[lambda]

Well, when I looked around a bit I found this article <http://readwrite.com/2014/09/02/women-in-computer-science-wh... which links to this study: <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/11/220748057/why-wome... which indicates that rather than being based on prestige, it appears that the disparity can be broken down based on more rewarding but lower paying, vs. more purely mercenary jobs.

I wouldn't call being a teacher more prestigious than being an engineer, nor a social worker, but there are still a lot of women who are more interested in going into those fields than into engineering disciplines.

Other studies also point to other reasons; in computer science especially, there's a very strong effect of computers being seen as boys toys, so men come into the major with more experience and more interest in the field just to begin with: <https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/s...

The gender gap in engineering disciplines, as a complex social phenomenon, is likely to have many interrelated causes. Between lower encouragement of computers as girls toys at younger ages, the fact that there is still a bit of an expectation that men will be the primary breadwinner in the family and thus women can get these lower paying but more rewarding jobs, the fact that the large existing gender gap makes it less comfortable for women in the major, in the workplace, and so on, it's unlikely that there's going to be one single cause for it.

So, in summary, while from what I found it looks like it's not prestige but how rewarding the job is perceived to be that makes more of the difference, but that's not to say that your hypothesis is wrong, just that I found some evidence to support a different effect that at least appears to be stronger than the effect you describe.

[sputr]

I think everyone discussing any gender gap should really watch this Norwegian documentary:

Brainwashed: The Gender Equality Paradox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE

The "social expectations" hypothesis fails to explain why countries with higher living standards have more polarized sectors. The idea that in a perfect world with no "social pressure" we would reach a parity between genders ignores just about all research done on the biological gender differences.

[abathur]

A hypothesis about why people end up in the jobs they do fails to account for whatever non-causative correlation someone can cook up? Astonishing! Why doesn't every country with a highly gender-segregated economy have a high standard of living?

[xaa]

Obviously because it is quite reasonable to assume that standards of living partially cause gender distribution by making daycare affordable, allowing more paid leave, etc., whereas gender polarization would not be expected to be a strong enough effect to pull an entire economy significantly in one direction or another.

Causal modeling is a very difficult thing when you cannot perform a controlled experiment. I would be interested in your take on how you would suggest that the authors attempt to confirm or disprove this hypothesis.

[abathur]

Right. Precisely. Gender polarization isn't a strong enough effect to pull significantly on an economy; sputr is trying to use a spurious correlation with little value in actually predicting whether a country will have a high or low standard of living as evidence that we've all had the wool pulled over our eyes.

Assuming you mean the authors of the documentary, I'll give you a new synopsis highlighting what it's really about: Strawman arguments abound as our intrepid documentarians drag us from interview to interview to assert that it seems people conform very closely to what our stereotypes tell us to expect of them. Obviously this must be the inevitable result of our biology! Our strawman assertion of what "equality" means is defeated! There's no way our stereotypes could be self-perpetuating! People definitely don't continue to believe in the same religions or speak the same languages or eat the same food or celebrate the same holidays just because their ancestors did! Propensity to speak English and believe in the Judeo-Christian God must also be biological destiny!

Per your last question, I have no meaningful suggestion for the authors of the video; they're going to have a miserable confirming or disproving anything as long as they insist on using logical fallacies to do so.

[yawaramin]

On the contrary, the difference in living standards explains it perfectly. If you're in a poor country, pragmatism forces you to drop your 'social expectations'. It's either earn enough to eat or hold on to your prejudices. In that environment, people lose their prejudices fast.

[WalterSear]

This hypothesis holds no water in any 3rd world country I can think of.

[yawaramin]

Sorry, but what planet are you from? Every day we're bombarded with stories and images from the developing world of men, women and children trying to make a living. Villagers migrate to cities seeking work. People work in factories and make a better wage than they could anywhere else without education. Women take micro-credit to start up little businesses like mobile phone call booths, or charging booths, and finance their childrens' education. (Women are seen as better clients for credit because they're less likely to spend the money on drinking and gambling.)

