Poster #183 - Gender Differences in Young Children’s Occupational Preferences

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Sex, Gender

Integrative Statement

Women are under-represented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) activities and disciplines (Clewell & Campbell, 2002). Perhaps one reason for this under-representation is due to a gender difference in interests: From early in development, females and males may differ in their interests in activities that benefit or help others. Indeed one study found that among sixth grade students, girls judged “helping other people” as more important a characteristic for future jobs than did boys (Jones, Howe, & Rua, 2000; also see Baker & Leary, 1995).

However, it remains unknown whether these gender differences (i.e., in interests in helping and benefitting others) are present in very young children, which would suggest the early influence of preferences in females’ decisions about whether to pursue STEM experiences in childhood, and consequently STEM careers in adulthood. The present research examined children’s preferences for jobs described as either helping or non-helping. Of chief interest is whether any gender differences emerge in which jobs children prefer to have in the future.

Three hundred 3- to 7-year-olds (30 per gender per age group) were shown and told the job descriptions of two gender-matched characters. One character’s job was described as involving helping others (e.g., “Her/his job is to make things that help other people”), while the other’s job did not involve helping others (e.g., “Her/his job is to make things that nobody has ever made yet”). Children were then asked to choose the job they would prefer to have when they grow up, and to give a confidence rating indicating whether they want that job “a lot” or “a little”. Children’s responses were computed into a raw binary choice score of helper or non-helper (0 and 1, respectively), and an average helping score that additionally takes into account children’s confidence in their choice, ranging from 0 (want the non-helper choice “a lot”) to 3 (want the helper choice “a lot”).

We ran separate generalized linear models on average binary choice and average helping score, with the between-subjects factors gender (female, male) and age in years (3, 4, 5, 6, 7). For binary choice, there was a significant main effect of gender, Wald χ2(1) = 5.64, p = .018, which occurred because girls on average picked the helper 55% of the time while boys picked it 41% of the time (see Figure 1a). The average helping scores take into account children’s confidence ratings, and found no main effect of gender nor age, and no interaction of gender and age, p > 0.05 (see Figure 1b). However, this may have resulted because younger children had difficulty answering the follow-up confidence question.

Overall, the present study found that girls were more likely than boys to prefer a helping job. These findings suggest that there may be a gender difference among young children in their preference for jobs described as helping or non-helping.

Authors

• Emma Tran, University of Waterloo
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie Denison, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ori Friedman, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author