This article presents an overview of the recent literature on gendered patterns of academic choice in mathematics, science, and technology. It distinguishes in this literature microlevel, macro-level, and institutional explanations. Micro-level explanations focus primarily on psychological constructs, that is, variables at the level of the individual students. Macro-level explanations focus primarily on socioeconomic conditions and cultural understandings of gender roles. Institutional explanations focus on design characteristics of (national) education systems. After a presentation of these perspectives and of recent research progress that has been made, the authors critically discuss the lacunae that still exist in explaining cross-national variety, and provide suggestions for designing future research in this field.Keywords: gender; education; academic choice; mathematics; science and technology Introduction Female participation in higher tertiary education has increased rapidly over the past decades.1 Currently, about 56% of all students in the European Union are women, and this figure is still rising (Eurostat, 2010). Yet, this increase in female student participation does not apply to all academic fields. In mathematics, science, and technology (MST), where women have always been underrepresented, their participation rate has actually decreased over the last years, from 41% at the end of the 1990s, to 38% in 2010 (Eurostat, 2010). The relative decline of women in MST is generally regarded as undesirable as it contrasts with European ambitions of achieving gender equality and a highly skilled, innovative society (European
This study focuses on high school students' profile choices and the choice for or against the Nature and Technology (NT) profile in the Netherlands. A mixed-methods approach is used to study cultural values that affect this choice. The quantitative part of the study shows that being female is negatively correlated with the choice for the NT-profile, irrespective of the grade average for mathematics, chemistry and physics. It further shows that students' ethnic background does not have a significant effect on this choice. The qualitative part of the study reveals that students' choice processes towards or away from NT can be categorised in three ideal types: the postmodern perfectionist, the pragmatic hedonist and the materialist maximalist. Gender differences appear to be more pervasive across these types than differences in ethnic background.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Since STEM knowledge and skills are increasingly being sought after in our information and technology driven economies, it is pivotal that ideas and human resources that foster these economies also reflect the STEM population. Although it is evident from earlier research that specific demographics are clearly underrepresented, little is known about who constitutes as ‘diverse’, which makes it challenging to develop and assess effective policies aimed at increasing diversity in STEM. Through content analysis, we explore in recent STEM education literature, which groups of students and faculty are referenced in relation to diversity, i.e., groups that are underrepresented. The results reveal 180 uniquely defined references to underrepresented groups in STEM. Our main results show that across articles, the majority of the references to diversity are related to gender (69%), and a considerable portion of references (12%) can be classified under ‘other unspecified minorities’. Consequently, the analyzed articles portray a narrow understanding of diversity, and a variety of groups remain unspecified when it comes to background characteristics. To change this, clear definitions of the target groups are necessary and more consensus among the research community about the justifications to include or exclude these groups is needed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.