STEM/Non-STEM Divide Structures Undergraduate Beliefs About Gender and Talent in Academia.

Kimberlyn A Bailey,Ampalavanar Nanthakumar,David Horacek,Steven Worthington,Scott Preston,Carolina C Ilie

doi:10.3389/fsoc.2019.00026

Kimberlyn A Bailey, Ampalavanar Nanthakumar + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00026

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Abstract

Research and popular debate on female underrepresentation in academia has focused on STEM fields. But recent work has offered a unifying explanation for gender representation across the STEM/non-STEM divide. This proposed explanation, called the field-specific ability beliefs (FAB) hypothesis, postulates that, in combination with pervasive stereotypes that link men but not women with intellectual talent, academics perpetuate female underrepresentation by transmitting to students in earlier stages of education their beliefs about how much intellectual talent is required for success in each academic field. This theory was supported by a nationwide survey of U.S. academics that showed both STEM and non-STEM fields with fewer women are also the fields that academics believe require more brilliance. We test this top-down schema with a nationwide survey of U.S. undergraduates, assessing the extent to which undergraduate beliefs about talent in academia mirror those of academics. We find no evidence that academics transmit their beliefs to undergraduates. We also use a second survey “identical to the first but with each field's gender ratio provided as added information” to explicitly test the relationship between undergraduate beliefs about gender and talent in academia. The results for this second survey suggest that the extent to which undergraduates rate brilliance as essential to success in an academic field is highly sensitive to this added information for non-STEM fields, but not STEM fields. Overall, our study offers evidence that, contrary to FAB hypothesis, the STEM/non-STEM divide principally shapes undergraduate beliefs about both gender and talent in academia.

Highlights

Established stereotypes linking men but not women with innate brilliance may hinder women’s paths into academia (Bennett, 1996; Tiedemann, 2000; Kirkcaldy et al, 2007; Lecklider, 2013; Leslie et al, 2015)
The fieldspecific ability belief (FAB) hypothesis claims that the FABs of undergraduates are strongly influenced by the FABs of academics and, the hypothesis predicts that undergraduate FABs, like those of academics, predict female representation
We hypothesized that, (1) as Leslie et al found for academic FABs, there would be an association between average undergraduate FABs for each field and female representation for each field

Summary

Introduction

Established stereotypes linking men but not women with innate brilliance may hinder women’s paths into academia (Bennett, 1996; Tiedemann, 2000; Kirkcaldy et al, 2007; Lecklider, 2013; Leslie et al, 2015). Using a nationwide survey of postdoctoral researchers, faculty and graduate students (: academics) in 30 disciplines, the authors found that the disciplines with the fewest women had Undergraduate Beliefs About Gender/Talent practitioners who most strongly considered talent essential to success in their field (Leslie et al, 2015). Based on these findings, Leslie et al proposed a theory for female underrepresentation in academia: the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis. The authors propose that FABs are passed down from academics, saturating the general public, and combine with stereotypes about women’s intellect to create and perpetuate the academic gender gap

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