Why Do We "Need" Male Nurses And Female Engineers?
A good bit of the advice I give -- advice that doesn't usually make the column -- goes to people who went into some profession due to others' expectations: Their parents, what they thought they "should" do, etc.
An article about Swedish teens in The Local by Catherine Edwards reflects this notion -- through a "gender studies" lens. Una Tellhed is the researcher -- and the person who's quoted just below:
"We need more men to take an interest in nursing and more women to take an interest in technology, partly because it's important for the labour market to be able to recruit both men and women," she said.
This follows an earlier remark from her:
"Both boys and girls are reluctant to enter professions dominated by the opposite gender, leading to gender segregation later on in the world of work, the study ... shows."
The reality is, women tend to prefer working with people and will often sacrifice making big bucks and advancement for living balanced lives. In fact, many women prefer to just have jobs they enjoy and are not the tigers fighting for the corner office that men are more likely to be.
I wrote about this in a column -- and, by the way, as somebody who's pretty "work first," I'm one of the female outliers:
There's an assumption that women should want to join the cutthroat race to the corner office. Psychologist Susan Pinker criticizes this as the "male standard" being forced on women. In her 2008 book, "The Sexual Paradox," Pinker points to countless studies that find that women tend to be more motivated by "intrinsic rewards" -- wanting to be happy more than they want to be on top. As an example, she profiles "Donna," who quit her prestigious job as a tenured professor in a computer science department for a lower-status job (tutoring faculty at another university) that allowed her more one-on-one engagement with people. Pinker explains, "Donna decided to opt for what was meaningful for her over status and money."Like you, I don't want kids. (I describe them as "loud, sticky, and expensive.") However, Pinker notes that there's "plenty of evidence that many more women than men" -- including women at the top of their game -- put family before career advancement. She tracked down "Elaine," the author of an op-ed titled "My glass ceiling is self-imposed," about why she'd declined a promotion that would have put her third from the top in a company with 12,000-plus employees in more than 60 countries.
The president of the company was dumbfounded. But Elaine wrote that she was happily married, with children (and grandparents nearby). The promotion would have required relocating, and that would have destabilized her family. She concluded her piece with the observation that "many companies ... would like nothing more than to have more senior female executives, but not all females are willing to give up what it might take to get there."
Frankly, that's just fine -- with me, anyway. I think people should do what works for them for their career and not feel obligated to act as quota points to comfort those in gender studies academia.
via OldRPM
1. OK but... nursing is an excellent example of men avoiding female-associated careers that could be very fulfilling. Not every man who wants to work in medicine can hack it in medical school.
That kind of openness is, I think, welcome. And I think most people who follow your blog agree that the gubmint should not be engineering any of this. It's politicization of this that is wrong.
(BTW Something similar is happening in the Protestant and liberal-Jewish clergy: the ordination of women has caused men to drop out of this profession.)
2. OK but... my Orthodox Jewish community is full of women who, although fully committed to Jewish family life, made sure to get that Bachelor's degree first. They in no way lack "drive", and have every intention of returning to the workforce - and not just to support their families: many move on to rather high-powered positions, or follow the traditional Jewish track of small business ownership. Many manage to complete 2nd and 3rd degrees during the years that are focused on child-rearing.
These women have a attained "life-work balance" by doing one thing at a time, each in the biologically proper time. And yes, living in a community that still values the commitment of marriage makes this a lot easier.
Paradoxically, the traditional mores that clearly leave sex at home, combined with having already achieved personal goals of marriage and family, allow these women to be very assertive/self-possessed when they get to the workforce.
"You can have it all, just not all at once"
Ben David at February 4, 2018 11:42 PM
It's good comedy that women have decided to make themselves systematically unhappy; I guess the Feminine Mystique was a tombstone for women's happiness; making powerpoints and trying to act like men must offer something to replace housewife boredom, but whatever it is has no name...
Living somebody else's vision for your life is a sure recipe for anxiety, unhappiness, and early-onset "old man's" diseases.
And your average college co-ed thinks that these women who tell her how she's supposed to live her life are on her side!
El Verde Loco at February 5, 2018 6:31 AM
Problem #1 for the diversity advocates is that they take "diversity is good" as an axiom; it is true because they define it to be so. But that doesn't make a good axiom. "Two plus two equals four" is an axiom; it is true because it's inherent in the definitions of the words "two", "plus", "equals", and "four". And it clearly conforms to real-world experiences. The only way that "two plus two equals four" could not be true would be if one or more of the words was redefined, or put into a different context.
