Gender discrimination is not the only explanation for there being more men than women in STEM jobs, according to the research summarized in the passages quoted below.
(p. C3) Scores of surveys over the last 50 years show that women tend to be more interested in careers that involve working with other people while men prefer jobs that involve manipulating objects, whether it is a hammer or a computer. These leanings can be seen in the lab, too. Studies published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2016, for example, found that women were more responsive to pictures of people, while men were more responsive to pictures of things.
Consistent with what men and women say they want, the STEM fields with more men, such as engineering and computer science, focus on objects while those with more women, such as psychology and biomedicine, focus on people.
Given the push to get more people—and especially more girls—interested in STEM, it is worth noting that talented students of both sexes tend to avoid a career in math or science if they can pursue something else. STEM jobs aren’t for everyone, regardless of how lucrative they may be.
A study of more than 70,000 high-school students in Greece, published in the Journal of Human Resources in 2024, found that girls on average outperformed boys in both STEM and non-STEM subjects but rarely pursued STEM in college if they were just as strong in other things. A study of middle-aged adults who had been precocious in math as teens, published in the journal Psychological Science in 2014, found that only around a quarter of the men were working in STEM and IT.
Large-scale studies around the world show that women are generally more likely than men to have skills in non-STEM areas, while men who are strong in math and science are often less skilled elsewhere. But while everyone seems to be concerned about whether girls are performing well in STEM classes, no one seems all that troubled by the fact that boys are consistently underperforming in reading and writing.
For the full essay see:
(Note: the online version of the essay has the date March 6, 2025, and has the same title as the print version.)
Hippel’s essay, quoted above, is adapted from his book:
Hippel, William von. The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness. New York: Harper, 2025.
The academic study published in the Journal of Human Resources and mentioned above is: