Majors and Careers: Women vs. Men, Engineering vs. Teaching, High Pay vs. Total Compensation

In a previous post, I asked the question, do only women choose quality of life over high salary? In other words, do women evaluate quality of life, or true "total compensation," when deciding on a job, while guys are stuck on a treadmill with only one measure of success, total wages earned?

I found three obvious differences between American men and women in the AAUW study, "Behind the Pay Gap," all of which hint at women preferring quality of live over money:

1. Boys do not go to college
2. Women do not choose majors or careers to maximize income
3. Women are more likely to leave the workforce to care for children

I covered the first point in the previous post. In this post, let's look at what the AAUW study has to say about differences in choice of majors and careers between men and women.

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Of course, everything discussed here is "on average", "typically", and "for the most part." Women and men in the US are very diverse; it is easy to find individuals who do not make the "typical" choices.

For example, I started college as an engineering student, one of the highest paid majors, but switched to physics after one term. The reason? Engineering courses were at 8:30 am, and physics courses were at 10:30 am. I chose "quality of life" (sleeping in) over higher income :-)

When I admitted I was a lazy student to one of my co-workers at PayScale, she could not understand why I majored in physics. Physics seems like a hard way to earn a college degree for a slacker. In truth, physics is not such a hard major, as long as you don't mind getting bad grades :-)

Physics is as unpopular with female students as engineering; less than 20% of majors are female. When I taught at Duke, I tried to figure out why. The only answer I could find was that women are not willing to be told they are stupid on a daily basis. For me, that was no big deal :-)

While I can speculate about the psycho-social influences that determine college majors, the hard facts from the AAUW study are that male and female students continue to choose different majors, and those choices directly affect future income.

As the AAUW says, "Choice of major emerges as the leading difference between women and men in their education and training...Students who graduated in female-dominated majors tend to get jobs that pay less than do students who graduated in male-dominated majors."

A large fraction of 20% difference between male and female graduate salaries can be traced to the fields of education and engineering, so let's look at them as a microcosm of the choices male and female students make.

According to the AAUW study, as of 2000, the percentages of all male and female students who major in each field are:

• Education: 13% of women, 4% of men
• Engineering: 2% of women, 12% of men

Why does this gender difference matter? The typical major (male or female) in education is paid on average 40% less than the typical engineering major. This pay difference is true both one year and ten years after graduation.

This 40% difference in pay, and similar pay differences related to major and career choices in other fields, is much more important than the 5% less female education majors make than male education majors, or female engineering majors make than male engineering majors, in explaining the 20% pay gap between male and female college graduates.

While the 5% could be due to illegal gender discrimination, the 40% is caused by male and female students making different choices for majors. The choice of major determines a student's career path and future income.

If we want to equalize male and female income, the biggest "problem" to fix is the gender segregation by major. More men need to major in education (bringing down their incomes) and more women need to major in engineering.

The question is, who is making the wrong choice, the male or female students? If the only measure of success is income, then clearly women are making the wrong choice.

I happen to know a fair number of teachers and engineers. I am not so sure, if "total compensation" is considered, that the men are making the right choice.

Many of my engineering colleagues would love 10 weeks a years of vacation, and are lucky to get 3 weeks. My teaching friends get a minimum of 10 weeks. Whose "total compensation" is better:

• the engineering major earning $75,000/year (AAUW average 10 years after college), but with little time off to enjoy the money, or
• the education major earning $42,000/year, and spending months traveling the world each year?

Funny, in the twenty years I have been reading it, the Swarthmore alumni bulletin has never run a story about an engineering graduate slaving in a cubical 50 hours a week, for 50 weeks a year, in order to earn $33,000/year more than what a typical education major earns...

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Cheers,

Dr. Al Lee

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Comments

[Sonia]

Al - This is a telling post but one angle that you overlooked is this: valuable professions like teaching that happen to be female dominated are simply not as valued as male dominated professions. Maybe the pay gap calls for a re-evaluation of the relationship between pay and the actual importance of jobs done in society. After all, without teachers, there's no one to tell a slacker physics major that he's stupid on a daily basis ;) It's a tough job that's sadly undercompensated - which explains, I suspect, why you're no longer a teacher.

