I disagree. I believe that socialization and discrimination
are the dominate reason for both the lack of men in teaching and the
lack of women in technology.
In fact it is easy to show that it is not pay that keeps men out
of teaching. Secondary School teachers have the same average pay
as Primary School teachers according to the NCES. The former has
as many men as women and the latter is dominated by women. I conclude
that it is not pay which is keeping men out of primary school education.
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Alright, so maybe I oversimplified a bit. Certainly
socialization and discrimination have a lot to do with why there are so
few men in elementary ed. But I still believe my original statement
that lack of pay is a major reason that more men do not consider
teaching in general. Interestingly the percentage of male teachers in
K-12 education has decreased from 33% to 25% in the past 15 years
(NCES). (This ofcourse means that there cannot be as many male
secondary teachers as female unless there are NO elementary male
teachers.) Two-thirds of school administrators are male. The fact is
that 3 times as many women are going into teaching as men and twice as
many men are administrators as women. I think that money is a factor in
these statistics. Money is more of a issue for men in their career
decision making than it is for wormen. I further think that if more men
went into teaching that salaries would rise dramatically. Many of the
males who do teach have second jobs and businesses on the side that
ensure that they maintain their role as "primary wage earner" of the
family. This primary wage earner conditioning is really strong in men.
These are just gut feelings not well-researched opinions. I'd be
curious to know if anyone has researched any of these questions.