Defennder said:
There's also this article published in the Boston Globe linked to in the blog you quoted:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/18/the_freedom_to_say_no?mode=PF"
Excerpts:
This is an important factor to consider. Lack of women in a particular field (or any group you want to examine in a particular field) doesn't necessarily mean lack of ability or skill or opportunity in that field. Likewise, prevalence of men in the field doesn't necessarily mean they have greater ability, skill, opportunity or even interest in that field. The last point is something hitting home for me recently, and makes me wonder if this pattern exists more broadly than just my little local population sample.
So, keeping in mind this is anecdotal (but this is GD, so I'll indulge), here's what I've recently been noticing in the biomedical research community at our university. We are ALL struggling to get external funding (there's just too little to go around, this is a known problem and has been going on for several years now). A lot of the faculty are unhappy with this situation and feeling the stress and frustration of being in a job where they can't do what they were hired to do because they don't have the funds or resources to do it. These aren't just people who are bad scientists, these are people who are very good at what they do, but even great proposals don't get funded now because there's barely money for the most outstandingly excellent proposals. You can see it in the reviews coming back, reviewers are nitpicking things that would never have been nitpicked before just trying to find reasons to rank one above another to find a cut-off point for the sparse funding they have.
Okay, so that's the set-up. People are feeling discouraged about staying in research, both sexes, various ranks.
Now, who have I seen changing careers or directions in their careers or focusing on building new skill sets to effect a change in career in the near future? The women. It seems we're the ones saying, "This is a crappy situation, so I'm taking the bull by the horns and getting out while I can." Is it that men don't want to change, or don't want to get out? From those who have expressed their frustrations to me, no. I've had several come up to me since it came out I was applying for education-based positions rather than research-based ones, and their comments have all been similar. "I've been thinking about making such a change too," or "I wish I could get out of here as well." What's holding them back? A sense that they are responsible for providing stability for their families, that they can't just pick up and move, that they can't risk changing careers and losing the stability of the income they have now to support their families, and things like that. While my own situation doesn't have to factor in family stability, the interesting thing is that there ARE women who are married and have young children who are also changing careers and moving. They seem to be approaching it differently...the best way to guarantee stability and support for their family is to move to where there's a better job opportunity in a different field. It seems women are able to "get out" while men feel "stuck." The men seem to be hanging on until they can move up, while the women move out.
In a way, it seems to be dispelling the notion that women follow the men for their careers. It seems that if the women don't want to move, the men aren't picking their families up and moving. Or maybe this is a new change in a direction that didn't exist before, or maybe it's just my isolated population here that behaves differently than the general population. It's just interesting to me.
