Sex differences in adolescents’ occupational aspirations: Variations across time and place

Abstract

We investigated sex differences in 473,260 adolescents’ aspirations to work in things-oriented (e.g., mechanic), people-oriented (e.g., nurse), and STEM (e.g., mathematician) careers across 80 countries and economic regions using the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We analyzed student career aspirations in combination with student achievement in mathematics, reading, and science, as well as parental occupations and family wealth. In each country and region, more boys than girls aspired to a things-oriented or STEM occupation and more girls than boys to a people-oriented occupation. These sex differences were larger in countries with a higher level of women’s empowerment. We explain this counter-intuitive finding through the indirect effect of wealth. Women’s empowerment is associated with relatively high levels of national wealth and this wealth allows more students to aspire to occupations they are intrinsically interested in. Implications for better understanding the sources of sex differences in career aspirations and associated policy are discussed.

Closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship: The importance of skill variety

“…Finland as a country with strong female empowerment still shows substantial gender differences in educational and occupational trajectories, while one might expect the opposite. However, our results are well in line with recent findings from cross-country comparisons of occupational aspirations, where Stoet and Gary [139] report that gender-typical occupational aspirations (such as boys aspiring things-oriented occupations and girls aspire people-oriented occupations) is larger in countries with strong female empowerment such as in the developed North European countries.…”

Effect of Gender on French High School Students’ Dream Jobs and Professional Ambition

“…As shown in Figure 1b, the terms used by girls to describe their dream or expected jobs correspond more to people-oriented occupations, whereas those used by boys correspond more to things-oriented occupations related to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This result is in line with the existing literature, which consistently reveals across countries such a gender discrepancy in occupational aspirations (e.g., Stoet and Geary 2022). The persistence of gender-based occupational segregation in France therefore seems to have more to do with students’ gender stereotypes than with a difference in professional ambition between girls and boys.…”

“…It has been shown that in France, gender-based occupational segregation is not explained by a difference in professional ambition between female and male students at high school age, as they are equally ambitious (Dupont et al 2012). In contrast, studies have shown that in France, as well as in many other countries, students' occupational aspirations are highly gendered (e.g., Stoet and Geary 2022). In this visualization, we replicate these findings about high school students' professional ambition and aspirations with new data and indicators, introducing a distinction between their dream jobs and their expected jobs.…”

Sex differences and similarities in relations between mathematics achievement, attitudes, and anxiety: A seventh-to-ninth grade longitudinal study.

“…As noted in the introduction, the mean sex difference in mathematics anxiety could result in more girls than boys avoiding future mathematics courses (Dowker et al, 2016; Ma, 1999; Meece et al, 1990). The combination of higher mathematics anxiety and more negative attitudes will likely contribute to the sex difference in interest in and pursuit of math-intensive careers (Lauermann et al, 2017), although there are other factors that contribute to these differences, such as intra-individual strengths in reading and mathematics and interestin math-related professions (Stoet & Geary, 2015, 2018, 2020, 2022).…”