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Women Avoid STEM Degrees to Get Better Grades?

posted by janrinok on Wednesday March 12 2014, @08:35PM   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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @01:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @01:06PM (#16326)

    Now, if we could all get over this fundamentally idiotic notion that we need to differentiate people based on some aspect of their genetics, that'd be great. That would include following 'trends' like these to 'highlight perceived *ism' which likely have other underlying causes instead of some grandiose 'hate the people of group X' scheme.

    What likely other underlying causes? Accusations of hate would generally be overblown, but discrimination seems like a realistic explanation to me for a lot of these group trends. Either direct discrimination or just the way our societies are structured - both of which should be tackled. The only other possible underlying cause I can think of would actually be genetics - e.g. maybe women are genetically worse on average at STEM?