The Role of Cultural Contexts in Explaining Cross-National Gender Gaps in STEM Expectations

Abstract

In recent decades, women have made impressive inroads in education and the labour market in most countries; yet, they often remain under-represented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professions. One way to understand women’s under-representation in STEM is to examine how boys and girls develop their career expectations during adolescence, as this is a critical time when individuals begin to plan their futures. Prior cross-national research finds that gender stratification in education, work, and politics in a country affects the size of male-favourable gender gaps on math and science achievement tests for adolescents. Countries with more gender equality have smaller gender gaps in math and science. But, it is unknown how gender stratification or cultural ideologies impact the development of boys’ and girls’ STEM career expectations. Do countries with less gender equality have smaller male-favourable gender gaps in STEM career expectations? Do countries with less gender egalitarian have larger male-favourable gender gaps in STEM career expectations? Using data on student’s occupational expectations from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment and data on country-level gender stratification and genderegalitarian ideologies from the World Bank and European Values Survey, I study the gender gap in 15-yearolds’ expectations to enter a STEM career across 24 countries. Women’s under-representation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is a continuing concern for scholars, educators, and policymakers, who repeatedly ask, why do so few women enter STEM (Rossi, 1965; Hill, Corbett and St. Rose, 2010)? Women have made impressive gains in education in recent decades. Girls and boys are near parity in math performance (Hyde et al., 2008); girls take as rigorous math and science courses in high school as boys while earning better grades (Buchmann et al., 2008), and more women complete college than men throughout much of the world (UNESCO, 2012a). Despite women’s tremendous success in education, sex segregation in fields of study and occupations persists (Charles and Grusky, 2004; Charles and Bradley, 2009). Across countries, women remain under-represented in STEM fields of study (Hanson, Schaub and Baker, 1996; van Langen and Dekkers, 2005). This is a pressing concern because increasing women’s participation in STEM matters for reaching gender equality in societies more broadly, but also has implications for countries hoping to retain a qualified STEM labour force, which is thought to be crucial for VC The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com European Sociological Review, 2016, Vol. 32, No. 1, 122–133 doi: 10.1093/esr/jcv078 Advance Access Publication Date: 13 August 2015