This installment will look at how societal norms are playing out for women with STEM careers.

So far, I’ve covered WHY there are so few women in STEM careers and what is up with this hostile work environment that women in tech careers are experiencing.

My interviews with the women at work also showed that they are feeling a lot of pressure to juggle the roles of careerist, mom, house manager, social secretary, and wife (or significant other).

The research supports this.  A paper out of Penn State states there’s a strong “…influence of cultural attitudes about maternity, childcare, parental care and working outside the home on a woman’s choice of a [STEM] career.”

Societal Norm: Women are the Caregivers

Women are the ones to give birth.  That’s a (so far) irrefutable fact.

However, societal norms perpetuate inequality in domestic obligations.  When maternity leave is favored over paternity leave, or when women are encouraged to work part-time after the birth of a child while men are not, the social perception that it is more appropriate for women to fulfill the commitment to family responsibilities than for men is reinforced.

My interviews proved this out.  Some of the statements I heard:

• ”I feel pressure because I have kids and that’s seen as a negative.”
• My male counterpart doesn’t seem to have dad-guilt, so he doesn’t understand my mommy guilt.”
• ”My experience at work totally depends on my male boss’ home life.  If he has kids but a stay-at-home wife, he still doesn’t get it.  If he has kids and a working wife, he understands totally.”

Societal Norm: Women are the House Managers

Although women have increased their participation in the workplace over the last few decades, their domestic responsibilities have decreased only marginally. Research shows that the average American woman works 13.2 hours per week on housework, compared to her spouse who works roughly 6.6 hours.

This creates a situation that forces women to choose an unhealthy work life balance in order to pursue their careers.

A woman told me a funny story to drive this point home.  She said “I have to remember everything.  If we are out of toilet paper, I have to remember to stop on the way home or remember to ask my husband to stop. He’s happy to do it, but he would never even think about the state of toilet paper in our house.”

Societal Norm: Leadership Traits are Masculine Traits

Research consistently demonstrates that society sees leadership traits as closely resembling those which are usually attributed to men.

Women are affectionate, helpful and gentle.

Men are assertive, commanding and controlling.

Professional STEM women are expected to replace warmth for competence based on the norm that women cannot be competent and warm at the same time.

When women reach levels of leadership, they experience complex expectations where they show more male-associated traits as a leader yet female-associated traits of being a woman.  These women get criticized for being both too feminine and too masculine. They simply can’t win.

One woman I talked to put it this way.  “Our concern for humans is a disadvantage.  I’m perceived weaker for it.”

Societal Norms: Is There An Easy Answer?

Unfortunately, there is not.  Societal norms take an incredibly long time to shift.

On top of that, the early adopters are often viewed in a very negative light and have to fight the fight every minute of every day.

Doesn’t that sound exhausting?

But it’s a fight worth fighting.

I was lucky; there were a lot of options and role models right in my family.

I have three sisters-in-law who all were professional women when they had their children (three of us are STEM professionals).  Incredibly, each of us chose a different path for child rearing.

I stayed working full time.  One stayed working full-time but her husband became a stay-at-home dad.  One worked only part time after having children and the fourth decided to leave the work force and be the stay-at-home mom.

And you know what?

We all raised smart, well-adjusted children despite our different family lives. And we were all under the same societal norms.

Bottom line is that STEM women have more options than ever to navigate through societal expectations.  WE know we can be a warm human being AND an effective leader.  Women can be good employees AND good moms. We can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan…

Leaving you with this from the lighter side: Motherhood: It’s not a 9 to 5 job, it’s a “when I open my eyes ‘til I close my eyes” job.

 

 

In last week’s post, I described the “leaky” pipeline of women with STEM careers. One very alarming statistic came out that I want to explore this week, Namely that 50% of STEM women will leave mid-career due to a hostile work environment.

Hostile is such a  harsh word! Can THAT many women be experiencing a work environment so bad that it is labelled hostile?

I had to dig in.

Hostile: Is it overt sexual harassment?

One of the first things that the study says is that it is NOT overt sexual harassment. I totally believe that.

I believe that women who make it through a four-year college to earn a STEM degree are so used to being the minority, that they know how to shut down unwanted advances in a heartbeat.

For a project at work, I interviewed 30 women in supervisory positions and asked specifically about overt sexual harassment.  Most said they had never experienced any.  The ones who had, myself included, said they took care of it themselves.

The methods varied from avoiding that person like the plague to throwing a shoe at the offender, but the result was the same; the person did not continue the behavior.

Hostile: Undercurrent of Condescension

Most of the women in the Harvard study said they left due to an undercurrent of condescension that was prevalent in the workplace.

