Why Do So Few Women Aspire to a Technology Career? Investigating the Relationships Between Students' Attitudes, Competence Beliefs, and Career Aspirations in 12 Countries

• In Event: Gender and STEM Education

Abstract

Despite the fact that females today outnumber men in higher education and are now well represented in many natural science orientated fields, they continue to be underrepresented in math- and technology intensive fields such as computer science. The aim of this paper is to investigate gender differences in students’ technology career aspirations which represents a least-likely case within the broader STEM field. We apply a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to comparative data from ICILS to examine whether gender differences in students’ attitudes and competence beliefs contribute to gender differences in technology aspirations. Building on research showing that the gender gap in STEM attitudes and choices differ across countries, we investigate cross-country heterogeneity in gender differences in students’ technology aspirations and their determinants.

Authors

• Elisabeth Omand Grønhøj, Aarhus University

• Ida Gran Andersen, Aarhus University