Daily Mail
LONDON: Women who prefer brainy boyfriends are less likely to be interested in male-dominated careers such as engineering, a study suggests.
Instead, they gravitate towards more nurturing professions such as teaching and social work because they seem more intent on playing a “traditional” gender role.
Meanwhile, women with little desire for a clever partner are more likely to be interested in working for a conventionally male profession, researchers discovered.
The findings will fuel concerns over the low number of women pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) amid fears that girls downplay their skills in these subjects to appear more attractive.
A team from the University at Buffalo in the US examined the dating preferences of more than 900 participants, and found that women were more likely to look for a smarter partner than men. The more seriously women felt about this, the more traditional they were about gender roles.
The researchers then tested the maths skills of the participants before analysing how interested they were in the subject while they thought of their dream partner.
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, revealed that the women who were most driven to find a smarter man appeared to be the poorest at maths and the least interested in Stem careers.
Professor Lora Park, who authored the study, said: “What we found is that not all women react equally to these romantic goals.
“Women who had a traditional preference of wanting to date someone smarter than themselves were the ones who distanced themselves the most from Stem fields.”
“In general terms, women have made many advances, but in certain fields of Stem, they haven’t made that much progress.
“I was surprised by the fact that some women have this preference, but I wasn’t surprised that this led to worse outcomes in these masculine fields.”
Figures from the Wise Campaign, which aims to get more women into maths and science careers, reveal that women make up just one in seven of the Stem workforce in Britain.
Concerns have been raised that girls are dropping the subjects at an early age, which can limit earning potential.