1970-01-01 00:00:00
Part-time and a partner who provides the main income. This is what many female students who have chosen female-dominated branches want. The students have, even more, a traditional vision of feminine and masculine careers.
For three days, these results relayed in the Sunday newspaper hit the headlines, because they shock or because they are accused by some of being exploited. They come from a study carried out by Margit Osterloh, professor of economics, and Katja Rost, sociologist, both practicing at the University of Zurich. Nearly 9,000 students from the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich were surveyed.
The researchers were thus trying to understand the famous phenomenon of the “leaky pipe”, ie the decrease in the participation of women as one climbs the ladder of a scientific career. In Zurich, for example, almost 60% of students are women, but the proportion of female professors is only 24%. As a reminder, women occupy 22% of senior management positions in Switzerland, according to figures from 2021.
Margit Osterloh says she is surprised: since the publication of the study, her phone has not stopped ringing.
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Le Temps: Your conclusions are astonishing. Can they be extended beyond the academic world?
Margit Osterloh: Yes, but with limitations. These are not representative figures for Switzerland since the questionnaires were completed by students, without vision of the rest of their course, and in Zurich only. But we asked them questions about their career prospects in general, not just academically, in the event of a potential arrival of children within their couple.
Precisely, you observe that many female students want an older and more efficient partner in the professional environment. Do you think we should no longer worry that so few women occupy positions of responsibility?
I think you have to accept that there may be differences in preferences. If women with less career ambition don’t complain about it, we shouldn’t force them to be unsatisfied. However, they should be aware of the risks that part-time work can entail financially, especially if they divorce. In the same way, it is not advantageous for a man to provide the household income alone.
You also notice that a majority of men have a traditional view of roles. How is it possible?
Men have an even more conservative view of their professional and private life than women and have internalized masculine stereotypes more strongly. For example, they accept that their companion works full time as long as it does not affect their own career. All this joins other statistics which show that in Switzerland the difference between men and women on the labor market intervenes especially at the time of the arrival of a child.
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A small minority of women study in male-dominated fields such as computer science and very few men in female-dominated fields such as psychology. Is it choice or a form of societal pressure?
I cannot answer because we did not ask the students about the causes of their preferences. They could be partly due to stereotypes which are very persistent and to our socialization. I personally don’t believe much in the biological dimension of preferences. But we don’t know.
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Are there schematically two types of women, those who choose predominantly female disciplines, often less career-oriented, and those who evolve in predominantly male disciplines, generally more career-oriented?
It is interesting to see that these women who study in more masculine environments experience less of the leaky pipe phenomenon: in veterinary medicine, for example, women represent 82% of bachelor’s graduates, but only 27% of teaching positions. While in the field of electrical engineering, women make up 12% of graduates and 11% of faculty positions. We note, without being able to explain it exactly, that this second category of women has better resources for a career, they had better grades in secondary school, for example.
But 11% of female professors in electrical engineering, isn’t that very low?
Yes, but compared to the number of graduates, the leaky pipe phenomenon is much less important for women in these predominantly male fields.
The female students do not report, at their level, discrimination linked to their gender. Except in response to that last question: “Do you feel advantaged or disadvantaged as a woman?” How do you explain it?
It is striking to note that before the mention of gender as a possible factor of discrimination, this dimension does not appear among female students. We don’t have a certain explanation, but our interpretation is that making the gender issue salient triggers a politically correct response.
Faced with the “leaky pipe”, why are you not in favor of quotas for women in teaching positions?
They are useless for women in predominantly male sectors, since the leaky pipe phenomenon is less. And quotas or other preferential measures will have a hard time convincing women in female-dominated fields who choose their branch more in accordance with their limited career aspirations. They therefore represent discrimination for motivated men who today have less chance of accessing a professorship and for high-performing women who have no desire to be just a quota.
What other solutions do you suggest?
Women must be made aware of the financial risk of putting their careers on hold too much. It would also be necessary to put an end to the “clock of tenure” [la période probatoire de plusieurs années sur laquelle est évalué un professeur avant d’accéder à un poste permanent, ndlr]. It often coincides for women with the “biological clock”, thus making their productivity lower over this period. Women are still generally poorly represented in teaching positions and it is true that quotas would make it possible to reduce this gap, but we believe that they are not desirable because they create frustration for both men and women.
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