Now consider what happens when students are told. Do what you are good at! Loosely speaking the situation will be something like this: females will say I got As in history and English and B’s in Science and Math, therefore, I should follow my strengthens and specialize in drawing on the same skills as history and English. Boys will say I got B’s in Science and Math and C’s in history and English, therefore, I should follow my strengths and do something involving Science and Math.
So the theory is that, even though both boys and girls may have the same grade on math, girls are so far ahead on reading that they may choose liberal arts subjects because that’s what they do best and thus easiest for them.
Come on, back at Lowell, there were plenty of fellow female students who excelled in the sciences and math. Now, why some or a lot of them ended up not going through with careers in science and math I couldn’t say. We have some female posters. Let them speak for themselves as to why they did or did not pursue careers in science and math. My sis in law has an engineering degree from Cal and my lil sister got her law degree from Hastings yet both chose to become stay home mothers after marriage. Financially they were able to do it since their husbands made enough money to keep the ship afloat.
I don’t think their degree in STEM is the main motivation for the decision to stay at home.
The article’s point was more about decision on major/career. I guess decision on staying-at-home-mom Vs working-mom is orthogonal to the issue the author is talking about although it is another interesting point for discussion.
I went science high school and did way better in STEM than literature/history almost entire my life.
My mother studied math at college and pretty much same with me.
My daughter does better in STEM than literature/history just like me.
Thus, I don’t think I can represent average female group anyway.
However, I guess the article has a good point especially since it used objective data point.
My younger got perfect score in English but not perfect score in Math in this year’s CASSPP test.
So, I really thought that she was more like literature/history person.
However, looking at her score again, her math score is in high range of advanced level as well.
I realized that I have to revisit my evaluation strategy on her strength after reading this article.
As a matter of fact, she has been stressed out quite a bit about the fact that she is a bit different from rest of the family members (2 engineer parents and a sister who wants to be an engineer too). Of course, I told her that it is OK to be different. However, maybe she is just better than us in English.
It’s been proven that the more prestigious of college a woman attends the more likely she is to leave the work force once having kids. Most women who graduate from Ivy League are out of the work force within 10 years of graduation.
Many people behave like zombies mindlessly doing what they think are societal norms.
fact checker