Communications of the ACM
When Women Are More Like Men, They Still Face STEM Bias
A new study has found that women who received science, technology, engineering, and mathematics degrees in the 1970s through the early 1990s did not receive the same career opportunities as similarly educated men.
Credit: Warner Brothers
Women who earned science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees in the 1970s through the early 1990s who planned to focus exclusively on work did not get the same employment opportunities as men, according to a new study from Cornell University professor Sharon Sassler.
Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, Sassler focused on 163 women and 353 men who completed STEM bachelor degrees. Forty-one percent of women and 53% of men were employed in a STEM job within two years of completing college, which was found to be a statistically significant difference.
Sassler says the women had strong characteristics of the ideal worker, were expected to have few family distractions, and work in STEM both within five years and at midlife, and had very strong aspirations. "But they were no more likely to enter STEM jobs than women who anticipated marrying young and having two or more children," she notes.
Sassler says some research suggests women still face challenges entering STEM fields. She says colleges and universities can help shore up the STEM pipeline by encouraging women to major in STEM subjects.
From Cornell Chronicle
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2016 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found