Rachel Maines, who has written two amazing and geeky books about the history of vibrators and asbestos, wrote a great piece for the Chroncle of Higher Education entitled “Why Women Become Veterinarians But Not Engineers.” She asks, “What do veterinary schools know that engineering and physical-science programs don’t about enrolling lots of women?”
Mara H. Wasburn and Susan G. Miller’s … chapter in Women, Gender, and Technology — edited by Mary Frank Fox, Deborah G. Johnson, and Sue V. Rosser (University of Illinois Press, 2006) — included a table of female undergraduate enrollment in Purdue’s various schools in 2001. Engineering and technology were at the bottom, with women making up 18 percent and 15 percent, respectively. At the top was veterinary medicine, where 99 percent of the undergraduates were female.
Unfortunately the article is behind a subscription wall, so I’ve only been able to read snippets of it. I’d love to know what, if any, explanations Maines comes up with.
UPDATE: Ellen Spertus sent me a temporary link to the full text of the article. It’s fascinating stuff. Maines talks about how grad students in veterinary medicine went from being 8 percent female to about 77 percent female in the past few decades. Veterinary medicine, she points out, is technical, demanding, precise, bloody and dangerous for pregnant women. Also, there are still few female role models at the top of the veterinary profession.
So why the sudden influx of women? Maines isn’t sure. There are fewer high-paying jobs servicing the farm industry and more low-paying jobs dealing with pets. And the veterinary medicine field did all the same things to reduce discrimination that engineering schools did. But in fact, “There were no organized efforts in veterinary medicine, as there now are in engineering and the sciences, to recruit women.”
Could the cause instead be that treating cats and dogs, now more common patients than in the past, is insufficiently macho?
Maines wishes someone would do more research on why veterinary medicine succeeded where other formerly male-dominated fields have failed. So do I.
Meanwhile, reviewing the new book Why Aren’t More Women In Science?, Dr. Dobbs contributing editor Gregory V. Wilson writes:
Several years ago, Michelle Levesque and I looked at the gender balance in open source (see Open Source, Cold Shoulder). While the male:female ratio in the software industry is between 7:1 and 12:1, depending on how you measure it, the ratio in open source is at least 200:1, and probably worse. For a community that talks so loudly about freedom and rights, I think that’s shameful; I think it’s even more shameful that so many people in that community choose not to notice, or say (rather defensively), “Well, it’s not my fault.”
Medicine’s been more equal for a while, if only because money attracts both genders. The really elite medical fields like specialty surgery do tend to be more male.
Partly it’s the money, but also – certainly in the uk, where the majority of vets/medics are undergraduates – it’s linked to girls having higher grades when leaving school; as it is so competitive, this puts girls at an advantage when it comes to applying (although more girls are applying to begin with). And as SFG said, the speciality fields tend to be male-dominated for vets as well, particularly in large animals. I find that women working with large animals have to work harder to earn thier client’s respect – there is still an attitude of “you’re just a girl”, so it can’t be the superior working conditions.
I’d love to see the article.
I can relate to some of what is talked about in “Open Source, Cold Shoulder”. I first encountered OSS in college, and kind of liked it. I had rude encounters with people on newsgroups, but I had kind of come to expect it in some contexts. And I’m a guy. For example, it was common to see “flame wars” go on between people who wanted to say “My computer is better than yours” (nowadays it would be “my OS is better than yours”, something of that nature), or “my programming language is better than yours”. There was this whole hierarchical, competitive thing going on, and it happened all the time. It was going on 20 years ago when I first started seeing this.
One time I was puzzled with something I wanted to do on Unix. So I went to a Unix newsgroup and asked a newbie question. I got one polite, helpful response, and about 3 “flame” messages, yelling at me about how stupid my question was, providing no help at all. I explained that I even tried following the “netiquette” of reading messages on the group for a bit, and looking through the group’s FAQ. I didn’t find the answer to my question, so I asked. It didn’t matter.
I’ve also gotten yelled at online by Linux folks who didn’t like something I said about it. Maybe it was just an opinion, or maybe it was factually inaccurate. In either case they tend “jump” me, rather than help me understand where I might be mistaken.
There are friendly OSS communities though. One that I’ve encouraged people to check out if they’re at all interested is Squeak and Squeakland. They’re two different distributions of the Squeak system, with different emphases. Squeak is based on the old Smalltalk system from Xerox PARC. I have run into people who disagree with something I’ve said, but generally they’ve been reasonable, which is refreshing.
Meant to also say that something Jane Margolis said jumped out at me, that social class and access to computers has something to do with the current trends in computer science. I can give a qualified affirmation of this. When I was getting my Bachelor’s in CS in college in the late 80s/early 90s I noticed this. I grew up in a family that lived at poverty level, though ironically I had wealthy grandparents. They helped fund my education. I got my own computer though, but only when I graduated from high school. I had computer access through other avenues. For years my local library had a computer lab where one could sign up for computer time. By the time I graduated high school that was shut down, but by then the schools had computers in them for a few years. So it was a trade-off. I often stayed after school in their lab for as long as I could, writing my own programs. I would get about 1-1/2 hours on them each day, maybe a bit more if I used my free periods. The point is I was lucky enough to find access to computers in my community. If I didn’t have that I would’ve had no avenues for exploring computers and programming until I was about ready to go to college.
While everyone else in college had a 16 or 32-bit PC to do work on, or a Mac, I had an 8-bit computer. I was resourceful. I used a word processor on it and got A papers using it. I found free terminal software so I could hook up to the school’s mainframe and Unix systems via. modem. I had to learn how to do this stuff myself. I had no one to help me. I discovered this early on at freshman orientation. There was a section of it devoted to aspiring CS majors. I asked a question about computer tech support, and I said what kind of computer I had. Our advisor made a dismissive comment as if I should know better and the other freshmen laughed at me. I was on my own.
I was actually proud of the fact that I was able to get a low-power machine to do what the more powerful machines could do, though I did catch crap from my fellow computer-using dorm mates from time to time about it. They’d say derisively, “Come on. Use a REAL computer.” They were status symbols. It affected social comradery among fellow CS students a little, but surprisingly not too much. I think we appreciated each other more for our brains. I went to a state college. Maybe that had something to do with it. If anything I was socially ostracized generally on campus more for my socio-economic background than for what technology I used.
I learned to be self-sufficient and derive joy from what I did on my own, rather than appreciation from others. I ultimately got my Bachelor’s degree in CS.
I guess what I’m saying is if you’re the “odd bird” in the crowd you can still get through it, but you need to have determination and a strong sense of self.
I do wish things were different for women in technology. It’s a little depressing that just about everyone I run into in this field is male. I sometimes wonder what it’s like in other fields where there’s more of a balance between men and women. Frankly I think this is one reason why as a profession we tend to be misunderstood, seen as strange and anti-social, and are thereby not appreciated very much for the important work we do in innovating and “keeping the trains running”.
It’s not just a social equity issue. The field has wild financial gyrations in it that make you feel like you’re in the head of someone who is bi-polar. IMO the very idea that the field is a road to riches is a myth. Sometimes I wouldn’t wish it on anybody for what it puts people through. No, the reason I say this is the computer revolution needs to be shared by everybody.