Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Article: Princeton's Woman Problem

An essay "Why Can't a Princeton Woman Be More Like a Princeton Man?" by John Rosenberg at the site Minding the Campus
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2011/03/why_cant_a_princeton_woman_be_.html

explains why Princeton does not have a problem:

...

'[T]his report spends much of its 89 pages describing the ways in which Princeton women are different from Princeton men, and the remainder of its pages recommending measures to combat the �stale old-fashioned stereotypes� that women are different.
Evan Thomas describes these recommendations as an effort �to bolster women's confidence and prod them to seek prominent positions.� And prodding does indeed describe what Tilghman, Keohane, et al. believe their female undergraduates need. Despite their strained attempt to celebrate all the hard work that female undergraduates do behind the scenes, I think a fair reading of this report indicates that its authors want Princeton women to act more like Princeton men.

President Tilghman and Professor Keohane, meet Professor Henry Higgins: �Why Can�t a Woman Be More Like a Man?�'

Part of the LOL was because she has contacts in the firm with the other executive assistants and other worker bees who keep her informed.

At first she was told she "Needed a degree." and then "Needed real world experience." and then "Need to show proof of ability." which she has in all areas.

But this firm cannot get past her sex appeal and their first view of her as being fresh out of High School - among other things.

Senior management has this view of the world that does not really represent the real world. They think a man with fake credentials is worthy while proven performers are not.

But this is no different from other places that also lack an objective strategy for managing, promoting, and mentoring people.

In the case I write about above, all the objective standards say "HIRE NOW!" yet they do not follow them.

Which is what the OT is about.

I see the same process at other firms as well as the one I am at now. People are thrown into new situations and when they screw up, rather than mentoring them and helping them learn, they get blamed. Or past goofiness sticks to people even though they have grown and matured.

The Dean's comments :


This is a very interesting quote. It gives me the creeps.

Structurally and culturally, the Dean's comments are no different than that from any other Old Boy's Club.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/25_percent_of_lawyer_moms_leave_the_workplace_study_finds

A study finds that in comparison to medicine, where only 6% of mothers leave the work force, 25% eventually do so in law. The need for family-friendly work policies is cited.

Who needs more lawyers?

Professions with an "up-our-out" career ladder demanding total commitment to make partner (or get tenure) will have more women dropping out, because they want to spend time with their children and in general, "have a life". Men do too, but a higher fraction of them are willing to sacrifice everything for their careers.

At many law firms and consulting firms, you need to make partner or leave. Doctors are not pushed out of medical practices in the same way, and this can make medicine a more appealing profession for women.

Over 50% of medical school classes in the US are currently are female. BUT, women are still overwhelmingly clustered in poorly valued medical professions like pediatrics or internal medicine. And, women physicians are paid on average something like only 80% of what a male physician makes, EVEN when you account for women working part-time, etc. It is a little depressing.
In my field of interventional cardiology, only about 10% of such physicians nationally are female.

We need more women lawyers to achieve equality, though the field is definitely choked right now overall. There's no reason that further advances can't be made in offering family-friendly policies, as is already occurring in greater measure all the time. We're not talking about Navy SEALs here, and some of the best lawyers I know work from home a fair amount of the time anyway.

Behind a lot of men who "sacrifice everything" are women who stay at home, taking care of the household and enabling the man to go out and earn. In an era when alimony awards occur less and less, it continues to be a major justification in many awards for stay-at-home mothers today that they contributed to their husbands' professional careers. There may be more bachelor workaholics out there than bachelorettes, but I wouldn't know and think it is bound to be a secondary phenomenon.

An NYT op-ed says the productivity of female doctors does not match that of men because the women want more work-life balance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/opinion/12sibert.html
Don�t Quit This Day Job
By KAREN S. SIBERT
June 11, 2011

...

But the productivity of the doctors currently practicing is also an important factor. About 30 percent of doctors in the United States are female, and women received 48 percent of the medical degrees awarded in 2010. But their productivity doesn�t match that of men. In a 2006 survey by the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges, even full-time female doctors reported working on average 4.5 fewer hours each week and seeing fewer patients than their male colleagues. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that 71 percent of female pediatricians take extended leave at some point � five times higher than the percentage for male pediatricians.

This gap is especially problematic because women are more likely to go into primary care fields � where the doctor shortage is most pronounced � than men are. Today 53 percent of family practice residents, 63 percent of pediatric residents and nearly 80 percent of obstetrics and gynecology residents are female. In the low-income areas that lack primary and prenatal care, there are more emergency room visits, more preventable hospitalizations and more patients who die of treatable conditions. Foreign doctors emigrate to the United States to help fill these positions, but this drains their native countries of desperately needed medical care.

...

Yes, but studies show that when you account for number of hours worked, etc., women still earn only 80% of what the male physicians earn. This finding is fairly true of most professions in the USA- in corporate law, science, etc., women earn less then men.

When I selected my first pediatrician for my first born, I used a female pediatrician in sole practice. The city had an after hours pediatric clinic (associated with the medical school) that was for weekday evenings, Saturday evenings and all day Sunday.

My ped hired another female ped to cover all day Wednesday so she could have that day off (only sick visits, well check visits weren't scheduled on Wednesdays) and once a month on Saturday mornings my ped had office hours (those hours were for 4 practices' patients and only if it couldn't wait until Monday).

Both women were extremely happy with the arrangement. The practice owner didn't have to work her one Saturday a month and didn't have to work Wednesdays. The part timer worked 5 or 6 days a month while her children were very small. I think the plans were when her children were older for her to become a partner in the practice and they would hire another part timer when the practice grew big enough to handle it.

I don't see that as under productivity. The practice was well run, successful, and met the needs of both the women and the patients.