The Role of Gender Stereotypes in Choice of Occupation Research Paper

The Role of Gender Stereotypes in Choice of Occupation - Research Paper Example Methodology: The study selected (n=40) individuals, of which (n=30) were female, while (n=10) were male. A questionnaire was administered consisting of two major sections. One section sought to directly elicit the career preferences of the participants. The other section sought to indirectly elicit career preferences by asking participants to choose from a list of twenty eight career aspects that the participants preferred in their future career. These career aspects were then entered into the Making Better Career Decisions computer program to identify careers twenty-eight the aspects identified. Results: As hypothesized, there was a significant relationship between gender stereotypes of suitable careers and the careers chosen by participants of their respective genders in the directly elicited career lists. However, the relationship between gender stereotypes and careers selected from the indirectly elicited lists was less significant. Differences between males and females in the indirectly elicited lists were negligible. Conclusion: The influence of gender stereotypes on career choices can be significantly reduced if the decision is made based on the preferred aspects or characteristics of one’s future occupation, rather than the career itself, which is likely to be biased by gender stereotypes. According to Zafar (2013), the movement of female workers into the labor force in Europe has increased steadily in the last thirty years, although a similar number of women who occupy prestigious and powerful career roles in their respective fields have not matched this. While all careers, theoretically, should be equally available to females and males, various studies have shown that this is not perceived as being realistic by both genders.