BYU and female faculty
 

I don't know very many LDS women that have professional degrees of any sort.

I know some. Just not a lot.

Red Head Gal, formerly on this website, is one. A lawyer.

I don't know that I've ever personally known a LDS female doctor. That's kind of scary.

I think one of my roles as a dad is to counteract the messages that my daughter receives through the church and other non-church sources that she shouldn't pursue a higher education or a profession.

Like I've said before. A LOT of LDS women work. They just don't work in well-paying careers.

My brother is married to a lawyer. They don't have kids. My wife is an administrator at a a hospital at the director level. For us, as we both married later than most LDS do, she was a few years into her career and in her late 20s when we got married. It was a lot easier for us at that point to start a family and for her to continue working.

On the other hand, for women who marry young, as is common among LDS, it's really hard for a woman to pursue a professional career. It takes time to pursue a degree, much less an advanced one, and then it takes a few years experience at a good job before a woman can even afford quality daycare. As soon as the kids come, at least where I live, you're looking at in the neighborhood of $1200-$1500 a month for a baby to get the level of daycare I'd want my kids to get.

At one time with our two young daughters it was over $2000 every month for their care during the day. Most families can't afford that. Any options significantly cheaper than that put a burden on parents, siblings or other family members if you have them stay with family. Or if you find anything much cheaper than that, frankly, you're just risking a lot in terms of your kids' safety and well-being. There is a lot of bad childcare out there and it's usually of the "home daycare" variety because those are still largely unregulated or monitored by the state in most places. Unfortunately, that's the hand that is dealt to a lot a of single moms. In those cases the moms tend to try anything they can to leave the workforce as soon as possible because they see the kids as having a less than ideal situation, which is often the truth for those families. Or they work part time or whenever the other parent can be home, if there is a spouse or another parent to take care of the kids. And that kind of work is going to usually be lower paying.

Also, where my wife works there are lots of women working as nurses, therapists, and even a few doctors, but she's told me even among non-LDS there are few women who work there with more than one kid. She's an exception. On the other hand, a lot work until they get pregnant and then never come back. I've seen the same where I work. I don't know that many women at my work who have more than one child unless they're single moms.

Now SLtrib is jumping in on the fun.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/4361236-1...y-so-few-women

My most orthodox of sisters surprisingly has two daughters with or obtaining advanced degrees. Her eldest has a MSW from ASU, and her next daughter is obtaining (two years left) a Phd in immunology. My own dove into business after obtaining their undergraduate education. My wife is an engineer who after retirement developed her own business with flex schedule. Of course, she's not LDS.

It is family driven, not just cultural. In my parents' house, advanced degrees were expected, not wished for.

Keep up the good work and you will successfully overcome the culture.

It's not due to a lack of trying.

A week ago I was gonna post about this. The electrical engineering department just hired a woman in her late 30s. She has one peer-reviewed publication and a few conference papers to her name. She works for the government and did mostly applied stuff. She got her MS in applied physics the same place I got my degree and has a PhD from the Univ. of MD. Some BYU person met her at a conference and wanted to hire her because she was a woman and they were looking for someone with her expertise.

Also, the law school wanted my sister (as a student, not faculty) because she was both female and a minority but she chose Columbia.

You guys obviously don't live in DC. Advanced degreed-Mormon women are more the norm.

True, I don't live in DC.

I live in regular Mormon-ania where only the poor Mormon women work.

I think you're right, notwithstanding the anecdotes here. I think this is more a problem of lack of supply than BYU's bias. It's particularly unusual for devout LDS women to go into academia (and stay devout).

The first woman to graduate from Harvard Law summa cum laude is Mormon, Lisa Sun. Her husband is Asian and she teaches at BYU now.