Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM): An Investigation of Their Implicit Gender Stereotypes and Stereotypes’ Connectedness to Math Performance

Exploring the stability of the gender gap in faculty perceptions of gender climate at a rural regional university

Increasing awareness of gender barriers and biases in academic institutions is an essential component of institutional change strategies to promote equity and inclusion. There is an established perception gap in recognizing gender inequities in the workplace, whereby men faculty under acknowledge the stressors, barriers, and biases faced by their women faculty colleagues. This study explored the gender gap in faculty perceptions of institutional diversity climate at a rural comprehensive regional university in the United States. In addition to gender, differences across academic discipline and time were explored using 2 (men and women) x 2 (STEM and other) x 2 (2017 and 2022) between-groups ANOVAs. Results revealed a gender gap that persisted across time and perceptions of stressors, diversity climate, student behavior, leadership, and fairness in promotion/tenure procedures, with marginalized (women) faculty consistently reporting greater barriers/concern for women faculty relative to the perceptions of their men faculty colleagues. These findings are largely consistent with the extant literature and are discussed both with regard to future research directions and recommendations for reducing the perception gap and addressing institutional barriers to gender equity.

Online images amplify gender bias

Each year, people spend less time reading and more time viewing images1, which are proliferating online2-4. Images from platforms such as Google and Wikipedia are downloaded by millions every day2,5,6, and millions more are interacting through social media, such as Instagram and TikTok, that primarily consist of exchanging visual content. In parallel, news agencies and digital advertisers are increasingly capturing attention online through the use of images7,8, which people process more quickly, implicitly and memorably than text9-12. Here we show that the rise of images online significantly exacerbates gender bias, both in its statistical prevalence and its psychological impact. We examine the gender associations of 3,495 social categories (such as 'nurse' or 'banker') in more than one million images from Google, Wikipedia and Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and in billions of words from these platforms. We find that gender bias is consistently more prevalent in images than text for both female- and male-typed categories. We also show that the documented underrepresentation of women online13-18 is substantially worse in images than in text, public opinion and US census data. Finally, we conducted a nationally representative, preregistered experiment that shows that googling for images rather than textual descriptions of occupations amplifies gender bias in participants' beliefs. Addressing the societal effect of this large-scale shift towards visual communication will be essential for developing a fair and inclusive future for the internet.

Are gender-science stereotypes barriers for women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics? Exploring when, how, and to whom in an experimentally-controlled setting

Based on Social Cognitive Career Theory principles, the present study sought to investigate whether stereotype threat experiences could act as a barrier and reduce the persistence of women in math-intensive activities. More specifically, we assessed whether the experimental activation of stereotypes about women's lower math capabilities affected the performance, persistence, and self-selected difficulty of engineering students in a math task which required sustained effort. We also evaluated the relationships between these effects and the participants' pre-testing gender-science stereotypes and math self-concept. A sample of 340 engineering students (175 and 165 self-identified as males and females, respectively) were recruited and randomly assigned to a control (Con) or stereotype threat (StA) condition to form four similarly sized groups. All participants rated their self-concept in four academic domains (math, chemistry, physics, and coding), completed the gender-science Implicit Association Test, and a "reading comprehension task" that served to promote the stereotype threat manipulation immediately before facing a modified version of the Math Effort Task (M-MET). We observed that, in the control condition, M-MET performance, self-selected difficulty, and persistence were similar in female and male participants, independent of their gender-science implicit stereotypes but correlated to their math self-concept scores. In contrast, the StA condition triggered opposite effects in female and male students, so they showed decreased/enhanced M-MET performance and self-selected difficulty, respectively. This experimental condition also resulted in enhanced persistence of the male students without affecting the number of trials completed by female students. These effects were correlated with the strength of the participants' gender-science implicit stereotypes but not with their math self-concept scores. In fact, as revealed by finer-grain analyses, stereotype threat only had a significant impact on individuals harboring stereotypical gender-science implicit associations. Therefore, it is concluded that: (1) stereotypes can promote differences between male and female engineering students in their performance, self-confidence, and persistence in math-related activities; (2) These effects seem to be more prominent in individuals implicitly perceiving science as a masculine domain. The relevance of these findings to explain women's enhanced abandonment rates of math-intensive studies is discussed.