However, the proposition "is diversity good?" is testable. Studies have been done. Results from what I've seen have been mixed. While we can say that "is diversity good?" might be a true proposition -- we don't have enough data to know -- it can't be a valid or useful axiom because, clearly, it isn't self-evidently true. Thus, the diversity advocates base all of their arguments on a premise that hasn't been demonstrated.
Problem #2 is the advocates' definition of the word "diversity", which to them means having a mix of males and females, and mixes of people of different ethnic origins and sexual orientations. This is a proxy for having people who have different ways of looking at things due to having had different life experiences. The theory is that having such a mix of people improves creativity and the quality of work, and therefore, an organization having this type of diversity will be more successful than one that doesn't. That hasn't been proven to most people's satisfaction (see problem #1), but for the sake of argument, let's assume that it is true. Now, are the life experiences of a white boy who grew up in midtown Manhattan likely to be the same as a white boy who grew up on a farm in Kansas? Probably not, and to lump both of them into the category of "white male" is intellectual laziness. Diversity advocates try to get around this problem by micro-dividing demographics into ever-finer categories, assuming that they can eventually get to a small enough set of divisions that it can serve as a proxy for the individuals in each division.
But that doesn't work because of the nature of statistics. Demographic statistics are good for telling you the average behavior of large groups; they don't tell you much about a given individual. And as the groups are divided smaller and smaller, the error bars get bigger, pretty soon you have demographic stats that fail at doing what they are supposed to do -- tell you the average behavior of a group -- and still don't tell you how an individual will behave. The whole thing breaks down and you wind up learning nothing. To really achieve what the diversity advocates say they want, they'd have to take a different approach: doing psychological testing on everyone, and categorizing people based on how they actually think. (And of course, such tests do exists, such as the Meyers-Briggs assessment.) There is no neat and easy proxy. But doing this level of testing on everyone would be expensive, raise obvious civil rights concerns, and it doesn't make for pithy political slogans.
So to sum up, "diversity" has two big problems: (1) it is based on premise that hasn't been demonstrated, and (2) its methodology is faulty. That's why diversity advocacy quickly breaks down into a political power contest.
Cousin Dave at February 5, 2018 6:53 AM
"Why Do We "Need" Male Nurses And Female Engineers?"
To make porn more believable?
On a more serious and similar note, people push the 'innovation is good' idea just like they push the 'diversity is good' idea. And reality has shown that too much innovation is just as deadly for an organization as too little. Kodak was an incredibly innovative company. And not just in the chemical photography business. They essentially invented digital photography. And that quickly lead to the death of Kodak.
Ben at February 5, 2018 7:04 AM
It's a sad sign of the times that the simple concept of recognizing what makes you happy, and then doing it, is seen as unusual, brave or anything out of the ordinary.
Psychologist Susan Pinker criticizes this as the "male standard" being forced on women.
It's not being "forced" on anyone except those who never learned to say "No, that's not what's going to make me happy or fulfilled." If you let Betty Friedan or Phyllis Schlafly or anyone else guide your decisions against your own best interests, you're not thinking for yourself.
Kevin at February 5, 2018 8:28 AM
"... women tend to be more motivated by "intrinsic rewards" -- wanting to be happy more than they want to be on top."
I prefer women on top.
iowaan at February 5, 2018 8:48 AM
Regarding “intrinsic rewards”, I am reminded of a discussion I read a number of years ago, I believe quoted by Donald McCaig about something Patrick Burns was asked by a dog trainer, about rewarding his terriers when they brought an animal to earth: “I let them do it again.” And that to me is a powerful remark about both genetics and behavior: his terriers want to hunt voles, and live for it. I think to some degree you see the same sort of thing in the STEM disciplines, most particularly computer science and engineering: the work itself is rewarding for men in ways it is not for women.
