Women’s preference to work in fields with greater female representation may be contributing to the persistent gender gap in male-dominated professions, according to a new study led by Stella Lourenco, professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta.
“Some people may think of gender representation as mostly symbolic — that it’s simply nice for women to see themselves represented in a field,” said Dr. Lourenco. “What we found is that gender representation is more consequential. It is perhaps a primary reason women decide whether to enter a particular occupation in the first place.”
For their research, Dr. Lourenco and her co-authors tested the field-specific ability beliefs (FAB) theory, which claims women may feel unwelcome in fields historically linked to stereotypical male brilliance, such as philosophy, economics, and STEM disciplines. In contrast, they are drawn to fields that emphasize dedication and diligence, such as education and nursing.
The researchers recruited a total of 1,680 U.S. participants (50.6 percent women) for a series of online experiments regarding participants’ awareness of the male-female gender ratios of certain occupations as well as their inherent beliefs and sense of belonging within those fields. Overall, women showed a preference for jobs associated with dedication, while men showed a preference for jobs associated with brilliance. Women’s sense of belonging was higher in fields where participants expected greater female representation.
Other experiments presented participants with hypothetical job advertisements that either emphasized the need for brilliance or dedication in the role and provided information on male-female distribution in each job. Participants were asked to rate their interest in applying for each role and their anticipated sense of belonging. Notably, women’s anticipated sense of belonging was higher for a female-dominated job that emphasized brilliance compared to a male-dominated job that emphasized dedication.
“Gender representation is often spoken of simply as a result of women choosing not to work in a particular field,” said Dr. Lourenco. “Our work suggests that gender representation is also an important underlying cause of fewer women choosing to work in certain fields. It’s really a self-reinforcing cycle. Today’s gender representation likely plays a role in shaping tomorrow’s gender representation.”
Dr. Lourenco has been an Emory faculty member for nearly two decades. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D from the University of Chicago.
In addition to Dr. Lourenco, the research team included Arber Tasimi, assistant professor of psychology at Emory; Kylee Novick, a former undergraduate student at Emory; and Ryno Kruger, a former graduate student at Emory who now teaches as an assistant professor at Brigham Young University in Utah.