Women
Choosing Medicine over Engineering
Young
women’s beliefs and values about working with and for people
may be keeping them from careers in physics, engineering, astronomy
and information technology, according to research presented at
the Spring meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.
University
of Michigan psychologist Jacquelynne Eccles, PhD, and research
scientist Mina Vida studied young women and men who pursued science
careers and found that the girls in their study tended to chose
careers in the biological sciences—social sciences, environmental
sciences and medicine—over the mathematically based sciences
because they perceived the latter to be less people-oriented and
to have less value to society.
“We
do a bad job of explaining to young people what you do in different
jobs—they don’t think that engineers design and build
buildings that work efficiently and safely for the people who
use them,” says Eccles. “If you want to attract women
to these types of jobs, you need to provide more information about
them and how they can provide young women with opportunities to
fulfill their broader occupational and personal goals.”
Dr.
Eccles offers very important advise for our society, as bringing
more women into engineering might have many benefits for our society
as a whole.
January
2004
