Wow! Now that I'm in organic chem, I'm seeing a bit of a shift. For the first three quarters my classes were male majority (60-80%), but that has
abruptly reversed.
I'm guessing that a fair number of the men in prior classes only took basic chemistry to fulfill a requirement, but the majority of the women who took
it were actually interested in the content.
As an aside, for the first three quarters I never had the same lab partner. From here onward, everybody works alone anyway. I must say that the new
glassware is sexy- WANT! WANT! WANT!AndersHoveland - 26-9-2011 at 07:09
I'm guessing that a fair number of the men in prior classes only took basic chemistry to fulfill a requirement, but the majority of the women who took
it were actually interested in the content.
That is quite a shift, normally it is just the opposite. You might also note the interesting demographic shifts by looking at ethnicity and national
origin, in addition to gender. Depending on which country you are in, you may likely notice a disproportionate number of Indians and Asians in
chemistry.
I must say that the new glassware is sexy- WANT! WANT! WANT!
I don't know about the new ground glass chemistry stuff but I do like to
collect older pieces of equipment when it was custom blown by real
crafts-men, not to say there isn't skill in the modern stuff but it's just
feels more mass produced.
I have a wonderful collection of old reagent bottles I have picked
up over the years.
Lovely IMHO.
Good luck with your chemical future. LanthanumK - 10-10-2011 at 10:35
For me, basic chemistry is split about 50/50. I might ask someone who teaches organic chemistry which gender is more present.phlogiston - 10-10-2011 at 14:44
We started out 70/30 F/M in the first year, with more females leaving initially, to end up with more or less 30/70 at the end. At least 3 of the
remaining few females are doing exceptionally well though (full professorship in less than 6 years after graduation at very respectable institutions).
We used to combine parties with the pharmacology faculty to compensate (90% females) AndersHoveland - 10-10-2011 at 14:47
To shift the subject somewhat, I had heard that the un- and under-employment rate for chemical researchers in the USA was around 25 percent BEFORE the
official start of the recession, and that official government estimates were greatly underestimating the extent of job difficulty. I just hope that
the American chemical industry has not been complaining of a "shortage" of qualified chemists" merely to be able to bring in cheaper foreign
workers.
Unfortunately, it is all too often that the big industries in the western countries want highly educated, skilled, and "flexible" workers, but do not
want to pay the salaries it takes to attract such workers from within their own country. "Flexible" means the job is not permanent, and typically such
skilled workers spend a third of their working careers unemployed during the inetervals shifting between positions. Here is a question: can an
occupation really be experiencing a "shortage" of workers when a significant proportion of those workers are unable to find full-time permanent jobs?
An excellent example of this is radiologic technologists, those average earnings are not so high when one coniders that those numbers are only for a
lucky portion of those workers who have been able to get full-time hospital positions, the rest have to suffice with temporary or part-time work. In
addition, due to the odd and unpredictable hours, it is difficult for such part-time workers to work an additional job.
My point is that so much of the suppossed "opportunity" that exists for "skilled" workers is merely a mirage, a farcical trick perpetuated on the
workforce by dishonest industry proponents and private educational institutions.
[Edited on 10-10-2011 by AndersHoveland]fledarmus - 10-10-2011 at 17:47
@AndersHoveland - I think the biggest problem is that the people that decide how many visas can be issued respond way too slowly to the workforce.
Skills that are in short supply tend to command high salaries, and then more people enter those programs in college while the State department starts
to consider issuing additional visas for those skills. Eventually the job market starts to fill up with new graduates, and the supply begins to even
out, and the State department finally gets around to approving that skill for additional visas. Now companies start bringing in foreign workers, the
high salaries that drew so many people into the field begin to decline, and usually technology has advanced enough that the available positions also
begin to decline. But somehow the State department never gets around to removing that job description from the shortages list...