[Lisa]

I want to echo Sonia's comments. Teaching is a very demanding job. Please, please do not perpetuate the false and demeaning stereotype of the easy life of a teacher. Your stereotyping and casual dismissal of the extremely hard work that teachers do is precisely what has lead to the pay discrepancy you discussed.

Teachers are often told that they have "easy" jobs and therefore do not deserve to earn more money; however, most every teacher I know works at least 60 to 70 hours a week, spends a good amount of that "vacation" time grading papers, planning lessons, taking continuing education courses in order to keep their credentials valid (these courses are paid for out of their own pockets, of course), and going to professional development workshops to improve their teaching practice. Teachers are also required to do 30+ hours of unpaid "supervision" each year by attending school plays, sports events or acting as a club advisor. No teacher get off work at 3pm every day. None.

Furthermore, you say that teachers make less money but have the time to travel the world each year. I ask you to look at that logically. With what money? Most teachers struggle to be able to afford a house for their family, let alone be able to afford to travel the world each year. In my area, a teacher's salary is not even enough to afford a small condo, let alone the standard 3 bedroom average home. Many teachers have to work summer school just to make ends meet. Travel the world each summer?!? Sure, if they are married to an engineer.

Teaching is a physically, emotionally, and intellectually demanding profession. Everyday you are on stage giving presentations to classrooms of 30+ students who would rather be anywhere but in class. You are required to motivate students to learn and pass state mandated tests. It is the teachers job to make all students succeed whether or not that student has had breakfast that morning, has just arrived in the country and does not speak the language, or is the only child of a wealthy family. The background and living conditions of the student are no excuse for why the teacher can not get the student to understand how to formulate a thesis statement. If the teacher does not manage to get every child to pass these tests, the school is punished and the teacher is told that he or she has not done his/her job effectively.

So, please do not continue to perpetuate these false and degrading stereotypes. You are demeaning and devaluing the profession. Changing the gender gap in pay, starts with truly valuing the work that is done in traditionally female professions, not dismissing it as "easy work".

[Dr. Al Lee, PhD]

Dear Lisa and Sonia,

The point of my piece is that women may be better, on average, at valuing the "total compensation" of a position, rather than judging a job on only cash compensation.

While I focused on official vacation time as an obvious non-cash benefit of teaching over the typical engineering job, this is just a stand-in for all other non-cash rewards of teaching.

As the movie "Mr. Holland's Opus" showed, teaching has rewards which cranking out, for example, payroll software, or even composing symphonies, will never have.

However, given Lisa's description of teaching, I would not do it for even $150,000/year.

My question is, why not quit? Teachers are manifestly people with options; they are literate college graduates. Teachers are not like illiterate coal miners in West Virginia, who have no options that pay better.

I believe in social justice, but I also believe in the free market. Nursing wages rose sharply in the 70's and 80's, when women as a group got other options, causing nurse shortages. It is still a field dominated by women, but nursing is also one of the highest paying jobs that requires only an associates degree.

The reason software development pays twice what teaching pays is because, relatively speaking, few Americans wants to write software, even at the higher pay. When school districts are going to Congress for more visas to import teachers from India, we will see teachers' wages rise.

Sonia is right; I quit teaching college physics because the rewards (cash and otherwise) were not competitive with what I could get in private industry for the same, or less, effort.

Funny, universities do go to Congress to demand more visas to import physics professors from India, and their wages are some of the highest in the university...

Cheers,

Al Lee (Dr. Salary)

[Mike]

Dr. Salary hits the nail on the head. Teacher's low salaries are a function of supply, demand, and free market fundamentals. Teachers, through their unions, have traded income for security. Jobs that have higher salaries also have perfomance mechanisms in place that invite more productive workers to negotiate for higher incomes.

Note that professor's salaries are significantly higher. That is because free market dynamics force universities and colleges to compete for students ... they compete by offering a better product, i.e. better educators. Hence, qualified teachers are able to leverage this demand by negotiating higher salaries.

Elementary and secondary teacher's salaries are not a reflection of the value society puts upon them, they are a reflection of the value they put upon themselves.

[Lisa]

Al and Mike,

Thank you for your thoughtful responses. I hope you will bear with me through my reply.

