Cultural Interview : Cultural Informant Interview

Today’s college students have the opportunity and freedom to choose their major and their career path. Many factors influence the decision of a college student’s career paths including background, general interests, personal strengths, time commitment, and job outlook. Although many important decisions are made in college, one of the most important is the choice of major and career track. Out of hundreds of majors the science and engineering fields are under-represented by women. Although the numbers of women in science technology, engineering, and mathematics, STEM, majors has been increasing in the past years, women still are in the minority in the STEM fields. In her study, Lona Whitmarsh

I was captivated by this article because it discusses social constructs and how they shape a person’s career choice. Bell describes how gender roles denote a career path in children at an early age. Research showed that girls tend to choose careers such as nurses, teachers and stylist, while boys often pick firefighters or cops. Children tend to lean towards stereotypical jobs based on their gender. Consequently, the brain is complex and hard to decipher so we cannot be sure if this is biological or environmental. We do, however, have the power to change how we communicate career choices to the youth. A man can become a stylist and a woman can become an engineer. In other words, labeling an entire job on behalf of a gender limits a candidate choice. At an early age, my family taught me how important it was to choose hobbies based on whether or not I enjoyed them. Specifically, this meant having the chance to partake in camps and sports without my gender stopping me. Having this background served as my foundation when I chose my career

Foremost, the familial image has undertaken significant changes in regards to the ‘breadwinner’ and ‘homemaker’ roles within the family. In the latter of the 20th century, women’s participation in the labour force had been very little to non-existent, primarily because time allocations had been perceived as gender specific, that is, men were seen as the ‘breadwinner’, while women were viewed as the ‘homemaker’ (Seltzer, Bachrach, Bianchi, Bledsoe, Casper, Chase-Lansdale, Diprete, Hotz, Morgan, Sanders, & Thomas, 2005, pp.20). The ‘breadwinner’ role was to secure financial stability, while the

Parents and teachers plays a enormous role in gender-related math attitudes. Women have, throughout history, been reported as having lower math achievement than men, but results of achievement tests have shown that the gender gap is closing. I feel as though the gender gap is closing, due to people having more knowledge of stereotypes and wanting to stop them in society. Even though, the gender gap is closing girls tend to still not pursue STEM careers because of discrimination that seems to sometimes present itself in the workplace. Discrimination in the workplace is something that will not go away easily unless people are truly trying to change it; discrimination that has been listed in the article has to do with hiring and promotions of women in these STEM workplaces. Continuing, girls tend to think they can no longer do these careers when they have children,

There is stereotype within society that I was shielded from as a child: girls can’t be scientists or engineers. As a kid, my parents let me pursue whatever passions I developed, which led to dozens of chemistry kits and breadboards scattered around my house. They never told me I couldn’t do something

Since the topic deals with cultural adjustment of International Students, I decided first-hand experiences of cultural adjustment would give me the appropriate data to work with. Through my interviews I sought to figure out how well adjusted my interviewees are to the academic environment and different cultural aspects of the USA and how they coped or are coping with the cultural adjustment process.

Besides stereotype threats, there is also a group of behavioral and contextual factors which affect the females and minority students’ career choices. These individual differences affect the adolescent’s potential outcome in STEM. These differences are also supported by two theories which also can explain the results of career choice. First is the theory from Lent, Brown, & Hacket (1994,2000) called the social cognitive career theory (SCCT) which emphasizes self-efficacy as well as its link to the likely outcome of choosing a specific path, interests, goals, and the interaction of these attitudes with relevant contextual variables and individual difference (Else-Quest et. all, 2013). This theory is rooted in Bandura’s 1986 self-efficacy theory. A more recent theory which also supports the link of self-efficacy to the outcomes of academic and vocational pursuits is Eccles expectancy-value theory. This theory maintains that achievement behaviors are the product of an individual’s expectations for success and the perceived value of the behavior (Else-Quest et all, 2013).

