– Masculinity is more consistent with the culture of science than femininity, persons with masculine personality characteristics will find it easier to merge their performances of gender with performances of science than persons with feminine personality characteristics, and the differing effects of masculine and feminine personality characteristics in scientific settings explain- at least partially- why women are underrepresented in scientific careers.
– The authors find little support for the hypothesis that masculine personality characteristics are especially rewarded in STEM majors.
– For males, higher scores on the BSRI masculinity scale were actually associated with lower odds of majoring in a STEM field, after controlling for STEM self-evaluations.
– The authors assert that because males are already expected to have assertive personalities, males with an especial abundance of masculine personality traits may be viewed by parents, teachers, and peers as excessively aggressive and competitive, and may, therefore, be encouraged to pursue career paths that permit the expression of those attributes more than STEM careers do, such as careers in sports, law, business, or politics.
– However, the authors find that women pay a femininity penalty in STEM majors, while more abundant feminine personality traits in men render them more likely to major in a STEM field, after accounting for occupational values.
– Higher females scored on the BSRI femininity scale was associated with a decrease in the odds of majoring in a STEM field.
– After occupational values were accounted for, males who scored higher on the feminine personality scale were significantly more likely to major in a STEM field.
– Males with particularly nurturing/communal personalities may be viewed by teachers, parents, and peers as having well-rounded personalities that suit them for STEM fields, which not only utilize
analytic thinking, logic, and mathematics, and reflect the disposition that nature can and should be mastered by people, but which also emphasize the social and human benefits of scientific research.
– The authors found a positive association between femininity and majoring in a STEM field for males, they also observed that this effect was suppressed by the positive association between femininity and communitarian/ altruistic occupational values. The contrary effects of nurturing/ communal personality traits and altruistic/ communitarian occupational values for males is somewhat puzzling: males with especially nurturing/ communal personalities were more likely to major in a STEM field, though males with especially altruistic/ communitarian occupational values were less likely to major in a STEM field.
– Females who scored higher on the femininity scale were found to have significantly fewer friends in their major than females who scored lower on the femininity scale, and this relationship was observed among STEM majors only, suggesting a femininity penalty for female STEM majors.