Research shows choice of school subjects factor in pay

SCHOOL subjects play a huge part in helping students into high-paid jobs, latest research reveals. And there’s one reason why many girls avoid such subjects.

Young businesswoman sitting at workplace and reading paper in office

• New push for parity as women’s salaries start lower, peak earlier
• Young girls earning less pocket money than boys
• Super gender gap: why it exists and what you can do about it

OF ALL the issues that spark cross-cat and mad dog-style debate, you’d think the wage gap between men and women would be pretty low down the list.

Despite the cries of “it doesn’t exist”, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has found Aussie women do earn less than men across most sectors and the gap (about 18 per cent) is on the way up, not down. Grrr.

For you or your daughter, this tricky little gap means hundreds of thousands of dollars over a working life and, combined with lost earnings during time out of work raising kids, it’s considered a factor in the increasing numbers of Aussie women living their last years in poverty, sadly.

Given this, you may want to tell any girl or student in your life who is thinking about their career choice that the latest research shows the roots of the pay-gap stretch right back to girls’ subject choice at school.

And what is driving girls to avoid subjects such as sciences and maths that could help them into high-paid jobs in the flourishing tech industry is not a lack of skills or aptitude … heartbreakingly, it’s a lack of confidence.

I know; you see these strapping, strong and confident young members of the next generation
of working women and think, “Go you girls, you’re gonna set the work-world on fire.”

Although they are getting higher grades than boys in many subjects in VCE (not that it’s a
gender superiority contest) young women are underestimating their abilities.

They’re falling victim to what best-selling US authors and TV reporter/presenters Katty Kay and Claire Shipman have dubbed “the confidence gap”.

To research their book The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self Assurance — What Women Should Know, the pair interviewed high-performing women and were shocked to discover many had an unhelpful trait in common.

Claire Shipman and Katty Kay.

“We began to talk with other highly successful women, hoping to find instructive examples of raw, flourishing female confidence,” the women wrote in The Atlantic magazine.

“But the more closely we looked, the more we instead found evidence of its shortage.”

When Melbourne University’s Dr Susan Mendez looked into why girls are less likely to choose science, tech, engineering or maths (STEM) subjects than boys — “despite many girls testing better in these subjects” — she found something very similar to Kay and Shipman.

Mendez was looking for the causes of women being under-represented in high-paying jobs in engineering and IT and found it goes right back to girls not feeling good enough to do those subjects, even if they absolutely are. They’re scared of the risk and underconfident.

The study followed 58,000 students from year 7 in 2008 to graduation in 2013 and found “even girls who are good at mathematics are much less likely to choose physics and information technology than equally skilled boys. Yet girls who choose these subjects perform better on average than boys.”

Girls are “talking themselves down” and locking themselves out of fields where many new, high-paying jobs are emerging.

Melbourne women-in-business mentor Andrea Clarke confirms this lack of self-belief can extend
well into women’s working lives.

“A lack of confidence is an absolute handbrake on the career progress within the workforce for
most women,” says Clarke, who works with businesses to help female employees develop professional self-assurance.

“We need to look at ways to manage it before girls leave school.”

Clarke cites evidence suggesting confidence is partly determined by genes, but, like The Confidence Code authors and Mendez, she stresses it can be improved if women (and girls) learn to take more risks and try their hand, as men are more prone to do.

Like Mendez, Kay and Shipman, Clarke is optimistic about closing the confidence gap,
which feeds the pay gap. It comes down to “encouraging them to try”.

Mendez’s message to girls is this: “Be more confident about your abilities and, if you think you can try it (a science or maths subject) and if you really like it, go for it.”

Because, according to the well-versed authors of The Confidence Code, “success correlates just
as closely with confidence as it does with competence”. But “the good news is that with work, confidence can be acquired”.

Action breeds confidence.

So take a few more risks, girls, and as ex-TV journalist Andrea Clarke says, remember the old motto “fail fast” then try again and get more confident. Because girls are up to the challenge
of competing with (and earning with) the best, if they just believe they can.

Keep in touch with Wendy via @wtuohy or at facebook.com/ontheperch