Nerve Endings Firing Away

This issue has been flogged to death but each time it pops up, it doesn’t fail to raise passionate arguments. Interestingly, last week two diametrically opposite yet independent issues were highlighted. USA Today notes that these days, 135 women are graduating from college for every 100 men. The U.S. Department of Education projects that the gap will grow in coming years. Effectively, there are also more women in college than men (I know, guys, Yay!). Somewhere else, NY Times reported on the controversial topic that has a Larry Summers touch that “a 2000 survey of Yale graduates in their forties showed that 90% of men worked but only 56% of women, and the article says there are similar numbers for the 2005 survey”. That meant that women at elite colleges are giving up their careers to be mothers. Distressing?

I think not. First of all, it is personal choice in what you do with your life regardless of the education you receive. I departed from the field of architecture to explore the public policy field, returned partially to urban planning, and I might even end up doing something totally different. But admittedly, women are more likely to stay at home compared to men because they are perceived to be better care-givers and home makers than men.

Personal choice arguments aside, as Half Sigma points out, “Elite education is all about status, and it’s mathematically impossible for more than 1% of the people to be in the top 1% of the status bell curve.” We do not sign a bond when we join college that we will be employed in the field that we were trained. The “seat wastage” argument frankly doesn’t hold water because real education is never wasted. An educated mom is definitely better than one who isn’t, although she doesn’t become a better mother simply by being more educated e.g. a ‘PhD mom’ vs. a ‘bachelors degree mom’. Doing a PhD is less about acquiring proficiency in the particular field than it is about persistence and learning rigors of research. Why do you think engineers
who do a graduate degree in business are more preferred by employers than their peers? Also would it matter if women are more likely to ‘drop out’ if they graduate from second-tier colleges instead of elite
colleges? Worth a look, eh?

But what does it mean for women seeking to find a foothold in an intensely competitive world heavily prejudiced against hiring women? Does it mean that employers will be less likely to hire women because
they might quit anytime? They might be inclined to offer a lesser compensation as compared to men. As Half Sigma also points out, employers are looking for short-term gains and do not expect you to hang around for more than three years anyway. If you are really that motivated and ambitious, you would be compensated adequately and may balance your tradeoffs of career and home. The erudite Becker-Posner
blog has an opinion too.

I am in no position to comment on choices that a woman makes regards home and career and I would definitely appreciate if anyone out there would be willing to comment extensively on this issue (either in the comment box below or on your blog; send me a trackback if you do).