> The main subject in this story was pursuing a PhD in "Women's Studies". Not to disparage that field of study, but it's quite obvious that it is a pretty useless degree that limits you to a career as a Women's Studies professor.
It isn't obviously useless, or even less applicable than many social science degrees, but for signaling purposes it's probably less useful to get a Ph.D. in an interdisciplinary field like Women's Studies than in one of the fields of more broadly recognized utility which it overlaps (which you can probably do with exactly the same research.) Because pretty much the whole thing about interdisciplinary fields is that they (in terms of the whole field) cross traditional fields of study, which tend to align somewhat with vocational fields, which makes degrees in them (without considerstion of things like the area of your personal research) less useful for non-acadenic vocational signalling.
It isn't obviously useless, or even less applicable than many social science degrees, but for signaling purposes it's probably less useful to get a Ph.D. in an interdisciplinary field like Women's Studies than in one of the fields of more broadly recognized utility which it overlaps (which you can probably do with exactly the same research.) Because pretty much the whole thing about interdisciplinary fields is that they (in terms of the whole field) cross traditional fields of study, which tend to align somewhat with vocational fields, which makes degrees in them (without considerstion of things like the area of your personal research) less useful for non-acadenic vocational signalling.