5 ms·

Nobody may be thinking twice about the head of internal medicine being a woman. But they do about just regular physicians. > We find that the median female (bu

Nobody may be thinking twice about the head of internal medicine being a woman. But they do about just regular physicians. > We find that the median female (but not male) primary-care physician would have been financially better off becoming a physician assistant. This result is partially due to a gender-wage gap in medicine. However, it is mostly driven by the fact that the median female physician simply doesn’t work enough hours to amortize her upfront investment in medical school.[1] Anyway, I think ibanking is in line before tech. [1] http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/keith.chen/papers/GenderNPV_WorkingPaper.pdf http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/keith.chen/papers/Gende...

masklinn 13y ago
That's a very different meaning of "thinking twice" than the one rayiner used.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 13y ago
Banking is more overtly sexist but banks have policies to hire women so you have more women in "front-line" roles. 14% of partners at Goldman Sachs are women. In which tech company are 14% of executives in technical roles (not HR or marketing) women?
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
We might ask why it is still broadly assumed and expected that women will scale back their career hours so much more than men within a given profession. To suggest instead that women doctors should have become medical assistants is astonishingly blinkered.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  You clearly didn't read the study at all. The study doesn't assume that women will scale back their hours. They use data which shows it. Suggesting that female doctors should have been medical assistants is merely the result of the fact that they would have made more money (i.e., income - cost of education) if they did.
  - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
    I did read the study. My question is: why do women still take a lot more time off their careers for childcare than men? Presumably most of the children that a woman doctor is missing work to look after also have fathers: why are fathers not taking more responsibility to raise their children?
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      Most of the time the fathers are taking responsibility. They typically provide income while the mother takes care of the children. Or perhaps you are asking why individual couples choose this particular breakdown of responsibility?
      - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        I'm asking why the prevailing pattern in North American couples is for the mother to give up years of career advancement to provide direct child care while the father continues to work, earning more money and a higher income.
        yummyfajitas 13y ago
        Most likely more than 50% of women have a comparative advantage (relative to their husband) in caring for children.
        RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        You're still begging the question. Shall I jump on the regress treadmill with you and ask why women have a "comparative advantage" with respect to caring for their children? I suspect you'd like us eventually to land on some innate, hard-coded difference between men and women that makes women's relative absence in tech and under-representation in pay and seniority in other industries okay, but that's bullshit. Men are every bit as capable of looking after children as women, and it is a convenient insult to men to suggest otherwise: convenient because it just happens to uphold the gender imbalance that leaves men in much more powerful positions, relatively speaking, than women.
RobAley 13y ago
I currently work in the UK Medical Careers Research Group at Oxford University. [edit: this post isn't an official communication from our group!] To give a UK perspective, what our research has found is that, in general, female doctors are only disadvantaged in their career (in terms of career progression and so on) when they have periods out for maternity leave and work part-time for childcare reasons. And then, they are only disadvantaged to a similar level as male doctors who took time out or work part-time for the same or different reasons. In medicine, in the UK at least, there is a lot greater gender parity than there is in the Tech industry (which being a programmer I also am part of). This conference looks really interesting, aside from the gender issues, and it's happening right here in Oxford. Its a shame I don't have funding to attend conferences, academia can be very fickle like that!

masklinn 13y ago

That's a very different meaning of "thinking twice" than the one rayiner used.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 13y ago

Banking is more overtly sexist but banks have policies to hire women so you have more women in "front-line" roles. 14% of partners at Goldman Sachs are women. In which tech company are 14% of executives in technical roles (not HR or marketing) women?

RyanMcGreal 13y ago

We might ask why it is still broadly assumed and expected that women will scale back their career hours so much more than men within a given profession. To suggest instead that women doctors should have become medical assistants is astonishingly blinkered.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
You clearly didn't read the study at all. The study doesn't assume that women will scale back their hours. They use data which shows it. Suggesting that female doctors should have been medical assistants is merely the result of the fact that they would have made more money (i.e., income - cost of education) if they did.
- RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  I did read the study. My question is: why do women still take a lot more time off their careers for childcare than men? Presumably most of the children that a woman doctor is missing work to look after also have fathers: why are fathers not taking more responsibility to raise their children?
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    Most of the time the fathers are taking responsibility. They typically provide income while the mother takes care of the children. Or perhaps you are asking why individual couples choose this particular breakdown of responsibility?
    - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
      I'm asking why the prevailing pattern in North American couples is for the mother to give up years of career advancement to provide direct child care while the father continues to work, earning more money and a higher income.
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        Most likely more than 50% of women have a comparative advantage (relative to their husband) in caring for children.
        RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        You're still begging the question. Shall I jump on the regress treadmill with you and ask why women have a "comparative advantage" with respect to caring for their children? I suspect you'd like us eventually to land on some innate, hard-coded difference between men and women that makes women's relative absence in tech and under-representation in pay and seniority in other industries okay, but that's bullshit. Men are every bit as capable of looking after children as women, and it is a convenient insult to men to suggest otherwise: convenient because it just happens to uphold the gender imbalance that leaves men in much more powerful positions, relatively speaking, than women.

RobAley 13y ago

I currently work in the UK Medical Careers Research Group at Oxford University. [edit: this post isn't an official communication from our group!] To give a UK perspective, what our research has found is that, in general, female doctors are only disadvantaged in their career (in terms of career progression and so on) when they have periods out for maternity leave and work part-time for childcare reasons. And then, they are only disadvantaged to a similar level as male doctors who took time out or work part-time for the same or different reasons. In medicine, in the UK at least, there is a lot greater gender parity than there is in the Tech industry (which being a programmer I also am part of). This conference looks really interesting, aside from the gender issues, and it's happening right here in Oxford. Its a shame I don't have funding to attend conferences, academia can be very fickle like that!