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One thing that I'm observing in software engineering students that I have seen over the years is that in the most skilled range (ones who are quite capable of doing all kinds of tasks and also have enough market leverage to get hired for whichever kind of role they'd prefer) wind up on quite different career paths depending on gender. In particular, the skilled male students went on in all kinds of roles, roughly matching everything that the industry demands, but the skilled female students (with very few exceptions, I've seen two IIRC), as a rule, all chose from the subset of roles that are more, how to say, people focused. Despite having excellent technical skills as well (which I have seen and compared with their male peers), they have chosen not to do the core hands-on technical work and go on to related careers in e.g. system analysis, project management, testing, on-site consulting, technical sales, etc - even if they'd be paid more as a straightforward individual technical contributor. I've seen them decline "poaching" offers to such positions with superior pay because they prefer what they're doing now and, unlike some (not all, but a large portion) of the men they've understood that they just won't be happy spending almost all of their day fighting code problems, and since they're good and can choose their conditions, they choose something that's more rewarding for them - knowing full well that it limits their salary. Sure, it's anecdotal experience, but it's many anecdotes so the patterns seem visible. |