A new international study published by researchers at Northwestern University and University of California-Berkeley found that even in nations with high gender equity, gender-based stereotypes continue to dominate science and technology fields, where scientists are still expected to be male.
For the last half-century, the percentage of women with careers in science has increased unevenly across countries. This allowed the researchers to perform a country-by-country examination of the relationship between gender stereotypes and the presence of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. The question the researchers asked was simple: if subjects were to think of a scientist, are they more likely to put a man or a woman inside the lab coat?
The result was the largest study of this type, encompassing approximately 350,000 participants from across 66 nations. On average, each national sample was 60 percent female and 27 years old. Half had a college degree or higher, and nearly 80 percent had at least some college education. These last two factors are important because they suggest that over half of the sample population had at least some exposure to the representation of women among science majors in higher education.
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