Why Are Girls Less Likely to Become Scientists?

Closing the gender gap in STEM jobs has proved difficult, perhaps because it has more to do with the priorities of men and women than with sexism. 

By William von Hippel. He is a social scientist in Australia. Excerpts:

"There’s growing evidence that girls and women aren’t pursuing STEM careers because they’d simply prefer not to. That is, that sex differences in the STEM workforce may largely be a product of sex differences in interests and priorities."

"if discrimination were preventing women from entering STEM fields, then women in countries with less gender equity, such as in the Middle East and South Asia, would surely be less likely to pursue STEM careers than women in countries with greater gender equity, such as in Scandinavia. After all, there must be more barriers for women who want to be scientists in Algeria than in Finland. In fact, we see the opposite: Women make up over 40% of the STEM graduates in Algeria and only 20% in Finland. This pattern can be seen around the world."

"Countries with less gender equity tend to be poor, and careers in STEM are one of the clearest routes to financial success anywhere. Women with strong quantitative skills in poor countries have good reason to enter the sciences to make a living. Women in relatively rich countries can afford to pursue less lucrative careers without risking a life of poverty."

"Why are women consistently more likely to become sociologists than chemical engineers?"

"A better explanation for lasting sex differences in various disciplines, I believe, is that they reflect the inherent attractiveness of different fields to men and women.

"women tend to be more interested in careers that involve working with other people while men prefer jobs that involve manipulating objects, whether it is a hammer or a computer." 

"Studies published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2016, for example, found that women were more responsive to pictures of people, while men were more responsive to pictures of things."

"the STEM fields with more men, such as engineering and computer science, focus on objects while those with more women, such as psychology and biomedicine, focus on people."

"girls on average outperformed boys in both STEM and non-STEM subjects but rarely pursued STEM in college if they were just as strong in other things."

"women are generally more likely than men to have skills in non-STEM areas, while men who are strong in math and science are often less skilled elsewhere."

"In every country, female students outperform male students in verbal tasks."

"It is likely, then, that girls who are strong in STEM subjects have more options for what careers to pursue, given their strengths elsewhere."