In Their Own Words: Re-examining Gender Differences in Career Motivations for a New Generation

• In Event: Gender socialization, stereotyping and gender development across childhood and adolescence

Abstract

Fueled by expected workforce shortages in STEM, research on gender differences in children’s career interests has grown in the past two decades. Theoretical explanations for gender gaps in career interests include occupation gender stereotypes (Barth et al., 2018), career or academic self-efficacy and self-concept (Fouad & Santana, 2017; Lauermann et al., 2017) and career goal affordances related to communion and agency (Diekman & Steinberg, 2013). However, the reliance of primarily quantitative and experimental methodologies in these paradigms limits the understanding of youth’s career motivations to the constructs central to these theories. To allow for new ideas to emerge and existing theories to be refined, it is beneficial to periodically re-examine how youth describe and explain their career interests in their own words. In support of this, US Labor and college majors statistics indicate shifts over the last 20 years in the size of the gender gap in many fields (National Science Foundation, 2019), and it is possible that youth in contemporary society are less impacted by the social forces that created the historical gender gaps in the labor force.

We endeavor to begin this re-examination with a study of 500 eighth-graders who were asked in open-ended questions to identify and explain their future career interests. This mixed methodology study also asked students to rate their chosen career on several characteristics based on constructs in previous research and indicate their perceptions of the gender balance in that occupation. An emergent coding process was employed to identify the motivations for career choices.

Gender differences in career interests (Table 1) generally reflected labor force gender gaps. It is noteworthy that significantly more girls than boys were interested in becoming a doctor and a relatively high percentage of boys and girls were interested in the arts.

The most common explanations for career interests for both genders were related to perceived aptitudes and favorable attitudes toward the career. This supports theories that emphasize self-efficacy/concept and attitudes as shaping career interests. Some previously theorized gender differences related to goal affordances were observed, including a desire to help others (mentioned more often by girls) and high earning potential (mentioned more often by boys). A desire to be creative was frequently mentioned by both boys and girls, a construct not part of existing theories. Ratings of the importance of specific career attributes indicated that creativity, positive impact on society, and earning potential were rated highly and gender differences were evident in the latter two. Inconsistent with some previous theorizing, boys and girls did not differ in the importance placed on work allowing for family time or providing power, influence, or distinction. Finally, on average girls rated their future occupations as gender balanced; whereas boys rated theirs as having “slightly more men than women.”

Although supporting previous theories, this study revealed some new areas for future research. Creativity emerged as an important occupation characteristic. Despite often choosing careers predominantly held by their own gender, students perceived their future careers as having a more balanced representation of men and women.

Authors

• Joan M Barth, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie Masters, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tarsha Patterson, The University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author