Good for you-and especially for telling others it can be done.
My sister became a chemical engineer in the 70s. Her guidance counselor told her it couldn't be done....she was obstinate enough to do it anyway.
When men don't choose teaching we blame men but when women don't choose engineering we blame society. It's pure hypocrisy.
How about a push to get more men into education, it's not only a area where boys are failing its over 80% female. I don't see why a story about that can't be in the women's section especially since there none for men. It's a field women dominate and should take the lead in making it more diverse.
Evidence teacher gender affects student performance:
"His study comes as the proportion of male teachers is at its lowest level in 40 years. Roughly 80 percent of teachers in U.S. public schools are women....Dee found that having a female teacher instead of a male teacher raised the achievement of girls and lowered that of boys in science, social studies and English.Looked at the other way, when a man led the class, boys did better and girls did worse.The study found switching up teachers actually could narrow achievement gaps between boys and girls, but one gender would gain at the expense of the other."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14546994/ns/us_news-education/t/study-teachers-gender-affects-learning/#.TqodA96AqU8
Exactly how far do boys have to fall behind before women find them to be worthy of attention? Men committed themselves to supporting female achievement but when the shoe is on the other foot we all we here are even more demands to focus on females.
So what are we going to do about the lack of confidence in our boys? How are we going to keep them from dropping out? Teaching might pay less but I don't even see the discussion going on but I have seen at least 20 articles on women in technology this year. The focus is not on those who needs our attention.
Feminism has made helping boys so unpopular that it seems we would rather push a few more girls into engineering than stop half the boys from dropping out. Focusing on getting men into education doesn't need to wait for a salary increase. It needs the aggressive advocacy like I see all the time here but it's only focused on getting women attention despite the sad reality of our struggling boys.
It's time for the next generation to step up or you're right -- we'll be back-sliding big-time.
There are programs being developed now for middle- and high-school age girls to show them what work really looks like. The nuclear industry has a program called Powerset targeting sophmore through senior girls, which has worked well.
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/publicationsandmedia/insight/insightnovember2010/high-school-program-sets-young-women-on-path-to-nuclear-energy-careers/
We've got to do everything we can to counteract the media images of what girls are supposed to be. The objectification girls experience can be overwhelming unless they have someone to tell them they are smart and they can do anything. ENGINEERING IS AWESOME!