This undercurrent is not blatant behavior, it is consistent, undermining  things that add up and it has three components:

1. Office Housekeeping – It’s the unspoken assumption that a woman will buy the admin a Secretary’s Day gift, take notes at the meetings, muck out the fridge every few weeks, erase the white boards, etc.  It doesn’t sound like much, but women are feeling taken advantage of because this work is never acknowledged as important but it’s assumed a woman will take care of it.
2. Social Strain
   1. Due to Men Women are uncomfortable breaking into male cliques like the Monday-morning quarterbacking clutch or the Friday after work bar gang. They are uncomfortable even if they enjoy the sport or activity happening.  And because they’re on the outside of the group, they will never be as close as members within the group, which can feel ostracizing.
   2. Due to Women This social strain is because all women feel judged by other women.  Somewhere along the line, women forget how to be nice to each other. We get very judge-y about our female coworkers. Admit it! We don’t look at an exhausted man and think “Gee, he’d look a lot better with a little under eye concealer!”
3. Overlooked Contributions – Women feel their contributions are overlooked and, in my mind, this is very corrosive

Hostile: Overlooked Contributions

Overlooked contributions look like the following:

1. Sally brings up an idea in a meeting and it’s glossed over.  Ten minutes later John brings up the same point and it’s gold.
2. Sally and John team up to create something, say a plan. It becomes known as John’s plan.
3. Sally and John give a joint presentation.  The audience directs all the questions to John.
4. Sally is talking in a meeting and John interrupts.  Numerous studies find that men interrupt twice as often as women do and are nearly three times as likely to interrupt a woman as they are a man.
5. Sally feels that her point has to be bullet-proof before she brings it up because John will shoot holes at it incessantly.  She stays quiet a lot.

My interviews with other STEM women showed me just how pervasive this is.  One woman keeps a folder of all the “crap” she puts up with.  It’s her way to vent off steam.  Another woman cited an incident that had occurred just that morning in a meeting. One woman, who works with three male peers (X, Y & Z) said that X always points out how he’s working closely with Y & Z and not her.

Hostile Work Environment: My Take

I had to think about this one.  Then, I realized that all these things happen to me all the time, but my personality (extroverted) and the way I handle conflict (accommodating) play an important part.  I really don’t feel as if I’m working in a hostile environment.

But then, again, I’m also not in tech leadership anymore.

I AM one of the 50% who left her tech career after 24 years.  I’m in organization development now, where the atmosphere is supportive and collaborative.

Did the environment I was experiencing when I made the switch effect my decision?

Probably.

Was it hostile?

I wouldn’t have said so at the time, but looking at the list above, I can say that I definitely experienced those things.

So next week, I’m going to dive into the next piece of the puzzle and talk about societal norms and how they are playing out with STEM women. Because that definitely effected my decision to switch career paths!

Leaving you with this from the lighter side: For women in engineering, the odds are good.  However, the goods are sure odd…

 

This is the first installment of my mini-series on women in science, technology, engineering & math (STEM). Having been female all my life and having earned an engineering degree a long, long time ago, I feel like a have a good basis for understanding the issues.

That, and I’m good at research :o).

There is so much data out there on this subject, it’s mind-boggling.  So as I was sifting through it all, a plan emerged to take you, my reader, on a journey of a thousand girls from Anytown, USA to answer the question of why there are still so few women in STEM careers.

Stick with me, I’ll try to be gentle with statistics!

Let’s start with our pool of 1000 average girls aged 13-17 years old.  According to research from the Girl Scouts of America, only 13% are considering STEM careers as their first choice. The news isn’t all grim though, because another study, this one by Penn Schoen Berland (PSB) found that if teens have the benefits of STEM careers explained to them, 74% will now consider a STEM career.  Those benefits included both economic benefits and the impact they can have on the world.

Regardless of how young women get there, an American Association of University Women study shows that 15.1% of female first-year college students intend to get a STEM degree.

Yikes! Our pool of 1000 women is down to 151 already.

A US Department of Education study picks it up from there.  In the US, nearly half of students starting with a STEM intention do not earn a STEM degree.  About one half drop out of college entirely, the other half changes their major to something non-STEM.

Oh boy…our pool is only 76 women now.  But hey! they have their degree!

Don’t get too excited because now is when the statistics get alarming…

Fully 40% of women graduating with a STEM degree will never work in her degree field, or will quit within five years.

Good Lord! What is going on?

Turns out that 17% do leave for child-rearing purposes, but the majority choose other industries.  For example, a biologist may choose to work at a hospital, putting her in the health care industry.  Or an engineer may decide to become a math teacher instead.

Wow!  That means only 30 women will make it to mid-career in her STEM profession.

A Forbes article that I read wants to place the blame on simply the fact that too few women are choosing a STEM career. The data I’ve presented is certainly proving that to be true.  However, it is still only part of the story.

Here’s where it get’s downright ugly.  A Harvard Business school study found that 50% of women will leave their STEM career after 15-20 years due to a hostile work environment

Now that is a crazy statistic that I just had to jump into. And I will.  Next week!

No wonder there are so few women in tech and particularly in tech leadership.  We lose them in high school, in college, after college, and now mid-career, too! Of the thousand girls/women we started with, only 15 are left to climb into senior leadership positions.

Wow! Just wow.

Next week, I’ll dive into what is meant by a hostile work environment and share some anecdotes that corroborate that 50% figure from my own research.

Leaving you with this from the lighter side: “I’m not weird.  I’m a limited edition.”