(U-WIRE) STORRS, Conn. — Girls are not placing business at the top of their list of career choices, according to a recent national study.
The survey of more than 3,000 girls and 1,200 boys in grades seven to 12 across the country was conducted by the Committee of 200, an organization of top businesswomen and the Simmons School of Management in Boston, which is the only business school in the world specifically designed for women. Students from 29 public and private schools from across the country were surveyed as well as members of 17 focus groups involving middle- and high-school girls, teachers and parents.
“The direct connections between business and helping people is largely invisible to teenage girls,” Fiona Wilson, co-author of the study, said. “We’re concerned far too few girls, 40 percent less than boys, say they are interested in a career.”
According to the study, teenagers rank business low as a career choice. When asked to list their future career choices, girls selected business careers 9 percent of the time, while boys listed business 15 percent of the time.
“This study is a wake-up call for us all,” Connie Duckworth, chair of the Committee of 200, said.
The survey found that 49 percent of the polled girls favored careers in medicine, law or architecture.
“One of the biggest findings is that girls much more than boys value helping others in their future careers,” Wilson said.
Thomas Gutteridge, former dean of the School of Business, said girls and women should realize that they could still help people and have a career in business.
“Any organization that helps people has accountants who also help people,” he said. “Non-profit businesses need people with business backgrounds.”
A consideration women may make when choosing careers is how to balance both a family and a career. The study found that 73 percent of the girls considered this balance when thinking about possible careers.
“The issue of balancing a family is challenging,” Gutteridge said. “Finding that balance can be a tough one.”
The poll also found that many of the girls surveyed said they had low confidence when it came to business.
“Their aversion to business careers seems to stem from a lack of familiarity with business and that it’s ‘what men do,'” Duckworth said.
Gutteridge said many students, both men and women, do not realize that business requires a large class load of math, including calculus. He said this “math phobia” keeps many students away from entering the business field.
The study found that money and finance were top-of-mind associations with business. In addition, teenagers said the saw financial literacy and the ability to work with numbers as important skills for business success. When asked to rate themselves in these areas, girls were less confident in their abilities than boys.
Gutteridge said the Enron scandal and other scandals in the past year may be keeping some young girls from not choosing business as their future career.
“The Enron scandal certainly did not help things,” Gutteridge said.
Gutteridge also said business may have a stereotype of being a “man’s field,” and not welcoming to women, but that is not the case. He said women are a valued asset to the business community.
“There is not a single corporation recruiter who would not welcome women,” he said.
Despite statistics in the survey, not all women feel like they cannot enter the world of business as their career.
“I personally do not feel intimidated by being a woman in a work force typically dominated by men,” Katherine Winiarski, a fifth-semester communications major, said. “If I was a business major, I would fight for my rights to move up as high as I could in the work force.”