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from the doesn't-stem-student's-interest dept.
Research into the obvious, but someone has finally done it: Three women researchers have studied the behavior of undergraduates in STEM fields, and concluded that there basically is no problem. From the abstract:
"The results show that high school academic preparation, faculty gender composition, and major returns have little effect on major switching behaviors, and that women and men are equally likely to change their major in response to poor grades in major-related courses. Moreover, women in male-dominated majors do not exhibit different patterns of switching behaviors relative to their male colleagues."
Furthermore current recruitment efforts to attract more women tend to be counterproductive. In an interview, the primary author says:
"Society keeps telling us that STEM fields are masculine fields, that we need to increase the participation of women in STEM fields, but that kind of sends a signal that it's not a field for women, and it kind of works against keeping women in these fields."
One of our female students told me that the women are interviewed endlessly, for one project or another: "tell us about your experience", "are you doing ok", "have you experienced sexism", and on, and on. That alone is enough to make them question their career choice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 07 2017, @11:42PM (3 children)
I'm not one of them. I had a male nurse groping me last year in the ER. No, I was not more comfortable with a male nurse, than I would have been with a female nurse. Now, funny thing about female nurses is, they can be too damned attractive. I had no problems with mature women, who ranged from attractive to unattractive. The young nubile thing who walked in on me while nekkid was a real hit to my composure. The mature women who were obviously mothers and grandmothers were comfortable to be around, no matter how many clothes I had on or off. The girlish looking youngster was pretty damned uncomfortable.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 08 2017, @03:09AM (2 children)
I had round of IV antibiotics for a case of osteomyelitis that lasted several weeks, so I regularly visited the office for new IV placements, and got to know the 4 nurses there. They ranged from supermodel attractive to potato, and their IV placement skills were perfectly negatively correlated with their attractiveness. By the end I was requesting the potato and refusing the other extreme.
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(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 08 2017, @02:27PM (1 child)
That's probably because the supermodel one was the youngest, and therefore the most inexperienced, and the potato was the oldest and therefore most experienced. So it's not too surprising that the oldest one will have the best IV placement skills. But this isn't always age-correlated: motor skills vary wildly by individual, regardless of age. Some people just have better "feel" than others.
Personally, I'll take my chances with the supermodel (if I don't already know her to be lousy with a needle). I have excellent veins and no nurse ever has trouble doing an IV on me, though some do have more finesse than others.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 08 2017, @09:33PM
There was some age difference, late 20s to early 40s, but the middle talent nurses were also 20s and 40s. There's some truth to the notion that "when you're that pretty, you don't have to do much else to get by in the world..." she couldn't place a needle in an easy vein over half the time. Worst of it was the suggestion that I needed a PIC line, I didn't need a PIC line, I needed one of the other 3 nurses who could actually do their job.
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