Implicit Science Stereotypes Mediate the Relationship between Gender and Academic Participation

Abstract

While the gender gap in mathematics and science has narrowed, men pursue these fields at a higher rate than women. In this study, 165 men and women at a university in the northeastern United States completed implicit and explicit measures of science stereotypes (association between male and science, relative to female and humanities), and gender identity (association between the concept "self" and one's own gender, relative to the concept "other" and the other gender), and reported plans to pursue science-oriented and humanities-oriented academic programs and careers. Although men were more likely than women to plan to pursue science, this gap in students' intentions was completely accounted for by implicit stereotypes. Moreover, implicit gender identity moderated the relationship between women's stereotypes and their academic plans, such that implicit stereotypes only predicted plans for women who strongly implicitly identified as female. These findings illustrate how an understanding of implicit cognitions can illuminate between-group disparities as well as within-group variability in science pursuit.

Stereotypes About Gender and Science

“…Some evidence suggests, however, that people perceive scientists to be more like men than women. Research using the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) indicates that people implicitly associate math (Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002;Nosek et al, 2007;Nosek & Smyth, 2011) and science (Kessels, Rau, & Hannover, 2006;Lane, Goh, & Driver-Linn, 2012;Nosek et al, 2007) with men more than with women. Moreover, research has found that liking math (Nosek et al, 2002) and the intention to pursue a STEM major or career was associated with implicit stereotypes associating men with scientists (Lane et al, 2012).…”

Beneath the numbers: A review of gender disparities in undergraduate education across science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines

“…Gender is a complicated identity based on individuals' internal experiences of who they are. Thus, individuals can vary in the degree to which they identify with a particular gender, how important gender is to their identity, the gender roles associated with their gender, and how their gender identity influences their experience in different settings such as a classroom [1][2][3]. In addition, gender is only one of a multitude of social identities that make up who we are and how we react in certain settings.…”

Communicating Gender-Equality Progress, Reduces Social Identity Threats for Women Considering a Research Career

“…It could also be relevant to replicate the design using indirect measures that are less sensitive to social desirability concerns (see Lane et al 2012). For instance, it is possible that the participants' would associate research aptitude more with men than with women on an implicit measure though explicitly rejecting such gender stereotypes.…”