1. Lower average math ability in women. This isn’t sexism - I’m a woman who made it through differential equations, linear algebra, operations research and Calculus 3. It was a challenge for me, and many other women dropped out to become business majors. So did many men, but that’s less of an issue.
2. The long hours associated with STEM dissuade many women from starting the career path. This mindset is why women are more likely to work part time with or without children.
3. Have children, and your odds of working in STEM go down dramatically. Why work in a engineering job where they demand 60 hours a week and/or travel when you can work in configuration management, management or some other position for a standard 40? Some proactively pick the career perceived as more family friendly.
4. Men have stronger visual spacial skills invaluable for design. Few women have the visualization skills to be mechanical engineers, and fewer know about industrial engineering, chemical engineering and other disciplines that pay as well but aren’t classic ME.
5. While there is equal opportunity in entry to STEM fields (and often outright bias against men), boys gravitate to construction toys and disassembly of items at an early age, they are more likely to have the interest, skills and expertise to move into engineering. Girls are more likely to love dolls, cooking toys, etc and want to become teachers, doctors, bakers. I was playing with my brother’s legos, and I know I was the exception.
Isn’t becoming a science professor (on a university level) or a doctor essentially a STEM career?
I sometimes think men and women are so different that aliens visiting our planet might think we were two different species.
But I relish the difference, it is the sauce of life that makes it work.
I believe there are things that men are better at than women, and I also believe that women can do some things better than men.
I have always enjoyed this video: A Tale of Two Brains (by Mark Gungor
One of the things that makes it so funny is not just that it is true, but that every man or woman in that audience knows it too (as evidenced from their reactions) from simple empirical evidence that results from living together for years!