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This post would be much more informative and useful if similar statistics were included for men. If the porportion interested in a subject, but not entering it
by nickff 11y ago
This post would be much more informative and useful if similar statistics were included for men. If the porportion interested in a subject, but not entering it (versus the porportion interested and entering it) was higher for one gender than the other, then it would suggest that one gender faced more difficulties in attaining success in that field than the other. If the proportion of one gender with (similar) credentials in a given field, but without employment in this specific field (which they have a stated desire for), then it would even stronger evidence that there were some obstacles with gender-specific impacts.
From what I can understand of this piece's evidence, it only shows that many women want to be civil engineers, but do not go into that field. Anecdotally, I know many men who would have liked to be engineers, and did not succeed. I am left wondering whether there are a large number of men and women who would have liked to go through years of agony in post-secondary education, to end up in front of a computer all day with few social interactions; if so, what are the differences in preferences, dedication, and outcomes for the genders (as there are likely to be many).
edit: It would also be interesting to see the impact of age on preferences and employment, to see whether younger women were more likely to achieve their preferred employment, and whether preferences varied with age.
edit2: It would also be useful to know how many careers each individual 'liked'. It is possible that (of the population surveyed) one gender 'liked' more jobs than the other, and so is less likely to be employed in any specific 'liked' career.
*I initially misunderstood the data presented in the article (see brighteyes' comment below), but would still like to see the gender separated data for interest, credentialling, and employment.
- beat 11y agoThis is the only attack-the-methodology critique I've read on this thread that actually makes any sense.
- nickff 11y agoThanks? I am not trying to attack the author, the writing, or the idea; it's just that I don't know what to make of the data they present, because I require some context to understand the situation they are trying to characterize. I do not doubt their dedication, their motives, or their work ethic.
- brighteyes 11y agoThe others make more sense, actually. They report proportions, so if 40% are women, you know 60% are men. Therefore there is no need to report men. But as I said in another comment, the article is indeed poorly worded and confusing on this.
- brighteyes 11y agoThe article is poorly worded - I misunderstood it initially - but their metric does appear to measure that. It measures how many "likes" a career got from women, and how many women actually work in it. It does not show the absolute number of likes or people working, but the proportion of women out of both.
- nickff 11y agoYou are correct, and I did misunderstand the writing initially. I would still like to see the raw numbers for interest, credentialling, and employment for each gender, but it appears the author tried to boil down the data and make it more easily understood.
- brighteyes 11y agoI am also worried about normalization. Perhaps men like more careers overall, for example? Seeing the raw numbers would clarify if that is a confounding factor or not.
- rayiner 11y agoSimilar statistics are included for men. They're reporting male-female split in self reported interest data versus representation in the profession. So the 37.4% for civil engineers in the first chart means that 37.4% of people who "liked" that career were women, but the field has only 16.5% representation of women. You can get the numbers for men just by subtracting those from 100%.