The importance of disability representation to address implicit bias in the workplace

Introduction

People are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment. Barriers can be physical or be caused by people's implicit and explicit attitudes towards people with disabilities.

Methods

We utilise the Implicit Association Test to investigate implicit attitudes towards people with disabilities among Human Resource professionals and people involved in making hiring decisions.

Results

We find no significant differences between people who work for large companies or Small- to Medium-sized Enterprises. Similarly, working in Human Resources (or making recruitment decisions) has no effect on implicit bias. We supply the first evidence linking a person's own health status (measured using EQ-5D-5L) to their implicit bias. We find that a worse health status is associated with lower implicit bias towards people with disabilities. In addition, we find women have lower implicit bias than men.

Discussion

The discussion reflects on the need for greater disability representation within the workplace - especially in making hiring decisions.

Evidence for Professional Conceptualization in Science as an Important Component of Science Identity

Experience in research facilitates development of science identity and encourages undergraduate student persistence along the pathway to careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Participation in authentic research can foster identity development by influencing a sense of belonging, recognition, interest, and performance and competence in science. We examine science identity in a group of five community college women in marine science during a 2-year study in which students participated in a research experience. We used interviews, surveys, identity artifacts, and significant circles before and after the research experience in a thematic analysis to explore identities and examine their intentions, interests, perspectives, and aspirations for a future career. Participation in research provided opportunities for students to gain conceptual understanding of themselves and their abilities in science as well as explore and clarify their professional interests. This work builds upon our current understanding by providing evidence that conceptualization of career trajectories and self as a science professional is an important component of identity. Exploring career options and developing professional conceptualization are critical components in science research experiences and warrants additional study to understand the role of professional conceptualization in shaping student trajectories in STEM.

The Latin America Early Career Earth System Scientist Network (LAECESS): addressing present and future challenges of the upcoming generations of scientists in the region

Early career (EC) Earth system scientists in the Latin America and the Caribbean region (LAC) have been facing several issues, such as limited funding opportunities, substandard scientific facilities, lack of security of tenure, and unrepresented groups equality issues. On top of this, the worsening regional environmental and climatic crises call for the need for this new generation of scientists to help to tackle these crises by increasing public awareness and research. Realizing the need to converge and step up in making a collective action to be a part of the solution, the Latin America Early Career Earth System Scientist Network (LAECESS) was created in 2016. LAECESS's primary goals are to promote regional networking, foster integrated and interdisciplinary science, organize soft skills courses and workshops, and empower Latin American EC researchers. This article is an initial step towards letting the global science community grasp the current situation and hear the early career LAC science community's perspectives. The paper also presents a series of future steps needed for better scientific and social development in the LAC region.

Implicit gender-science stereotypes and college-major intentions of italian adolescents

Gender stereotypes are often viewed as one of the root causes of the gender gap in STEM. According to Eccles’ model, they would indirectly influence major choices by shaping expectations of success and values attached to the viable options. However, empirical findings on the link between implicit gender-science stereotypes and college major intentions are limited. To fill this gap, the current study examines this association in a mixed-gender sample of 302 Italian high-school students. Logistic regression analysis revealed that implicit gender stereotypes were directly associated with females’ intention of majoring in STEM. Unlike previous findings, the mediation analysis could not confirm that other relevant factors, i.e., interest in the subject, performance at school, identification with the subject, and value attributed to the job’s salary and social utility, moderated this association.

Corruption Shock in Mexico: fsQCA Analysis of Entrepreneurial Intention in University Students

Entrepreneurship is the basis of the production network, and thus a key to territorial development. In this line, entrepreneurial intention has been pointed out as an indicator of latent entrepreneurship. In this article, the entrepreneurial intention of university students is studied from a configurational approach, allowing the study of the combined effect of corruption perception, corruption normalization, gender, university career area, and family entrepreneurial background to explain high levels of entrepreneurial intention. The model was tested with the fsQCA methodology according to two samples of students grouped according to their household income (medium and high level: N = 180; low level: N = 200). Stress tests were run to confirm the robustness of the results. This study highlights the negative impact produced by corruption among university students’ entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, the importance of family entrepreneurial background for specific archetypes like female, STEM, and low household income students is pointed out, as well as the importance of implementing education programs for entrepreneurship in higher education, and more specifically in STEM areas. Policies focused on facilitating the access to financial resources for female students and low household income students, and specific programs to foster female entrepreneurship, are also recommended.

