Masculine Culture, Gender Roles, and the Underrepresentation of Women in STEM Fields

Abstract

Women are underrepresented in degrees and career fields related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM; National Science Foundation, 2022), but the gender gap in STEM fields varies widely (Cheryan et al., 2017). Only a handful of studies have looked at gender differences within STEM fields (Cheryan et al., 2017), and no study has directly compared masculine stereotypes and culture across different STEM fields as an explanation for the differential gender gap. Therefore, the present two studies have been designed to examine the impact of masculine culture and endorsement of traditional gender roles as explanations for the underrepresentation of women across STEM fields. Study 1 measured how different STEM fields vary in their degree of masculine culture, and the role of individual-level and perceived organizational-level factors in the continued underrepresentation of women in some STEM fields (i.e., physics, engineering, and computer science), but not others (i.e., biology, chemistry, and mathematics). Study 2 experimentally tested how different STEM company cultures, perceived as masculine or gender-inclusive, influence interest in the company and other outcome measures. Results showed that although both engineering and computer science have similarly low proportions of women, this is likely because engineering is associated with masculine stereotypes whereas computer science is associated with nerd-genius stereotypes. This program of research offers important insight into the potentially different mechanisms that may account for the low proportion of women in engineering and computer science.