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Analyzing Female Brain Drain
Dueling reports on women in the sciences offer contrasting opinions on reasons for the scarcity of women in such industries. One report urges HR leaders to address issues of sexual harassment, isolation and the scarcity of mentors, while two others conclude that women simply prefer jobs where they can interact with people, such as medicine.
When people think of the highly technical fields of science, engineering and technology, most view these industries as traditionally dominated by men. But a new study finds that many women are entering those industries -- they are just dropping out. The study, The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering and Technology, found that women make up 41 percent of the lower-level positions in the SET fields, but that more than half (51 percent) of these women eventually quit their jobs, with attrition rates spiking after 10 years in the career, at approximately age 35. The studyof more than 2,400 men and women in these fields was recently published by the Harvard Business Review. One of its co-authors is economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who is founding president of the New York-based Center for Work-Life Policy . She also heads the gender and policy program at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. "Larry Summers was wrong," says Hewlett, referring to the former Harvard University president's suggestion that the shortage of elite female scientists may stem, in part, from "innate" differences between men and women. "There's a very rich and substantial pool of female talent in these fields." The results of the Athena Factor study are in stark contrast, however, to two previous studies done in the recent past according to the Boston Globe. Those studies found that women who possess the qualities to perform well in highly technical areas are simply choosing jobs in other fields, such as medicine and biosciences. One report, entitled Why Are There So Few Women in Information Technology? Assessing the Role of Personality in Career Choices, was co-authored by University of Kansas economist Joshua Rosenbloom and will be featured in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Economic Psychology.
Rosenbloom's study found that personal preference largely determined whether a qualified woman would go into the information technology field. People who expressed a preference to work with tools (mostly men) were more likely to go into IT work, while people who preferred to work with people (mostly women) avoided IT, according to the study. That so-called "self-selection," according to Rosenbloom's research, accounted for approximately two-thirds of the gender imbalance in the IT field. And a 30-year-long study by Vanderbilt University entitled The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth followed the career paths of 5,000 participants and found that girls who excelled at math were more likely to pursue careers in fields such as medicine, humanities and social sciences because of a desire to work with organic, living things, compared to the men who tested well for math skills and largely expressed a preference to work with inorganic things. But according to the Athena Factor report, five "antigens" are to blame for the exodus of women in the SET fields, including "hostile macho cultures," where "women are marginalized by lab coat, hard hat, and geek workplace cultures that are often exclusionary and predatory." Sixty-three percent of women in these fields report experiencing sexual harassment, according to the study. "The No. 1 problem is the predatory, demeaning macho cultures that are still alive and well. It's a flashback to the 1950s in some ways," Hewlett says. "There is something very hostile about these work environments in terms of women." Says social psychologist Rachelle J. Canter, who is also president of RJC Associates, a San Francisco-based career consultancy: "Women in technology have hard skills, but not hard hearts. "Tokenism, a highly sex-segregated field and rampant sexist comments discourage even the most technical and hard-headed of techies. Women want technical jobs, but they get worn down by overt and covert gender discrimination whose 'noise' drowns out their passion for technology," she says. Isolation is another reason many women quit SET jobs. "A woman in SET can be the lone woman on a team or at a site," Hewlett says. "This makes it difficult to find support or sponsorship" for mentoring programs. "As a result of macho cultures and isolation," the report notes, "women in SET find it hard to gain an understanding of the way forward" in terms of job progression and, therefore, find themselves struggling to follow a "mysterious career path." Four in 10 women said they feel "stalled" or "stuck" in their careers. Hewlett suggests these women would benefit greatly from having mentors. "Getting yourself an active mentor or sponsor is a real life-line. It seems that isolation is totally corrosive, especially where the culture can be super-hostile. You need to have senior allies." Women in SET fields also have a hard time dealing with the "diving catch" culture of companies within these industries, a term referring to baseball players who dive forward to try to make a spectacular catch as opposed to playing it safe. Generally more risk-averse than men, women tend not to make the risky moves that can ultimately garner more positive attention and job advancement. Thus, many women feel that their voice is not often heard when it comes to making decisions. Leadership and organizational development consultant Nancy McGuire is the founder of Chapel Hill, N.C.-based McGuire Consulting Group, as well as a 20-year veteran of engineering positions at both IBM and General Motors. She says a lack of access to the halls of power is keeping women from achieving their full potential. While that access "has improved significantly [over the years, it] continues to create an imbalance due to the high percentage of males in both the profession and, particularly, in leadership roles," she says. Having a voice in the decision-making process, McGuire says, is closely tied to that access. "When a female employee does not know how or does not believe that they can have a say in what is being decided in the organization, they will quickly become disenfranchised." Finally, the report states, extreme work pressures in the SET field contribute to the hasty exit of women. "SET jobs are unusually time-intensive and, because of their global scope, often involve working in multiple time zones." Canter says companies can improve working conditions for women in the technical fields by providing more support. "Companies can signal their commitment to not just hiring, but developing and retaining women with top technical skills by investing in executive coaches to help women navigate difficult career situations and build career skills and confidence, along with technical skills," she says. To help combat the female brain drain in the SET fields, the report points to a number of nascent initiatives at 14 companies, including an effort at Cisco Systems to break down female isolation and Johnson & Johnson's "Crossing the Finish Line" program to help young, female, multicultural employees make it into senior management. Hewlett says the initiatives "are likely to be 'game changers' that will allow many more women to stay on track in SET careers." "Reducing female attrition by one-quarter would add 220,000 people to the highly qualified SET labor pool," the report concludes. "Given the tight labor market in SET fields, this is good news indeed."
May 27, 2008 Copyright 2008© LRP Publications |
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