Reconsidering Math Gender Stereotypes in a Single-Gender College Context: A Study of Female Psychology & Neuroscience Majors

Survey data collected from 67 female college students attending a prestigious single-gender institution were examined in order to ascertain to what degree women in a single-gender college environment are aware of math gender stereotypes. The results indicate that the majority of the participants were aware of a math gender stereotype. Furthermore, participants also reported awareness of three different stereotype categories: traditional math gender, competitive, and negative personal characteristics. An association was found between stereotype category and college major, whereby a higher percentage of psychology majors reported awareness of both the traditional math gender and competitive stereotypes compared to neuroscience majors. Additionally, the stereotype category with which one reported an awareness had several implications, the most notable of which being that individuals who reported an awareness of a competitive stereotype also reported a higher mean level of work-related stress. A predictive relationship was also found to exist between the competitive stereotype category and work-related stress. The implications of these results are discussed. Humans have an innate tendency to categorize people, objects, and ideas and to then compare the subsequent groups across a range of characteristics (Gabora, Rosch, & Aerts, 2008). Thus, it is only natural that one of the first categories to which an individual is introduced, gender, is also one of the most researched areas in psychology (e. on differences between the genders, and meta-analyses have revealed moderate to strong effect sizes in several domains. 1 A meta-analysis by Su, Rounds, and Armstrong (2009) on gender differences in interests showed that men tend to prefer to work with objects rather than people (d = 0.93) and that men also have interests in more realistic, less imaginative subject matters (d = 0.84). Furthermore, women tend to have a greater interest in social activities (d =-0.68), and on average, women also have more artistic interests (d =-0.35). 2 Moderate to strong effect sizes favoring males were found for interest in science (d = 0.36), mathematics (d = 0.34), and engineering (d = 1.11). In a meta-analysis on gender differences in job attribute preferences, men were found to prefer jobs that allowed them to work alone (d = 0.26) and were leisurely (d = 0.25), whereas women preferred jobs that offered the opportunity to make friends (d =-0.35) and to work with others (d =-0.22; Konrad et al., 2000). Apart from gender differences in preferences, meta-analyses have also suggested that men and women …