Equity or Stereotypes in Science Education? Perspectives from Pre-University Students

In this work, we explore the presence of stereotypes in pre-university students with respect to gender, science, and scientists. The possible differences between boys and girls, school stage, and rurality are analyzed. For this purpose, a sample of 404 participants between 13 and 18 years old were delivered a form with items from the Questionnaire on Opinions about Science, Technology, and Society. The responses were offered using a five-point Likert scale and agreement percentages were calculated. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the analysis, where the effect size was calculated for items associated with any of the three factors. Our findings show that the stereotyped ideas of gender in science were more intense in Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) students in rural areas than in High School (HS) students from urban areas. In addition, perceptions of science and scientists showed greater agreement for CSE than for HS students. However, no differences were found between girls and boys. Regarding science items, there was a major agreement on the relationship between science and technology with problem solving, regardless of sex or school rurality. Finally, reflections on stereotypes and the presence of girls in STEM careers are provided.

Women in Engineering: Almost No Gap at University but a Long Way to Go for Sustaining Careers

Engineering is one of the career fields where women’s underrepresentation has been tenacious. In Korea, the government has made continuous efforts in the last decades to make a difference, yet the rate of women who pursue an engineering career pathway is still low. In this study, we analyzed 415 survey responses at a large private university in Korea to fulfill the aims of the current study: (1) to examine the gender difference on the 11 major- and career-related variables using t-test, (2) to test the adjusted social cognitive career theory (SCCT) model for the engineering undergraduate students’ intention to pursue an engineering career using path analysis. The independent t-test results revealed that the gender differences were found not in any major-related variable, but in three career-related variables, indicating the female students perceived their future career less vested than the male students. The path analysis results indicated that the adjusted SCCT model fitted to the data well and the relations among the variables were generally in the expected way with some exceptions. The highlighted implication is that removing systematic barriers and gender stereotype threats is as important as providing supports for gender equity in pursuing an engineering career.

Examining the effectiveness of brief interventions to strengthen a positive implicit relation between women and STEM across two timepoints

The current study assessed the impact of three brief interventions aimed at influencing implicit gender bias in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. The reduction of this bias is a key consideration as it remains a major barrier to gender equality in STEM. The interventions (psychoeducation, exposure to positive counter-stereotypical exemplars and perspective-taking) were compared to a control group at two timepoints. Gender-STEM bias was assessed at the implicit level (via the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure; IRAP) and the explicit level (via rating scales). Two hundred and ten adults (58.1% women) completed one of the four study conditions. Results indicated that implicit gender-STEM bias is malleable, at least in the short term. At Time 1, intervention groups showed higher levels of implicit pro-Women-STEM bias and lower levels of pro-Men-STEM bias than the Control group. Psychoeducation appeared most effective, followed by exposure to positive counter-stereotypical exemplars. Results from Time 2 presented a more complex picture of implicit bias change, as the control group exhibited an increased pro-Women-STEM bias that was unexpected. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to refining the interventions, the malleability of gender-STEM bias and the measurement of implicit bias across contexts.

The Supporting Role of Mentees' Peers in Online Mentoring: A Longitudinal Social Network Analysis of Peer Influence

Studies show that online mentoring is an effective measure to support girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), especially if it also allows for networking with other participants on the mentoring platform. However, research is missing on peer influence. This topic seems especially crucial in programs for adolescents as peer influence plays an important role at this age. In our study, we investigated peer influence on mentoring outcomes - confidence in own STEM abilities and STEM-related activities - in an online mentoring program in STEM for secondary school girls (N = 124, M = 14.3 years, SD = 2.2 years, age range: 11-19 years). The program provides girls with at least 1 year of one-on-one interaction with a personal female mentor who has a college degree in a STEM subject. Participants can also interact with other participants on the platform. We used a longitudinal social network analysis approach to examine peer influence on mentoring outcomes. Our results indicate that both mentoring outcomes - mentees' confidence in own STEM abilities and STEM-related activities - are influenced by peers moderated by the mentees' own age. Younger mentees tended to become more similar to their peers regarding confidence in own STEM abilities and STEM-related activities, whereas older mentees tended to become more dissimilar over time. In addition, peer group size had a positive effect on confidence in own STEM abilities, but not on STEM-related activities. This effect was moderated by the mentee's age. Overall, peers have a positive influence on the measured mentoring outcomes, especially for young mentees.

