RESUMO
Various studies try to disentangle the gender-specific competencies or decisions that lead to a career in a STEM field and try to find a way to encourage more women to pursue this kind of career. The present study examines differences in the meaning of work (i.e., their professional goal orientation) of students who are enrolled in STEM or non-STEM programs in tertiary education. Based on the background that gender stereotypes associate women and men with communal or agentic roles respectively, we expected that women in STEM subjects differ in their professional goal orientation from women in non-STEM programs. More precisely, women who are enrolled in a STEM major are expected to be less oriented to social and communal goal orientations than women in non-STEM university programs. In a sample of 5,857 second-year university students of the German National Educational Panel Study, three profiles of professional goal orientation were confirmed in a latent profile analysis. As expected, women were more oriented toward social aspects of occupations, whereas men more likely belonged to a profile with high importance for economic aspects of occupations. Moreover, students enrolled in STEM programs more likely belonged to the profile of economic goal orientation. There was, however, no interaction of gender and STEM program: Women in STEM fields did not differ in their occupational goal orientation from women enrolled in non-STEM programs. Based on these findings and on a goal congruity perspective, future interventions aiming at overcoming the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields should consider the individual meaning of work and the goals that are associated with STEM occupations.
RESUMO
This study investigates early secondary school students' gender-stereotypical interest profiles and how they relate to students' gender-role orientation, i.e., their traditional or egalitarian attitudes toward gender roles. Gender-stereotypical interest profiles are described by relatively high interests in either female- or male-stereotypical domains and low interests in domains that are not associated to the own gender group. In a study conducted with 4,457 students (49.2% female, sixth graders) with data from the German National Educational Panel Study, four interest profiles were derived from the combined latent profile analysis of two academic interest domains (mathematics and German) and six vocational interest domains (realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional). Aside from two gender-stereotypical interest profiles, two gender-undifferentiated interest profiles were found. One undifferentiated interest profile was marked by generally high interests in all domains, the other by generally low interests in all domains. Students in the male-stereotypical interest profile had high values in the mathematics, realistic, investigative, and enterprising domains and low interest in the German, artistic, social, and conventional domains. The female-stereotypical interest profile was marked by the opposite pattern. The results further showed that students more likely belonged to the high or female interest profiles when they expressed egalitarian gender-role orientations. Also, boys were more likely members of the female interest profile than were girls of the male interest profile. Students with low reasoning skills were generally more likely members of the low interest profile group. Results are discussed with respect to the question whether interest profiles are more predictive of students' academic development than single domain-specific measures of interest.