I agree with you, Al. Teachers need to stand up for their rights and for better pay. You ask, “Why don’t teachers just quit?” Well, they do. According to the National Education Association, “more than one-third of teachers leave the profession within their first three years and half leave within the first five years. The attrition rate is even higher for ethnic minority teachers, male teachers and teachers under 30.” The link to this information is found here: http://www.nea.org/newsreleases/2006/nr061114.html

It is funny that you mention schools going abroad to find teachers and that if they had to do that, it would lead to pay increases. There are school districts that do this and have been doing it for years, but with the new requirements for "highly qualified" teachers under NCLB, it makes it more difficult to bring in teachers who are not already fully credentialed under the state's requirements. It definitely still happens in areas where there are big teaching shortages, but the schools get penalized for employing too many teachers that do not have full teaching credentials. And it certainly doesn’t lead to higher pay because people coming from other countries are not generally the ones that demand greater compensation.

The fact that there is a shortage of qualified teachers is actually addressed in the recommendations of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind. Here is the link: http://www.aspeninstitute.org/atf/cf/%7BDEB6F227-659B-4EC8-8F84-8DF23CA704F5%7D/NCLB_RecomSummary.pdf
However, rather than acknowledging that maybe the shortage of qualified teachers has something to do with the lack of adequate compensation, the commission recommends, “Requiring institutions of higher education to establish goals for increasing the number of graduates qualified to teach in shortage areas.” Maybe universities would have an easier time recruiting students into the graduate schools of education if students knew that when they finished their degree they would be able to make a decent living being a teacher. The commission does mention schools should offer “bonus pay” for teachers who teach in shortage areas, but this again would just be placing a band-aid on a broken system.

The real crux of the problem comes down to the perception average people (taxpayers) have of teachers; so in some ways, I think it’s a PR problem. And of course, the only way to increase teacher pay is to raise taxes or reallocated tax revenue. Neither of these options would be popular ideas with most taxpayers, who of course, are concerned about having police on the streets and their sewer systems working. The federal government could step up and provide more money, but then, of course, we are spending it all on Iraq at the moment.

As for teachers’ PR problem, just as you mentioned in your article and response, average people assume that teaching is all about vacation. People see their kids out of school at 3 and home for a week for spring break, and they think that teachers are sitting on their bumms watching TV once the students are not in their classrooms. People have no idea of how much work teachers HAVE to do out side of normal school hours.

So, because people have a very wrong perception of the work that teachers do, it is hard for teachers to garner the kind of support for pay raises that nurses received. People see the obvious problems of nurses going on strike. Everyone, at one point or another, believes that he/she will need the care of a nurse. But teaching is different. Not everyone has children. Wealthy people who have children often send them to private schools. So, there is automatically less support and concern for teachers on strike than there is for nurses. Add to that the wrong perception people have about teachers, and you can see where teachers have problems.

In response to Mike’s comment about free market principles, Mike says that “Note that professor's salaries are significantly higher. That is because free market dynamics force universities and colleges to compete for students ... they compete by offering a better product, i.e. better educators. Hence, qualified teachers are able to leverage this demand by negotiating higher salaries.” I’m sorry to say that this system just doesn’t work in the K-12 arena. Our country believes in education for ALL students. In K-12 schools we cannot “compete for students”. K-12 educators have to take all students that come in the door. Free market forces just do not work the same way in a system that is designed on a socialistic desire to provide an equal education for all people. Universities make money. They have alumni that donate millions of dollars, and they do research that generates profit. They are able to reject students who do not meet certain entrance criteria and kick out those who fail to perform. Because K-12 schools have to teach every child that comes in the door, it is VERY hard to establish performance criteria for teachers. We are not dealing with widgets that come to us from a factory all in the same starting condition. We teach human beings who have very different needs and problems. How can you say that the teacher didn’t do his or her job and penalize that person’s pay because a student’s parents got divorced resulting in the student not doing his/her homework and scoring lower on tests? No, in a system where all students have to be educated equally, it is not a matter of market principles.

