Gender and STEM Identity Negotiation Among Double-Majoring Women

• In Event: Persistence and Perceptions: Challenges Faced by Women and Girls in STEM

Abstract

Whether the college major serves as a signal of knowledge or a source of it, the choice of one’s major is a function of students’ beliefs about benefits they expect will accrue to them as a result of this choice. Prior research assumes that students only have one shot at this choice; that is, they choose one major and it is expected to be both externally rewarding and personally fulfilling. This paper utilizes original qualitative data about women who double major in order to uncover the ways double majoring enables women to negotiate tensions between parental/societal pressures to choose high-prestige/pay STEM majors and their own affinities towards lower-status non-STEM fields.

Authors

• Richard Pitt, University of California - San Diego

• Amanda J Brockman, Northern Kentucky University

• Lin Zhu, National University of Singapore