Women make up about half the U.S. population, yet remain in the minority in many professions, such as politics, technology, science and academia.
A key reason for this disparity is that women prefer to work in fields with more female representation, suggests new research by psychologists at Emory University. The journal PLOS One published the findings.
The research comprised analyses of a series of questionnaire experiments, including some involving hypothetical advertisements for employment.
The results showed the effect of gender demographics on responses of participants was robust, particularly among women. Women were more likely to express interest in jobs portrayed as having more female representation — even when the required abilities specified by the ads were ones stereotypically associated with men.
"Some people may think of gender representation as mostly symbolic — that it's simply nice for women to see themselves represented in a field," says Stella Lourenco, Emory professor of psychology and first author of the study. "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."
Co-authors of the study include Arber Tasimi, Emory assistant professor of psychology; Kylee Novick, who did the work as an Emory undergraduate student of psychology and has since graduated; and Ryno Kruger, who worked on the project as an Emory graduate student and is currently an assistant professor of psychology at Brigham Young University.
Lingering disparities
One hundred years ago, most women in the United States did not work outside the home. Their workplace presence kept growing over the decades, however, as societal norms changed and more doors began opening for the female sex.
By 2023, 77% of prime working-age women held jobs outside the home, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Women have forged careers in many fields where their numbers were once few. And yet, large disparities in gender representation remain in many crucial sectors.
Research has shown that an array of factors likely account for this phenomenon.
'Brilliance' vs 'dedication'
Recent work, for instance, supports the field-specific ability beliefs (FAB) theory. FAB posits that female underrepresentation in a field may reflect societal stereotypes that link men, but not women, with "brilliance," or intrinsic aptitude. In this scenario, women may feel unwelcome in fields believed to emphasize brilliance, such as philosophy, economics and science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
On the flip side, FAB posits that women may feel more welcome in fields such as education and nursing, reflecting a stereotype that women are better suited to fields perceived to require more dedication and diligence than brilliance.
Research has also delved into potential impacts on women's career choices of what has been called "masculinity contest culture." The term applies to fields, such as technology, perceived to emphasize stereotypical male traits of aggressiveness, assertiveness, independence, ambition and competitiveness.
"We wanted to tease out to what extent current gender representation matters to women's career preferences," Lourenco says. "Does it matter more than perceptions about what it takes to succeed in a particular field and the workplace culture associated with it?"
Inherent beliefs
The researchers recruited U.S. participants for a series of studies on the online testing platform Prolific. A total of 1,680 adults, ages 18 to 64, participated, including 851 women and 829 men.
In the first study, a group of participants were presented with an occupation and asked to use a sliding scale to estimate the gender ratio within that occupation. The results showed that participants' average estimates significantly correlated with actual gender representation across 60 different fields.
To assess their inherent beliefs about these fields, participants were asked to respond to a series of statements on a sliding scale, from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." Examples of these statements include:
- "This job requires a special aptitude that just can't be taught."
- "With the appropriate training and resources, I feel like I would belong in this occupation."
- "In this job, one person's loss is another person's gain."
They were also asked to respond on a sliding scale of "not at all similar" to "very similar" to the question:
- "How similar do you think you are to the other people who hold this occupation?"
Analysis of the results largely supported previous research, suggesting that beliefs about brilliance, dedication and the culture of the workplace contribute to people's interest in different jobs. Women showed a preference for jobs associated with dedication; while men showed a preference for those emphasizing brilliance and competition.
The results also extended the work by showing the importance of perceived gender demographics, particularly among women. The greater the expected female representation, the higher women's anticipated belonging, even after accounting for effects of FAB and, in some cases, for masculinity contest culture and ratings of their feelings of similarity to prototypical characteristics of individuals within the field.
Hypothetical ads
In a separate study, participants were presented with hypothetical job advertisements that either emphasized the need for brilliance or dedication in the role. The ads also provided explicit information about the male-female distribution in each job. Participants were asked to rate their interest in applying for each position and their anticipated sense of belonging if they got the job.
Strikingly, anticipated belonging among women participants was even higher for a female-dominated job that emphasized brilliance compared to a male-dominated job that emphasized dedication.
In this experiment, men's ratings of an anticipated sense of belong for hypothetical jobs were largely unaffected by either messaging of brilliance versus dedication or by gender representation.
Percentage matters
In another study, the researchers did a quantitative test of how gender demographics may shape interest and a sense of belonging for future employment. Participants were presented with hypothetical job advertisements that included the ratio of male versus female colleagues.
The higher the ratio of women in the female-dominated jobs, the stronger the women's ratings were for belonging. Men also expressed greater anticipated belonging for jobs with their gender majority, although they showed less variation in anticipated belonging as a function of gender ratio.
A self-reinforcing cycle
Throughout the studies, women's responses consistently placed a higher value on female representation compared to other variables in the job advertisements.
"One hypothesis is that gender representation may be a proxy for workplace climate," Lourenco says, signaling expectations about support, inclusivity and competitiveness.
For example, she says, women may believe that fields represented by fewer women are also more likely to be fields with masculine-stereotyped competitive culture.
"Gender representation is often spoken of simply as a result of women choosing not to work in a particular field," Lourenco adds. "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."
The work was funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation.