Gender stereotypes and incremental beliefs in STEM and non-STEM students in three countries: relationships with performance in cognitive tasks

Women's underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has been linked, among others, to gender stereotypes and ability-related beliefs as well as gender differences in specific cognitive abilities. However, the bulk of studies focused on gender stereotypes related to mathematics. The present study, therefore, aimed to map gender stereotypes and incremental beliefs (i.e., the conviction about modifiability) with respect to a wide range of stereotypical male-favouring and female-favouring abilities. Gender stereotypes and incremental beliefs were assessed with self-report questionnaires in 132 STEM students (65 women) and 124 non-STEM students (73 women) in three European countries ranked in the top, middle, and bottom of the Global Gender Gap Report. Moreover, a mental rotation and a verbal fluency test were completed. Men endorsed male-favouring stereotypes more than women, and women endorsed female-favouring stereotypes more than men, an effect that was most pronounced in the country with the larger gender gap. Male STEM students endorsed male-favouring stereotypes more strongly than male non-STEM and female STEM students. Male non-STEM students endorsed female-favouring stereotypes less than female and male STEM students. Female STEM students reported higher incremental beliefs than female non-STEM students, especially in the country with the lowest gender gap. Men outperformed women, and STEM students outperformed non-STEM in mental rotation, while women outperformed men in verbal fluency. Male STEM students' stronger endorsement of male-favouring stereotypes might reflect genuine group differences, at least in mental rotation. While potentially such gender stereotypes can help creating a "chilly climate" where women in academic STEM degrees are expected to perform poorly, those women believed more in the possibility to change and improve in male-favouring abilities which could help them to overcome the potential negative effect of stereotyping.

Sources of Male and Female Students' Belonging Uncertainty in the Computer Sciences

Belonging uncertainty, defined as the general concern about the quality of one's social relationships in an academic setting, has been found to be an important determinant of academic achievement, and persistence. However, to date, only little research investigated the sources of belonging uncertainty. To address this research gap, we examined three potential sources of belonging uncertainty in a sample of undergraduate computer science students in Germany (N = 449) and focused on (a) perceived affective and academic exclusion by fellow students, (b) domain-specific academic self-efficacy beliefs, and (c) perception of one's individual performance potential compared to that of fellow students in the field. Perceived affective and academic exclusion by fellow students and domain-specific academic self-efficacy beliefs were significant predictors of female students' uncertainty about belonging in computer science. The perception of one's individual performance potential in comparison to that of fellow students, however, was a relevant predictor of both male and female students' belonging uncertainty in computer science. Our findings imply an expanded view of the theoretical concept of belonging uncertainty that goes beyond mere concerns of social connectedness.

The Impacts of Gender and Subject on Experience of Competence and Autonomy in STEM

In most societies, women are less likely to choose a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-related study program than men. This problem persists despite numerous initiatives aimed at fostering the uptake of STEM subjects by women, who represent an underutilized source of talent in a time of great need for STEM professionals. Many reasons for women’s avoidance of the path into STEM-related areas have been discussed, including weaker mathematical skills, implicit gender stereotypes or structural deficits in school education. One variable which is presumably at the core of decisions regarding a specific study subject is motivation. We aim to look in greater depth at the basis for motivation by referring to self-determination theory (SDT). Here, we specifically focus on the needs for competence and autonomy which represent pivotal sources of motivation, effective performance and psychological well-being and are assumed to be positively correlated with academic achievement and perseverance. In line with previous SDT research, we assume that self-perceptions during STEM studies contribute to experiences of competence and autonomy and may be responsible for gender disparities. To examine whether and how a sex-specific perception of autonomy and competence influences decisions regarding STEM subjects, we conducted a survey study of Master’s students (N = 888; 461 female, 427 male), who were enrolled either in STEM or non-STEM subjects, and asked about students’ motivations, perceived competence (e.g., self-efficacy) and autonomy (e.g., volitional decision for a study major). The results revealed several main effects of study major and only a small number of interaction effects of sex and subject. For example, non-STEM students were more likely to enroll due to their stronger interest in their subject, signifying higher autonomy, while STEM students were more likely to select their subject according to their families’ wishes. The comparison between female and male STEM students revealed that males perceived more self-efficacy and reported more leadership aspirations while female STEM students have lower perceptions of their own competence, especially regarding perceived future competences.

