 Hi, I'm Professor Steve Blackburn. I'm a Computer Scientist. I'm also Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science. With me today, I've got Professor Sharon Sassler from the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. Sharon's a social demographer and some of her recent research has looked at the advancement and retention of women in STEM careers. Thanks for joining us, Sharon. Thanks for having me here. Alright, we often hear about the leaky pipeline. I wonder if we could start off by you saying a little bit from your perspective as a social demographer about how you see that leaky pipeline and its impact on careers for women in STEM. Okay, so when we talk about the leaky pipeline, a lot of the research has focused on the types of classes that girls take in elementary school and in middle school and in high school, and it explores how over time they're increasingly less likely to be enrolled in these kinds of classes. And so when they matriculate in college, they are less interested in these kinds of classes and they're far less likely than men to be enrolled in them. But this is kind of an old approach. Over the past couple of decades, there's been a concerted effort to increase women's girls' interest in STEM, in science, in all shapes and forms. And so schools have done a great job at closing the gap, the gender gap in the kinds of classes that girls and boys are taking. And now in high school, there's really very little difference in the types of classes that both girls and boys are taking to prepare themselves for college. Once they're in college, however, we still see these gender gaps in the kinds of classes that young men and women are taking. And that is particularly evident in some fields in science and technology, such as in engineering and computer science. And so by the time we see college graduates, there's already a gap in the likelihood that men and women will have a college degree in a STEM field. And then that's further exacerbated when they enter into the labor force. So my interest has really been on the transitions between school and work. I think there's been a lot of really good research done on the earlier side, but there was this kind of hole in what happened once you got your degree and when you went into the workforce and whether women were as likely as men to pursue jobs in the field that they were trained in or stay in those jobs. And that's a big part of the leaky pipeline that women appear to be somewhat less likely if they have these degrees in a STEM field to accept STEM jobs. And they are also more likely, even if they take a job in STEM, to leave within a few years. So they're leaking out of the STEM workforce as well. Now, the important question is, do men do that also? And we do find, at least in the United States, that within the first five to 10 years, both women and men trained in STEM careers are much more likely to leave STEM fields for other kinds of fields than are people trained in other kinds of professions. But women are still significantly more likely than men to be leaving. So what we have is this constant drip, drip, drip out of the STEM labor force. And it's a big question as to why that's happening. Right. So you mentioned that engineering and computer science are two of the disciplines which have some of the worst problems. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on why, particularly in this transition from school to from university to the workforce, why they're so poorly? So I need to correct myself because engineering, if women get a degree in engineering, they're actually at parity with men and taking jobs in engineering. So engineering actually has the lowest representation of women in the United States who are getting degrees in it. But they've improved dramatically over the past few decades, starting at a very low base. But about, I think it's 20 to 25% of recent graduates in engineering are women. And then if they get the degree in engineering, they are as likely as men to take a job in engineering. So engineering has worked hard and somehow they are addressing this issue. The problem more with engineering is do they stay in engineering? And both men and women leave these fields often because they're moving into more of a management role. Or I mean, that's something we're exploring now. It's unclear where they're going, but women are more likely than men to leave these kinds of jobs to exit the STEM labor force and work in other kinds of jobs. So that is a question that we're currently examining. Right. It sounds like an interesting challenge to figure that out. Where do they go? Right. So it seems intuitive that the sex composition of a workforce might affect the outcomes for genders in that workforce. You've done a fascinating recent study on this and the gender wage gap. I wonder if you could share something of that with us. Sure. So the gender wage gap refers to the difference in pay that men and women receive for the jobs that they do. And there are a lot of factors that could contribute to women and men earning different amounts. So we have been looking at the gender wage gap in STEM. You'd think these are high skilled occupations. They require a bachelor's degree. So perhaps if you have invested in getting those kinds of degrees, the gender wage gap would be smaller for women in STEM fields than in the working world overall. And that's in fact what we find, that there is a smaller wage gap for women in STEM than in occupations overall. And you would think that would be attractive to women. They're earning more than other women. And so it might draw them or make them more interested in STEM jobs. What we find is that over the past couple of decades, more women have gone into STEM, particularly the life sciences like biology or the physical sciences, chemistry, and that this has not really altered how much they're earning. So the gender wage gap is not grown over time. And women and men in those fields earn about the same amount. That's still not the case in engineering and computer science. And they are the representation of women as low. So one of the things we think about when we think about jobs that have feminized or that are becoming more female is that that often results in a reduction in wages. So if you think about secretaries used to be male and then women moved into those fields and the wages went down, or veterinarians are now predominantly female and it's a more challenging field, or even the clergy. As more women go into the clergy, it's feminized and that might be associated with lower value. That also seems to be the case in an interesting way for women in computer science. So we focused on the two fields that had still had a gender wage gap was engineering and computer science. And in engineering, the gap was small. And it was narrowing over time so that as more recent women were narrowing that gender wage gap with recent male graduates. But we don't observe that with computer science. What we see is that as more women entered into computer science, wages declined. And some people think of this as either discrimination or economists talk about it as a pollution effect. I don't like that term. But it suggests that as more women go into it, perhaps the men feel threatened that their wages are going to go down and therefore maybe women are pushed into different kinds of occupations or are given less rewarding work opportunities and therefore might exit. So this decline in wages, it can't be explained by experience or family background characteristics. So it's again a mystery as to what's going on. And we need to be thinking about solutions to address that because one of the ways to close the gender wage gap is to increase the representation of women in STEM. Right. Wow. That sounds fascinating and challenging. Moving from the workplace to the campus, I know that most of your recent work has been looking at the workplace. I wonder if you can speculate perhaps on how any of what you've looked at in the workplace may translate to the situation for women on the campus and our improvement of retention of women in these fields on campus. That's a harder question. I'm currently interviewing recent college graduates who are in the workforce. And they've been in the workforce for a year or two and they're reflecting back on their college experiences. And many of them are quite positive about the kind of training they got. The women sometimes do talk about feeling like there were not that many female faculty that they could turn to. And it was sometimes difficult, particularly for minorities to find work groups because a lot of the engineering classes, for example, you work in projects and you study in teams. And so it seems like increasing the representation of female faculty might make more female students feel like there are role models for them, that they're reflected in the power structure and that they belong there. And that is something that many of the women said that they had, they either had a female mentor that encouraged them or a very strong male mentor who also connected them with other people. So the mentoring and increasing women's representation in faculty levels and in higher positions in the university is key. But a lot of both the men and the women talked about the group work that they did. And so I don't think that this is just a situation that only women need to think about. Many of the men talk in their interviews about learning to work in diverse groups, working with women on team projects. And those are the colleagues that are going to go into the work field and be able to work the best with women. So I think this is a two sex problem and that we have to think more about allyship and how to create teams that work well together where people feel like they're utilizing their skills and have a collegial relationship. Because that's one of the things that I find the most interesting about these interviews with these young people is when they talk about how rewarding these team projects were. It makes me want to go back to school and be an engineer, frankly, or about how they learn to work in groups. And that seems to be attractive and a way to alter the situation at work in a positive direction. Wow, that's a really positive way to finish the discussion. Group work is really important to my undergraduate class in computer science. And it's really refreshing to hear that slightly more optimistic look on things for what is otherwise an incredibly challenging problem for us in the STEM fields and particularly in computer science. Thanks so much for spending the time with us to discuss this important issue today. Thanks, Sharon. Thank you. Thank you for having me on.