This underscores my point here. Teachers will continue to be poorly compensated for their hard work until the priorities of our nation change. We are a nation that values a profession, and people in them, based on their potential to generate profit. Teaching (at least in the K-12 arena, rather than at Universities) generates no direct monetary profit. So until average taxpayers begin to see the profit in having a better-educated citizenry and how that is connected to the hard work that teachers do, teachers will continue to struggle for better compensation.

Maybe what I need to do is go and work for NEA and begin a campaign to spread the word. People see movies like “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and think, “Wow, it’s so great to be a teacher.” But they forget that high school teachers spend everyday with 150 teenagers and all the drama that comes with them. Anyone with a teenager needs to just ponder that for a moment to realize how hard being a teacher really is.

[Rodney]

I enjoyed your article. I've been a teacher for 21 years, have a MS degree and enjoy what I do. I remember family members and friends unhappy or shocked when I chose teaching as a career. Family felt it was too limiting, friends thought it to be the life of a pauper. During the first years, for me, it was a low-income choice comparatively speaking. I started at $18K while a couple of friends started their jobs - marketing and engineering at $30K. It was true what they told me.

Years later though my analysis is somewhat different. Consider that teachers (in my district) work 39 weeks a year with some on special contracts work 40, 41, 45 or more weeks a year. Depending on what contract worked you are paid only for your time worked with no vacations - only periods of unemployment. The work day is contracted to 7.5 hrs but reality is never less than 8 and more like 9 for those who have greatly streamlined their work efficiency with occasional periods of "extra work" needed for projects etc. Oh, include the meetings you attend after hours to help identify social emotional issues of students and plans for "you" to carry out during school hours.

Now, consider the salaries of the engineer - you mentioned $75,000 (10yr avg) for 49 weeks work - $1530 wk vs. $48,000 (our district avg) for 39 weeks work - $1230 wk. I have learned to look at salary this way to look at my time as valuable and compare based on similar time schedules. The engineer may only have 3 weeks off but he also has $1200 more per month to spend on vacation.

The teaching salary has improved over the years but it is overall lower than other degree requiring professions. The money is based on revenue and not profit. A friend of mine, a doctor, complains about his $85K yr frozen salary (after insurances and his conglomerate retirement/benefits program) yet he takes off when he wants and can schedule lengthy vacations if he wants. Teaching is good, but there are other things with better overall compensation.

[Mike]

Lisa, your point about having to accept all students into the education system is worthy. However, you said it yourself, wealthy families often select private schools for their children - why? Furthermore, what are the salary/working conditions for teachers in private schools?

Attempts to introduce market principles and performance standards have been so vehemently opposed by teachers and their unions, it's no wonder they have a PR problem. From my perspective as a parent, we all recognize that there is a problem, but the only solution acceptable to the NEA is more money.

You are correct, it is very much a PR problem but as I see it the solution is to work with communities to implement reform, not circle the wagons in order to protect those that bring down the profession. It is not enough to keep telling us how noble teaching is (although I agree that it is), teachers have to, as they say, put their money where their mouth is.

You mentioned that universities have the ability to reject students. Still, there is a hierarchy (local community college vs Harvard). In much the same way, a hierarchical system can be implemented in public schools. If at the bottom of the heap the schools operate as juvenile detention facilities, then so be it. Shining stars find ways to break though the obstacles. Unfortunately, the system in place now stunts the potential of the majority in order to accomodate the underperforming minority.

Perhaps this hierarchical system will incentivize and inspire both students AND teachers to work harder in order to reach a better level. At least this system introduces hope to the individual, rather than making them feel as though there is nothing they can do to improve their situation.

[Dr. Al Lee, PhD]

Dear Lisa, Rodney, and Mike,

Great comments!

Lisa has a great point about the nature of the market for teachers: the consumers of the provided service (students) are not the people who pay for it (taxpayers).

This is not so different from the market for nurses: the consumers of the provided service (sick people) are not usually the ones who pay for it (insurance companies/employers/taxpayers).

The difference is that hospitals are sued when nurses are so incompetent that patients die. :-) Paying nurses enough to make sure competent ones stay can save a hospital money in the long run.

I am shocked that teaching has such a high attrition rate. I wonder how many other careers are like this. In our PayScale database, I have seen high attrition rates for real estate agents and fast food workers, but I don't know about other jobs.

