Pink collar jobs aren't necessarily a bad financial choice. I'm a chemist, and I've been laid off twice in less than two years. I've had to relocate four tiimes, and every time I turn around, another company is having layoffs. I've been seriously thinking about going back to school to go into something like nursing. It pays just about as well as what I'm doing now, and the jobs are much more stable.

Ironically, when I was first looking at careers, back when I was in high school and college, several of my aunts encouraged me to look at nursing, pharmacy, etc. They told me they were good jobs "for a woman". All I could think is, "how old fashioned, to think that certain jobs are "women's jobs" But now, I look at those jobs and think how nice it would be to have a job that was stable and you didn't have to worry about layoffs, where you could go out and find a job in any city instead of having to relocate every few years, where you didn't have to invest years in graduate school before you could get a job. I didn't think about those things when I was 20.

Not that I would discourage women from going into science, if they really loved it, but it comes with some major drawbacks, at least in my field.