Occupational sex stereotypes among college students

Ambivalent Sexism, Gender, and Major as Predictors of Turkish College Students’ Attitudes Toward Women and Men’s Atypical Educational Choices

“…This finding is consistent with earlier studies on the effects of gender on educational choices (e.g., White et al 1989), occupational stereotypes (e.g., Glick et al 1995), associating males with sciences (e.g., Malinen and Johnston 2007;Kulik 2000), and high school students' attitudes towards women in science (McCarty and Baird 1997). Turkish male participants might show lower positive AWNS and AMSS than female participants because members of advantaged groups (e.g., men) are more likely than disadvantaged groups (e.g., women) to endorse legitimizing ideologies about gender status quo (Jost and Banaji 1994;Jost and Hundady 2005;Jost and Kay 2005;Sachdev and Bourhis 1991).…”

“…Even though they might have high percentages of male students, in the future studies the engineering departments can be grouped as more masculine (e.g., aerospace, mechanical, civil, electrical & electronics, mining, petroleum & natural gas), more feminine (e.g., food), and neutral (e.g., environmental, geological, chemical) to find clearer results about how gender, major and ambivalent sexist attitudes predict perception and evaluation of students who make an atypical educational choice. Similarly, since earlier studies showed that the occupation of accounting is rated as neutral (e.g., White et al 1989), and recently accounting is percieved as more similar to engineers than elementary school teacher with implicit measures (White and White 2006), accounting and business departments can be separated from other social sciences perceived as feminine (e.g., psychology, sociology, education).…”

“…There is ample evidence in the literature that sciences are usually associated with males and there is an unbalanced gender distribution into natural and social science departments (e.g., Malinen and Johnston 2007;Mason and Kahle 1988;Smith and White 2002;White et al 1989). This unbalanced distribution is not a result of mere chance but at least partly due to gender stereotypes and occupational stereotyping (e.g., Eccles 1987;Kulik 2000;Nosek et al 2002;Shinar 1975;Tindall and Hamil 2004;White et al 1989).…”

“…This unbalanced distribution is not a result of mere chance but at least partly due to gender stereotypes and occupational stereotyping (e.g., Eccles 1987;Kulik 2000;Nosek et al 2002;Shinar 1975;Tindall and Hamil 2004;White et al 1989). Following the studies showing that gender roles/ stereotypes/sexism are relevant to women's educational and occupational choices, the present study aims at extending past research by exploring (a) how the new conceptulization of sexism, namely, ambivalent sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996), and ambivalence toward men (Glick and Fiske 1999), as well as gender and major of the students are associated with not only attitudes toward women studying in natural sciences (AWNS) but also with attitudes towards men studying in social sciences (AMSS), since there is no study exploring the AMSS except for few examining the relationship between men in social sciences and their degree of gender identity (e.g., Chusmir 1990;Kulik 1998) (b) how the negative and subjectively positive sides of attitudes toward men and women can affect AMSS / AWNS differently fostering existing gender status quo specifically in educational arena, and (c) how the atypical education of men and women are perceived by the participants from a non-Western, and predominantly muslim nation, Turkey, where views of men and women tend to be relatively more traditional.…”

“…Additionally, gender has been indicated as an important predictor affecting many issues such as educational choices (e.g., White et al 1989) and occupational stereotypes (e.g., Glick et al 1995). Researchers have found that males tend to choose so called 'hard sciences' such as mathematics, chemistry, engineering, etc., and females tend to choose so called 'soft sciences' such as humanities, philosophy, business, zoology, etc.…”