By the way, hiring foreign workers is not a way to raise wages - it is the last gasp attempt by employers to avoid raising them while maintaining quality. I am glad to hear some school districts are getting that desperate.

Rodney makes a good point about calculating work per week. Other national studies have found similar differences in how teachers' pay compares depending on whether pay per year or per hour is calculated. See http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20051121ar01p1.htm and search for "teaching occupations".

I don't know whether the average teacher gets $10/hour ($1200/month) more in other compensation (the "Mr Holland's Opus" effect) relative to the average engineer. That is up to each person to decide.

I don't agree with Mike's hierarchy of schools. Each student should be taught appropriately for their level of ability, and having this take place in a common school makes it easier to adjust classes as abilities change.

Teachers working with the least able students from the roughest backgrounds should be paid the most, be the most competent, and have the smallest classes. The Federal American's with Disabilities Act has made this happen for special needs kids (law suits at work!), but there is no similar force at work for kids "just" from tough home situations.

Mike does have a point that some aspects of teacher pay, like the low starting salaries, can be traced to choices the NEA and other teachers' unions have made in negotiations with school districts.

However I agree with Lisa that it is very hard to measure teacher effectiveness, given how variable students are. There is no magic bullet in performance standards, and certainly not one in tying pay to student performance on standardized tests.

We in the IT world cannot even come up with good performance measures for software developers, and they all have the same computers with which to work :-)

By the way, one of the little know facts of education is that the private school teachers' salaries are usually lower than that of public schools teachers, at least to start. The reason? Private schools can hire teachers without credentials.

Cheers, Al Lee (Dr. Salary)

[Lucille]

I have found this entire conversation intriguing. Bear with me as I set the stage for my comments regarding the teaching profession.

I have struggled to find a school appropriate for my son's needs. My son is not challenged in the typical sense. He is a very bright kid. At a year and a half he was speaking in short but fully structured sentences. By the time he was three he was reading books to his younger sister. We enrolled him in French immersion preschool and the teachers were amazed at how accurately and qickly he learned the French language. At the end of grade one he was reading and writing at a grade 5 French level. He was not tested in English as he is in a French immersion school, but based on my experience I would say that he was reading at a grade 8 level. His success in French was accomplished with little support outside of school as our friends and family do not speak French. For the sake of brevity let me say that his accomplishments in Math and Science are similar.

In my personal experience, the school systems at my disposal have been unwilling to accomodate my childs exceptional abilities. After two years of preschool, we could not find a school that was willing to test him to determine whether or not he was capable of skipping Kindergarten. The attitude prevelent was demeaning towards our ability to assess our childs skills and needs. As a result, we chose to send him to an experimental French immersion school with high academic standards. Despite this choice, we have been severly disappointed with the teachers abilities to assess his needs and be flexible in their cirriculum and teaching methods. We do not have a private school for brilliant kids in our area, and probably will not send him off to boarding school when he comes of age, as that move would eliminate our input into the content and quality of his after school activities.

I do not agree with Mike's view on school hierarchies, but I would challenge anyone considering the needs of kids from tough home situations to also consider the necessary awareness and flexibility on the other end of the spectrum. In our experience, assessment was not an option until at least grade 3.

Bottom line, I also believe that the issues surounding teacher's salarys is a result of PR problems. It would seem to me that the perception of teachers having an 'easy' job is partially due to their inability to assess students needs and provide support for them such that it encourages growth at a rate appropriate for the individual child. In other words, if the service provided is not percieved as meeting all of the 'customers' needs, the service will not be highly valued.

Each parent assesses an individual teachers value based on feedback coming directly from the teacher at times throughout the school year and in this way they have complete control over the PR issues on a one to one basis. This communication process is a way of measuring a teacher’s effeciveness and is used by individuals to place a value on the profession as a whole. So, if at parent teacher meetings the teacher says only good things about the student, and oversimplifies the areas that need improvement, the teacher is shooting themself in the foot. On the other hand, if the teacher identifies challenges and needs for an individual child and cannot work in collaboratation with the parents to come up with an individualized approach that is applicable inside and outside the classroom, they are percieved as “lacking” in qualifications and therby lose support for events such as strike action.

