This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Women make up about half the U.S. population, yet remain a minority in many professions, such as politics, technology, science and academia. A key reason for this disparity is that women prefer to work in fields with more female representation, new research by psychologists at Emory University suggests.
The journal PLOS One published the findings. The research comprised analyses of a series of questionnaire experiments, including some involving hypothetical employment advertisements. The results showed that the effect of gender demographics was robust, particularly among women.
Women were more likely to express interest in jobs portrayed as having more female representation—even when the abilities specified by the ads were stereotypically associated with men. "Some people may think of gender representation as mostly symbolic—that it's simply nice for women to see themselves represented in a field," says Stella Lourenco, an Emory professor of psychology and first author of the study. "What we found is that gender representation is more consequential.
It is perhaps a primary reason women decide whether to enter a particular occupation in the first place." Co-authors of the study include Arber Tasimi, an Emory assistant professor of psychology; Kylee Novick, who did the work as an Emory undergraduate psychology student and has since graduated; and Ryno Kruger, who worked on the project as an Emory graduate student and is currently an assistant professor of psychology at Brigham Young University. One hundred years ago, most women in the United States did not work outside the home. Their presence in the workforce grew over the decades, however, as societal norms changed and more doors began opening for women.
By 2023, 77% of prime working-age women held jobs outside the home, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Women have forged careers in many fields where their numbers were once few.
And yet, large disparities in gender representation remain in many crucial sectors. Research has shown that an array of factors likely accounts for this phenomenon. Recent work, for instance, supports the field-specific ability beliefs (FAB) theory.
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