STEM

Via NotEvenWrong, an essay on women in STEM suggests possible changes to make it easier for women. Executive summary: sexism exists but isn't the main driver-out-of-women. The virtual impossibility of beginning a family and still keeping up with cutting edge research is the big issue. (FWIW, this effects men too, but nowhere nearly as strongly.)

The essay assumes that STEM means research, and in particular academic research.

Cutting edge research is a form of exploration. That generally requires devoting huge blocks of time and energy--going all out, as it were. In its extreme physical forms, most men can't handle it, very very few women--and no children.

Luckily academic research virtually never involves those kinds of strains (though one of the polar expeditions was to retrieve penguin eggs!), and very few of us die in the effort. But the competition often demands a single-mindedness that shunts much of the rest of life to one side.

I'd guess, from what I've seen over mumble mumble years, that most of the (mostly men) find some kind of satisfactory work-life balance. But it takes a while to figure it out. And marriages tend to come surprisingly late. And it takes a while to learn that incremental effort beyond a certain (individual) point generally doesn't produce much.

The icons are men like Erdos, who lived and breathed mathematics--no family, no home to take care of, just math as long as he could. Dang few of us are Erdos. We can't master everything he did, and what we do master we take longer to learn.

The competition is real--can I put in a few more hours to solve problem X and stand out from the crowd? If the difference between me and the fellow down the hall is that he's a little faster, I can get to the same place he did with just a little more time and concentration, right?

But there's something else at work too, that isn't as easy to solve with sociological cures. In physics and math (I can't speak to engineering), the nature of the discipline is abstraction and problem-solving, and it attracts people who are good at both, and love to do both. See a problem: try to solve it. The problem becomes a fascination, and when you're young you don't know your limits and it eats more and more of your time. And maybe there's a haunting realization that most mathematicians, and maybe physicists, do their best work when young. (I know exceptions)

I think that the nature of the field, and the people attracted to it, build an environment that is not friendly to taking it easy and watching the baby learn to walk. Most of us learn to, but not quickly enough.