Look at the tech sectors in Europe and India and Asia--they don't have all these hang-ups and prejudices and misconceptions about how women's brains 'work differently' or what the biological differences might be or all that pseudo-scientific bull-crap. They just do the work.

[Perdition]

You got some citations? Because in most of the countries you are talking about the poor who will do anything to survive aren't getting university degrees and sexist discrimination exists in abundance.

For example in many Islamic countries like Iran women do make up a significant portion of engineering graduates (sometimes even a majority) but few end up working as engineers due to sexism and cultural expectations.

I did some Googling and what I found didn't really support your argument.

https://hbr.org/2014/03/whats-holding-women-back-in-science-...

[WalterSear]

>Every day we're bombarded with stories and images from the developing world of men, women and children trying to make a living.

I bet you are. I've actually lived much of my life in countries you would consider 'poor'. There is plenty of prejudice to go around.

>Look at the tech sectors in Europe and India and Asia--they don't have all these hang-ups and prejudices and misconceptions about how women's brains 'work differently' or what the biological differences might be or all that pseudo-scientific bull-crap.

Sounds like you have a lot of the world left to see.

[kbenson]

> I wouldn't call being a teacher more prestigious than being an engineer, nor a social worker

I would. There's a lot of respect for people that do these things, because they are seen as somewhat selfless (partly because the monetary compensation is so low, partly because the jobs are so essential). Aid workers share in this as well. Prestige is about respect, and there are paths to respect that don't include a lot of money or power.

[yawaramin]

Speaking as a Canadian, I'd say that teachers are almost universally reviled here. Students hate them because they're the human agents of the school system; and parents hate them because they 'obviously' don't pay enough attention to and try to understand their 'special snowflake' kids, which is why the kid got a C- instead of the A+ they deserve.

I can't see things being very different in the States.

[chaostheory]

Yeah I forgot about social expectations

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/22/365968465/after-backlash-compu...

Still I can't help but feel social prestige is still a stronger factor for females than males

[abathur]

Why can't you help feel but feel this?

[chaostheory]

If you read the npr article that lambda referred to (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/11/220748057/why-wome...), it still feels like women choose fields that are cooler and higher prestige as opposed to being higher salary and lower prestige. lambda just refers to this as "rewarding" vs "mercenary"

I'm also going further disagree with lambda. For society at large, I feel that teachers and social workers do have higher prestige than engineers. Of course I realize that all of my opinions are just assumptions without actual data backing it up. However I do know this: the gender discrimination in both the military and finance are either just as bad or much worse, yet more women flock to both as opposed to our industry.

This is an interesting article as well that helps show that gender discrimination is also pretty bad in other industries that attract more women: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/02/...

[abathur]

Sorry--you probably won't see this now (much like I didn't notice for a bit!), but you took the time to reply, so I figured I should, as well. I was (a bit tartly) hoping to get you to unpack why, in a very deep sense, you can't help but feel that way.

Does this have to do with how you perceive men and women? Does it have to do with how you perceive these various vocations? Is this feeling rooted in personal experience(s) and memories? Can you locate those in space and time?

It's important to challenge the ways we can't help but feel, because those are stumbling blocks when it comes to understanding what motivates other people--especially people who aren't like us. Our personal experience is always a fairly small slice of human life, and I'm concerned that you're projecting things you "can't help but feel" onto two of the largest populations.

I posted this elsewhere in the thread--I don't know if you saw it, but the Harris poll actually released some numbers not too long ago on the notion of prestige in various occupations: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris%20Poll%2085%20...

But still, even though it cuts against some of your assertions about what is and isn't prestigious--it's a poll. It's messy. Hidden within its aggregations are the differences between what parents (of both genders) think would be prestigious for their boys, and for their girls. It hides differences between what is seen as prestigious in different ethnic, religious and regional communities. The way you "can't help but feel", whether about the people picking these occupations or the occupations themselves, is located in the messy middle of your own experiences.