“When cultural beliefs about male superiority exist in any area, even a fictitious one, girls assess their abilities in that area lower, judge themselves by a higher standard, and express less of a desire to pursue a career in that area than boys do” (44). Societal messages impede our self-assessment, and along with stereotypes can cause women to not follow a career in STEM. The internalized belief that many women hold about STEM can determine the path that they take academically. This reading has allowed me to evaluate my own choices and considerations for leaving a math/science major in college. Though I don’t think I ever felt less capable, I lost interest in science, and my performance slowed down exponentially is math. I began to self-sabotage my grades to convince my family that I did not belong in STEM. Through this reading, I have recognized the doubt I had in myself, and my future. I’ve tried to convince myself that leaving that major was my choice, but I left because I doubted my success, and I was not happy. My self-assessment of my intelligence and performance led me to choose a different career path. I actively denied these stereotypes and cultural beliefs about women in STEM, because I was successful and so were my sisters in this field. I ignored the instances where I was treated as less, and almost accepted it as normal. I now understand the importance of

Findings of the research give some implications for research on gender difference in major choice. Morgan et al. (2012) demonstrated that neither gender differences in work–family goals nor in academic preparation explain a substantial portion of gender differences while the occupational plans of high school seniors are strong predictors of initial college major selection. It was also found that the association between occupational plans and college major selection is not attributable to work–family orientation or academic preparation. On the other hand, Mann et al. (2012) found that none of the prominent explanations for the persisting gender gap in STEM fields related to mathematics performance and background and general life goals are

Conventionally, females played a very insignificant role in the paid work force of a society as many times they were expected to be home taking care of their family. Their roles at home can often include grocery shopping, meeting all the needs of her children and husband. As time moved on, our society became more accepted of sharing housework between the couples, but even so, the traditionally more feminine housework such as cooking, caring for sick children, and shopping for the entire family are mostly done by the females of the house. It is argued in a research journal Work and Occupations (Witkowski & Leicht, 1995) that in an average North American family, females take on roughly three-quarters of the housework. Even though we are in a democratic society, parenting roles in the household are assigned based on gender rather than in a democratic fashion (Winslow-Bowe, 2009). Because of the many responsibilities and obligations that are associated with the female gender, their career paths are eventually affected for the worse. According to Statistics Canada (2001), for every dollar a man earns, a single woman earns 93 cents and a married woman earns 69 cents. These statistics

Women were expected to be teachers, nurses, etc., just because that 's the role they had in society

Gender equality has been a well-discussed issue in recent years. By some people, women are not treated on the same level as men because of preconceived stereotypes and gender roles. However, others have been fighting tirelessly to increase the amount of people who treat women and men equally. Although women are treated more fairly with regards to men today than in the 1950’s, there are still many discrepancies between the sexes. One main concern is that the amount of men and women going into science, technology, engineering, and math, STEM, majors and occupations is disproportionate, with the larger amount of entrants being male. Despite the hard work of feminists, women are not pursuing STEM careers because of stereotypes and a specific idea of their gender role, both of which females are exposed to from a young age throughout adulthood.

Many people in society place a gender with almost every career field there is. For example, many people feel that there should only be males in both the math and science fields, or they associate males with a math or science career. Many women are not choosing to go into these fields such as physics or biology, because there are also not enough mentors encouraging women to go into the math and science fields. Society has built this culture to make girls not want to go into math and science because females are not hired in those fields as frequently as males are. Although society may feel that women shouldn’t have a career in the math and science fields, I personally feel that women shouldn’t go by what society says and not follow the societal norm or fit in this “mold” that society puts women in.

Women have often been viewed as the gender who should stay at home and take care of the children. Women are also sexually objectified and demeaned, while men are seen as the breadwinners. This overshadows the effort that women put into maintaining the home and raising children. They sometime work along with their husbands when their husbands do not make enough money to provide for the family. Throughout European history the role of women has changed in the home and industry.

“Starting from a young age girls are made to believe that their abilities are not sufficient enough to satisfy the requirements in such “complicated” fields and that boys are just more suitable for such jobs. Many are taught that and even if they were to take an interest in such subjects, it would be unnecessary since the fields are male dominated and they would never be able to excel in them. Overall societal pressures and expectations force women to conform to gender norms that hinder their participation and development in STEM fields. Gender inequality in STEM fields reflect a hierarchal system that further