I have an IT and marketing background and can tell you that these professions have and are continuing to face real challenges with monitoring and assessing effectiveness and quality workmanship. I honestly hope that the comments provided assist a teacher somewhere in understanding why their profession is not as valued as “it should be”. In the meantime, we continue to challenge each of our son's teachers to recognize his abilities and provide challenging educational experiences for him. Regretably, to date we remain disappointed with the trend that says addressing the classes needs at it's average ability is acceptable.

[Joanna]

I completely agree that women are paid less than men in any job - I work in a technical field and see this reflected not only in my own salary, but in the salary of other women I know - but to assert that in order to lower this difference, men should pursue more female-oriented studies and women, vice-versa, is a terrible argument.

It is a well known fact that, on average, men and women have drastically different thinking & learning types. On a whole, men are more spatial, logical, and business oriented (ie. math, science, technology) while women are more linguistic, empathic, and personal (ie. social sciences, teaching, and nursing). As a woman, my brain tends to fall somewhere in between these two extremes, but most of my female counterparts fall directly into the empathic, "total compensation" category, while my male friends tend to fall towards the "money oriented" preference.

What the author fails to address is the fact that fields which are viewed as "male oriented", and therefore highly paid [such as engineering and technology(excluding the less desirable jobs such as street cleaning & garabage collecting)] are dominated by men due to the construction of the male brain as opposed to gender discrimination. It's hard to imagine how someone else's brain may work since we're so accustomed to our own, but NO ONE else thinks like YOU do. Men and women DO think quite differently. I'm sure everyone who's ever been in a relationship with the opposite sex can agree. I've seen this in my own experience in the world of technology: I can pick up on one social aspect quite quickly (which the men are oblivious to), but when a more technical aspect of an issue arises which all the men can grasp, I'm left feeling like a complete idiot because my brain can't wrap around it.

Gender discrimination isn't what alienates women from certain fields - women make life choices based on what they're good at and what they enjoy, just as men do. I hate the male dominated career I work in, not because it's male dominated, but because it's not right for me - I've already made plans to return to school and pursue a different career. On the other hand, my best guy friend loves the exact same job because it's so easy for him and he does such a great job at it.

Another well-known fact is that men are more apt to negotiate their salaries than women. Could it be that fields which appeal more to men offer higher salaries because their main employee base has demanded higher pay, while jobs which appeal more to women offer lower pay because women tend to negotiate salaries much less than their male counterparts do?

To sum it all up, men-dominated fields are mainly male because that specific line of thought appeals to men, while women-dominated fields are mainly female because that's what appeals to women. The men are paid more for what they do because they present their work as more neccessary & difficult than other lines of work, while women are happy to offer what they're paid because they enjoy their work. In order for the large ratio in gender salary differences to be consolidated, women need to find a way to promote and advertise just how important their work is to the fabric of society and just how hard it truly can be. It's incredibly difficult to convert a child from complete denial to an avid scholar, but knowing that you've made an impact on the future is a total rush. Yes, we women do value "total compensation" over money, but we should never insist that other women pursue a path which was not meant for them just to prove a point.

Just some food for thought....

[LouAnn]

This issue is total non-sense. Unfortunately for most of the 20 years of my experience in business, men have made more and typically with less education and experience. I also note that they work less as well. It is a lot more than 5% discrimination, let's try 25%, which is more realistic. Even with younger male execs which you would hope are more open minded, the playing field is not level for women. That's the bottom line. For what it's worth, the factor that women are likely to leave the workforce for having children, I find that to even more non-sense as men tend to jump ship more than women, for no particular reason at all. I don't subscribe to any of the weak "gender" excuses, it is discrimination and women "PAY" for it in the pocket.

[LJ]

I was a civil engineer out of college and started at 45K per year with 2 weeks vacation. So, that's 45K over 50 weeks work = $900/week. I then became a high school math teacher and made about 40K per year with 12 weeks vacation. That's 40K over 40 weeks work = $1000/week. I worked about 45 hours/week in both jobs. I made more per week as a teacher, but less per year because I worked less. I enjoyed my summers =). In my fourth year of teaching I was making 45K over 40 weeks work = $1125/week. I then switched back to engineering and now make 60K over 50 weeks work = $1200/week. Now, engineering is making slightly more per week.