Rob McMillin at February 5, 2018 9:33 AM
Regarding item number 2 about women in the Orthodox Jewish community, in the first comment above by Ben David:
To each her own of course, but I think that's an excellent model for young women who want to have stable, traditional families and a lot more. In my family of traditional, conservative, evangelical Christians, this is the predominate model for young women. Both of my daughters and most of my 20 nieces were homeschooled, went to college, worked for respectable salaries, owned property, married in their mid-20's, and have children that they care for full time. They can't have it all, but they can have a lot; and they have pretty much whatever they want, including time. They profess satisfaction and happiness, and appear to be happy. All I ever hear about them from their husbands is gratitude and appreciation, and from their kids, some now in their teens, admiration. In case you can't tell, I'm very proud of them and love them all, especially my daughters. They are awesome women.
Ken R at February 5, 2018 1:02 PM
Ben: "Why Do We "Need" Male Nurses And Female Engineers?"
To make porn more believable?
You win the internet.
Though if we seriously wanted to make porn more believable, I think they should start with acting lessons.
Patrick at February 5, 2018 1:26 PM
Rob McMillin: I think to some degree you see the same sort of thing in the STEM disciplines, most particularly computer science and engineering: the work itself is rewarding for men in ways it is not for women.
My daughter is a software engineer. Her degree is in business administration, but while in college she found that she liked doing whatever it is software engineers do and learned the skills during her spare time and summers. She did part-time work in that for extra money in college.
After graduating she worked for several years for a company whose software developers were divided into five categories of "geeks", based on their skill level - level 1 were novices; level 5 were "super geeks". My daughter was a level 4 geek.
When I asked her if she was going to be a level 5 geek she said she had no desire to. Level 5 geeks were all men, mostly single, with masters degrees or PhD's in computer science, math or engineering. They lived, breathed, thought and dreamed code. It was their whole life and they loved it. They talked about code during their lunch and coffee breaks; they got together after work to drink beer and talk code. Code was their hobby in their spare time - they designed and built fascinating toys and gadgets for entertainment.
My daughter said she enjoyed the work, the company she worked for, the people she worked with, and the money - salary, bonuses and incentives into six figures - but her dream was to have kids and be a full-time mother and homemaker. And that's what she is. She and my son-in-law are self-employed and successful; their skills are complementary. My grandchildren are homeschooled and happy.
Three of my grandkids and I are going to eat junk food and watch movies later this afternoon.
Ken R at February 5, 2018 1:56 PM
Feminists: Men are awful
Also feminists: women should strive to be just like men
Excuse me if I notice that this is not working out so well.
cc at February 5, 2018 3:22 PM
And while they're at it. They should bring back higher production values and musicals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMXtlYLteDM
Sixclaws at February 5, 2018 5:37 PM
Thank you Sixclaws. That was hilarious.
Also if they want porn to be more believable the actresses should stop being so surprised when they find something in a guy's pants. It's like opening a refrigerator and be shocked there is food in there.
Ben at February 5, 2018 8:15 PM
"Feminists: Men are awful
Also feminists: women should strive to be just like men."
Yeah, that's a thing going back to Second Wave. Looking back it's amazing how quickly "the options that are available to men should be available to women" morphed into "women should want the same things that men want".
Later in her life, Phyllis Schlafly took an interest in missile defense. She educated herself well enough to write some thoughtful opinion columns on the subject. Take that however you will.
As far as the believability of porn: where would one start. Hugh Hefner started out with the idea that Playboy would feature "girl next door" women, and it was under that mantra that the magazine saw its initial growth. It wasn't until the mid-1970s that Playboy turned to the bolt-on-boobs, entire-body-covered-in-concealer supermodel wannabees, and that's where its growth pretty much stopped. There's a reason why amateur porn is a thing. Just sayin'.
Cousin Dave at February 6, 2018 7:08 AM
We don't need female engineers or male nurses, we need good engineers and nurses.
Feminists saw men making beaucoup bucks and engendering respect as engineers and wanted in on it. But they didn't realize (or want to realize) that getting an engineering degree takes a lifelong interest in mathematics and a great deal of study and effort. They saw a field that paid well and was mostly men and assumed "good ol' boys' club."
The push for male nurses is just a way to balance out the push for female engineers. As more men enter the profession and make more money than their EMT buddies, indoors and in better working conditions, those numbers will shift without any political action.
Conan the Grammarian at February 6, 2018 10:17 AM
As more men enter the profession and make more money than their EMT buddies, indoors and in better working conditions, those numbers will shift without any political action.
Until the males are forced out by sex abuse allegations.
dee nile at February 6, 2018 4:40 PM
Some men might not be comfortable being wiped down by a female nurse.
NicoleK at February 9, 2018 6:02 AM
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