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Women and Engineering

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"Women and Engineering"


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By Matt Zeitlin

Thanks to our current National Economic Council’s director, any new research or analysis on women in science and engineering is bound to garner some interest. So, in that spirit, here’s a Vox EU column from Jennifer Hunt where she compares women’s presence in science and engineering with other fields that are similarly intensive and demand long hours. The reason this type of comparison is important is because a common explanation for the skewed gender participation in those fields is the long hours , which, presumably, cause women who want to have and raise kids to not advance.

Larry Summers Treasury Portrait

Larry Summers Treasury Portrait

So what does Hunt find? First that “the exit rate for women compared to men is indeed higher from science and engineering than from other fields ” (emphasis added). We also have to find an explanation beyond just the hours and problems with starting a family, “Family-related constraints are not a factor – while many more women than men cite family issues as the reason for leaving engineering, the gender gap is as large in non-science and engineering fields.”




*Of course, I don’t know a lot about the fields, but I’m just following the work of someone who does.

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