The bottom line is that after factoring in the time off with teaching I've been making about the same per week whether I was an engineer or teacher. So, if teachers are underpaid, so are engineers. If engineers are paid well, so are teachers. Let's stop comparing salary with everyone else - just ask yourself if what you're doing is worth what you're getting paid - it's a personal value system that can't be quantified by comparing salary charts across different professions. Either you're happy with what you do for what you make or you're not. If not, move on to something else. If there isn't anything else that fits your value system better, then it's as good as it's going to get - stay put and be thankful that you're employed.

[LJ]

Oh yeah, and one more thing - after factoring in that I paid less taxes when I was teaching than when I was an engineer, teaching gets the edge back. As far as the difficulty of the jobs, I'd say it's a draw. Teaching was more of an emotional drain whereas engineering is more mentally challenging. Both leave me exhausted at the end of the day but in different ways. Although teaching was tough, there were also days where I got paid to watch dance or theater performances and I rarely took work home - although I know many teachers who did every night. That just comes down to how you manage your workflow and paper load. I implemented lots of student self-grading and electronic delivery of activities. If you are persistent it's not too difficult to get off work at 3 pm everyday. Of course, there's nights where the piles of work never end, but that's in any job. I've spent just as many late nights in engineering as I did in teaching.

So, which job is "tougher" comes down to your personal tempermant. I'm just tired of everyone preaching that teaching is the toughest job out there - well it is challenging but trust me, engineering is just as tough or tougher in a different way.

[Erica]

While Joanna contends that perhaps women are just hard-wired not to enjoy technical jobs as much as men, I wanted to contribute an opposing viewpoint. Though I can not incontrovertably prove that this is not the case, I feel that the perpetuation of this idea can be defeating to those women who are interested in the sciences, and any evidence to the contrary should be examined.

Dr. Salary linked to his article on accounting for the lack of women majoring in Physics. A whopping (relative to those who continue) 35% of his introductory Physics classes were female. After the ego blows typically dealt in introductory engineering, math, and physics classes, such as being able to correctly complete only half of an exam or less, many women drop out, even though the women actually showed as much aptitude for the material.

This observation of Dr. Salary's resonated with my own experiences in college. Many of my friends, who started college with a deep passion for physics and the sciences, and dreams of discovering the next heavy element or one day studying string theory, finished their freshman year with what they saw as confimation of a sinking fear that had dogged them all along - that they just weren't too good at science after all.

Ultimately, their grades weren't worse than anyone elses - but they (and at times I) felt defeated. Many girls I knew wouldn't even sign up for these classes, even though they were interested. My introductory classes in Computer Science were by my estimate about 35% percent women as well. I can't help but wonder what that percentage would have been if the young women I knew would have been confident enough to try these classes.

[Fazeila]

Question for you Dr. Salary, or any other man out there. Do men pick a college major and/or career based on the amount of money they can potentially make? And do they consider whether they will like the job or not? I ask this because I am in my mid 30s, female, looking for a career change. I'm at the point now where i'm looking at money more so than whether or not i'll be really happy doing whatever i decide to do. The way I see it, i've pretty much disliked most of the jobs i've ever had, so that being the case, might as well try and get into something where the money is good. Is that generally how men think?

[Dr. Al Lee, PhD]

Dear Fazeila,

Interesting question. I cannot speak for all men ;-), but I have made choices based on pay.

In college, my favorite two subjects were physics and philosophy. After college, I went to grad school in physics, not philosophy.

Why? First of all, grad. schools pay students to study physics, but students in philosophy often have to pay for their education.

Secondly, the career prospects in physics after grad. school looked much better than for philosophy.

So, while I did not choose a major to maximize my income (engineering would have been better than physics), I did choose a major where I thought there would be a good chance to make a decent income.

As for doing a job I don't like for the money, I don't have much experience. I may not be fussy, but I find a lot of jobs interesting.

When I have been unhappy in a job, my unhappiness has been more about my relationship to the job, rather than anything particularly horrible about the job itself. I generally have either been able to fix my relationship, or I have gone on to another job that was a better fit for me. I guess I have been lucky.

Cheers,

Al Lee (Dr. Salary)