Do Gender-Related Stereotypes Affect Spatial Performance? Exploring When, How and to Whom Using a Chronometric Two-Choice Mental Rotation Task

It is a common belief that males have superior visuospatial abilities and that differences in this and other cognitive domains (e.g., math) contribute to the reduced interest and low representation of girls and women in STEM education and professions. However, previous studies show that gender-related implicit associations and explicit beliefs, as well as situational variables, might affect cognitive performance in those gender-stereotyped domains and produce between-gender spurious differences. Therefore, the present study aimed to provide information on when, how and who might be affected by the situational reactivation of stereotypic gender-science beliefs/associations while performing a 3D mental rotation chronometric task (3DMRT). More specifically, we assessed the explicit beliefs and implicit associations (by the Implicit Association Test) held by female and male students of humanities and STEM majors and compared their performance in a 3DMRT after receiving stereotype- congruent, incongruent and nullifying experimental instructions. Our results show that implicit stereotypic gender-science associations correlate with 3DMRT performance in both females and males, but that inter-gender differences emerge only under stereotype-reactivating conditions. We also found that changes in self-confidence mediate these instructions’ effects and that academic specialization moderates them, hence promoting 3DMRT performance differences between male and female humanities, but not STEM, students. Taken together, these observations suggest that the common statement “males have superior mental rotation abilities” simplifies a much more complex reality and might promote stereotypes which, in turn, might induce artefactual performance differences between females and males in such tasks.

Examining the accuracy of students' self-reported academic grades from a correlational and a discrepancy perspective: Evidence from a longitudinal study

The present longitudinal study examined the reliability of self-reported academic grades across three phases in four subject domains for a sample of 916 high-school students. Self-reported grades were found to be highly positively correlated with actual grades in all academic subjects and across grades 9 to 11 underscoring the reliability of self-reported grades as an achievement indicator. Reliability of self-reported grades was found to differ across subject areas (e.g., mathematics self-reports more reliable than language studies), with a slight yet consistent tendency to over-report achievement levels also observed across grade levels and academic subjects. Overall, the absolute value of over- and underreporting was low and these patterns were not found to differ between mathematics and verbal subjects. In sum, study findings demonstrate the consistent predictive utility of students' self-reported achievement across grade levels and subject areas with the observed tendency to over-report academic grades and slight differences between domains nonetheless warranting consideration in future education research.

Shifting STEM Stereotypes? Considering the Role of Peer and Teacher Gender

This study builds on research on the power of counter-stereotypical cues, as well as intergroup contact theory, to consider whether interactions with a female teacher and female peers in a high school engineering classroom decrease male students' gender/science, technology, engineering, and math stereotypical beliefs and whether this varies according to the initial strength of their stereotypical views. Analyses reveal that among male students who initially reject stereotypes of male superiority, more female peers in the classroom leads to a further decrease in their stereotypical views by the end of the year. In contrast, boys who held strong stereotypical beliefs became less stereotypical by the end of the course when they had a female teacher. Implications for future research and current educational reforms are discussed.

Dynamic competition and binding of concepts through time and space

Models of implicit stereotypes (e.g., association of male with math or female with language) usually explain the faster responses observed for stereotype-congruent trials in the Implicit Association Test (IAT) by requiring a fundamental opposition between the male and female concepts (or math-language), limiting the decision-making dynamics to abstract dimensions. This paper introduces alternate models exploiting the sensorimotor dimensions of the IAT, which naturally account for the opposition between concepts, because typically mapped on opposite corners of the screen space and on different response actions. In addition to the emergence of the IAT effect, dynamic characteristics of the decision-making process within these models are tested against human data, obtained with a mouse-tracking adapted IAT procedure.