Having looked at this issue a lot myself, I think this study does get a bit closer to the heart of the matter. When I was getting into computer science, it ws a really interesting field because it did involve not only math and science but also a significant amount of social interaction as well. You simply couldn’t solve big problems by yourself — the computing power wasn’t really there and you had to interact with a lot of other people to solve problems. Now it’s a lot easier to simply build models or just use online resources and there doesn’t need to be as much social interaction.
I can see young women today who want that interaction going into other fields where there still is that social interplay. I often say if I were starting now, I would go into bio-engineering. Part of it for me would be doing the hottest latest thing, but a lot of it would be because it’s a field with lots of complex unsolved problems that require a lot of social interaction. I think women do want that along with the opportunity to use their math and science skills.
The freedom to say ‘no’ – The Boston Globe
Starting more than 30 years ago, the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth began following nearly 2,000 mathematically gifted adolescents, boys and girls, tracking their education and careers in ensuing decades. (It has since been expanded to 5,000 participants, many from more recent graduating classes.) Both men and women in the study achieved advanced credentials in about the same numbers. But when it came to their career paths, there was a striking divergence.
Math-precocious men were much more likely to go into engineering or physical sciences than women. Math-precocious women, by contrast, were more likely to go into careers in medicine, biological sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Both sexes scored high on the math SAT, and the data showed the women weren’t discouraged from certain career paths.
The survey data showed a notable disparity on one point: That men, relative to women, prefer to work with inorganic materials; women, in general, prefer to work with organic or living things. This gender disparity was apparent very early in life, and it continued to hold steady over the course of the participants’ careers.
Benbow and Lubinski also found something else intriguing: Women who are mathematically gifted are more likely than men to have strong verbal abilities as well; men who excel in math, by contrast, don’t do nearly as well in verbal skills. As a result, the career choices for math-precocious women are wider than for their male counterparts. They can become scientists, but can succeed just as well as lawyers or teachers. With this range of choice, their data show, highly qualified women may opt out of certain technical or scientific jobs simply because they can.
These studies looked at different slices of the working world, but agree that in a world in which men and women both have freedom of choice, they tend to choose differently.
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