BOSTON — Madeline Szoo grew up listening to her grandmother talk of being laughed at when she spoke of going to college and becoming an accountant.When Szoo excelled at math in high school, she got her share of ridicule too — though it was slightly subtler."I was told a lot, 'You're smart for a girl,'" she said."I knew other girls in my classes who weren't able to move past that.
"Even as we see some shifts and changes, disproportionate numbers of men are pursuing pathways through higher education that tend to lead to higher earnings," said Ruth Watkins, president of postsecondary education at the Strada Education Foundation, a nonprofit focused on postsecondary education and opportunity.
"It was awful," Mynatt said of her own experience as an engineering student in the 1980s, before she changed her major to computer science."It was very male dominated. It had such a weed-out culture. I didn't like the culture. It was about intellectual superiority and competing with the person next to you."
Caregiving responsibilities also come at points in workers' careers when they are developing networks and relationships, Fuller said. There has been progress of another kind, however, Mynatt noted: Those many college-educated women entering the workforce, especially in male-dominated industries, are changing perspectives.