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Do College Students’ Gender-typed Attitudes About Occupations Predict Their Real-World Decisions?

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Abstract

We investigated US college students’ gender-typed attitudes about occupations for themselves as a predictor of their real-world decisions regarding an academic major and intended future career. We also investigated US college students’ attitudes about the appropriateness of gender-typed occupations for other men and women. The sample (N = 264) was mostly Caucasian and was drawn from a large state university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US. An established self-report measure (see Liben and Bigler 2002) was used to assess attitudes about occupations for the self and other people. Gender-typed majors and intended careers were categorized using a coding scheme that was developed for the study. College students preferred gender-stereotypical occupations for themselves. Women’s, but not men’s, preferences for gender-typed occupations predicted their decisions about their academic major and the career they intended to pursue. Both men and women reported that men should only hold masculine occupations, but that women should hold both masculine and feminine occupations. We discuss the implications of our results for understanding the gender gap in occupations in the US, such as the underrepresentation of women in STEM careers and barriers for men in stereotypically female occupations.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the members of the Master’s thesis committee, Dr. Katherine Karraker and Dr. Kevin Larkin. Additional thanks to Stephanie Kincaid, Alyssa Fairhurst, Zac Corathers, Meggie Swisher, and Matt Basil for their assistance with this project. We thank Emily Keener for her comments on a previous version of this manuscript.

This manuscript is based on a thesis conducted by the first author under the supervision of the second author in partial fulfillment of the degree of master of science at West Virginia University. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the April 2010 Gender Development Research Conference, San Francisco, CA, 2010.

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  1. Lisa DiDonato

    Present address: Social Sciences Division, Rose State College, Midwest City, OK, USA

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  1. Department of Psychology, West Virginia University, PO Box 6040, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA

    Lisa DiDonato & JoNell Strough

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  1. Lisa DiDonato
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Correspondence to Lisa DiDonato or JoNell Strough.

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DiDonato, L., Strough, J. Do College Students’ Gender-typed Attitudes About Occupations Predict Their Real-World Decisions?. Sex Roles 68, 536–549 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-013-0275-2

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