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Women Avoid STEM Degrees to Get Better Grades?

posted by janrinok on Wednesday March 12 2014, @04:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the this-will-not-be-controversial-oh-no-sir dept.

GungnirSniper writes:

"Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post has 'A message to the nation's women: Stop trying to be straight-A students.'

In her analysis of others' findings, she writes of a discouragement gradient that pushes women out of harder college degrees, including economics and other STEM degrees. Men do not seem to have a similar discouragement gradient, so they stay in harder degree programs and ultimately earn more. Data suggests that women might also value high grades more than men do and sort themselves into fields where grading curves are more lenient.

'Maybe women just don't want to get things wrong,' Goldin hypothesized. 'They don't want to walk around being a B-minus student in something. They want to find something they can be an A student in. They want something where the professor will pat them on the back and say "You're doing so well!"'

'Guys,' she added, 'don't seem to give two damns.'

Why are women in college moving away from harder degrees?"

 
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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday March 12 2014, @05:34PM

    by VLM (445) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @05:34PM (#15546)

    Its a meme thing, and its false. In the whole STEM field, math is the closest to 50:50 ratio. Its closer to 50:50 than many "soft" degrees.

    I think its selective memory. I didn't like diffeqs although I found the electronics classes comparatively easy. Something like 3/4 of the freshmen dropped out or transferred into something else before graduation, including ALL the girls. ALL of them. Well, electronics is easy, so it must have been the math, so all girls must be bad at math.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Daniel Dvorkin on Wednesday March 12 2014, @05:50PM

    by Daniel Dvorkin (1099) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @05:50PM (#15559)

    In the whole STEM field, math is the closest to 50:50 ratio.

    Really? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd like to see the data on this.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Hawkwind on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:06PM

    by Hawkwind (3531) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:06PM (#15575)

    I just took a look at some simple Mathematics PhD data and women were around 26%. Granted you didn't say what kind of mathematics degrees, any chance your thinking bachelors level?

    • (Score: 1) by siwelwerd on Wednesday March 12 2014, @08:00PM

      by siwelwerd (946) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @08:00PM (#15616)

      It's not much better at the bachelor's level unless you lump in Math Ed majors (which is so watered down most places as to not be deserving of the name "math major").