There are communities where the most prestigious thing a woman can do is be a stay-at-home mother. There are communities where any occupation that doesn't pay at least six figures is an embarrassment. There are communities where going into finance is like selling your soul. There are communities where you aren't a real man unless you get dirty for a living. There are communities where academics are exalted regardless of pay, and communities where they're disdained for class, religious and political reasons.

This is all to say: The NPR article doesn't feel that way at all to me. But the way I read it doesn't mean your perceptions of the relative prestige of occupations are "wrong". They're probably quite right, given your experiences. Be open to the likelihood that your experiences don't generalize to others. Be open to the likelihood that the decisions other people make are better understood through careful consideration of their experiences than your own.

[chaostheory]

> Does this have to do with how you perceive men and women?

In the past compared to boys, girls simply aren't exposed enough to anything technical for them to discover it before their minds can get potentially tainted by popular perception compared to other fields. Is this changing? Yes. I feel that this will be much less of a problem for our children given the advent of toys like Goldiblox and even Lego sets aimed for girls. However I feel that this doesn't change the present situation for adults.

> Does it have to do with how you perceive these various vocations?

Yes because I've lived outside of places like Silicon Valley, in metros with a more conventional and old mindset.

> Is this feeling rooted in personal experience(s) and memories?

Yes outside of Silicon Valley it is strongly encouraged that engineers transition to management. It just isn't as respected outside of tech hubs and it's pretty recent. Is this changing for the better? It depends on the metro and the rate of change in perception varies.

> Be open to the likelihood that your experiences don't generalize to others.

I am definitely open to my generalizations being incorrect in many different places and times. I'm just stating what I feel is the general mass trend.

> I posted this elsewhere in the thread--I don't know if you saw it, but the Harris poll actually released some numbers not too long ago on the notion of prestige in various occupations

Looking that this poll and several other similar studies over the decades, my hypothesis has been proven wrong. Thanks for posting quantitative data. Yeah polls are subject to a lot of errors. Still, they're better than guesses based on personal experience. Logically I'm thinking that I've been proven wrong. However what's annoying though is that even in light of data, I still feel that I'm 'correct'. My gut still tells me that engineering is still seen by the masses as low prestige (outside of tech hubs like Silicon Valley). If I were to rationalize it, I would say that popular media is the main driving force behind my opinion. It's hard to ignore annoying shows like The Big Bang Theory. Ugh, I really hate that show. Another reason is that I feel the polls are measuring prestige incorrectly. imo A political office is very prestigious, yet in these polls they score so low. Why? Because the way the researchers measure prestige includes perception of ethics and generalized likability.

[tomp]

You can't compare being a teacher with a career in "law, medicine, politics, or finance" or a programmer. The latter all require very high intellectual aptitude, either logical/mathematical (programming, finance), memory (medicine, law) or social intelligence (finance, politics). In contrast, mostly everybody can be a teacher (and according to comment [1], teachers usually come from the bottom of their class).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9090437

[tptacek]

Perhaps 20 years ago it was the case that anyone could get job as a teacher. That's very difficult from succeeding as a teacher, and it's also not true today.

[BSousa]

Like anyone can be a lawyers or a programmer. There are good and bad ones, and a good teacher will require a lot of skills and 'logical' aptitude as well as empathy. AFAIK, you can't take a 4 week bootcamp and teach high-school math, but you can get a job at a startup after a rails bootcamp.

Can we stop with the 'we are so special/intelligent' arrogance?

[frabcus]

This isn't true - the core skill of controlling classes is pretty hard. It's not an intellectual skill, but a social intelligence one.

[tomp]

The difference is that you only see you're bad at it when you're already a teacher, teaching a class. If you suck at programming, you see it in the introductory course of first semester of college.

[ameister14]

You don't have to be that smart to be a programmer, and it takes less schooling than being a teacher requires.

[tomp]

Maybe not smart, but you have to have the ability to do a certain kind of abstract thinking. Like translating concepts into sequences of very precise steps (i.e. algorithms).