Abstract
Women's representation in science has changed substantially, but unevenly, over the past 40 years. In health and biological sciences, for example, women's representation among U.S. scientists is now on par with or greater than men's, while in physical sciences and engineering they remain a clear minority. We investigated whether variation in proportions of women in scientific disciplines is related to differing levels of male-favoring explicit or implicit stereotypes held by students and scientists in each discipline. We hypothesized that science-is-male stereotypes would be weaker in disciplines where women are better represented. This prediction was tested with a sample of 176,935 college-educated participants (70% female), including thousands of engineers, physicians, and scientists. The prediction was supported for the explicit stereotype, but not for the implicit stereotype. Implicit stereotype strength did not correspond with disciplines' gender ratios, but, rather, correlated with two indicators of disciplines' scientific intensity, positively for men and negatively for women. From age 18 on, women who majored or worked in disciplines perceived as more scientific had substantially weaker science-is-male stereotypes than did men in the same disciplines, with gender differences larger than 0.8 standard deviations in the most scientifically-perceived disciplines. Further, particularly for women, differences in the strength of implicit stereotypes across scientific disciplines corresponded with the strength of scientific values held by women in the disciplines. These results are discussed in the context of dual process theory of mental operation and balanced identity theory. The findings point to the need for longitudinal study of the factors' affecting development of adults' and, especially, children's implicit gender stereotypes and scientific identity.
Highlights
In 1966 just 7% of undergraduate women took their bachelor’s degrees in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, excluding health and social science; National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2011a, Table 9)
Following Halpern et al.’s (2007) report on sex differences in science and math, we use the term sex when distinguishing men’s and women’s cognitions. Both implicit (Istd) and explicit (Estd) stereotype scores are expressed in standard deviation units relative to a zero, or no bias, score
The gender difference is greatest, exceeding 0.8 standard deviations, for the implicit stereotypes held by men and women in either biological/life sciences or engineering/physical sciences
Summary
In 1966 just 7% of undergraduate women took their bachelor’s degrees in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, excluding health and social science; National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2011a, Table 9). More than four decades later, despite passage in 1972 of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act and an ensuing great expansion of higher education opportunities for women, the Scientists’ gender–science stereotypes figure moved only to 10% (National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2011a, data for 2008). This is slightly down from the high water mark of 12%, first reached during the mid-1980s and achieved again in 2000 and 2003. Even with men’s sagging interest, in 2008 they were still more than twice as likely as women to pursue and earn an undergraduate STEM degree
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