MATH, SCIENCE, AND PINK COLLARS: GENDER STEREOTYPING AND ITS EFFECT ON ACADEMIC CHOICES

High school and university are important institutions in the lives of many people. These academic institutions are considered places to form identity, build friendship, learn important basic courses, and ideally short and long-term future. High schools and universities are considered places to know what young people want to do after puberty. This takes four to eight years or more and is doing the basic work of the rest of my life. The real world is "layout".

As students progress at school and the opportunities to select subjects they are studying increase, you can observe the influence of sexual stereotypes in shaping the selection of these subjects. This includes mathematics and science as the stereotype of the theme of "boys", art and English are "girls' subjects". Another example of student discrimination is related to the assignment assigned to them by the teacher. Especially, students often report cases where male students are particularly required to perform tasks accompanied by strength such as movement of tables, chairs, and sporting goods. Female students often report that they want to gain more opportunities to do more fitness training and do not like being considered weaker than male students.

Gender stereotypes in the classroom are presumed to have the potential to lead to differences in academic performance and expression between men and women. Because mathematics and science succeed in "masculine" fields such as medicine and engineering, it is often seen as the theme of "male". On the other hand, English and history are often seen as the theme of "women" because they are more closely related to "female" work such as education and nursing work. These stereotypes may affect student performance in these areas.

The gap between mathematics and scientific achievement depends greatly on the method by which academic performance is measured, which men and women are disadvantaged. Girls usually get better grades in mathematics lessons, gaps begin to decrease, but they will increase with age. However, men record higher scores on standardized mathematical tests and the gaps between these scores also increase with age. Male students who are ready to go on to college also take higher scores such as AP calculation test and mathematical part of SAT. The difference in mathematical score between boys and girls in national educational progress assessment (NAEP) is almost twice that of 9 years old and 17 years old. This inconsistency of gender showing more achievement may be due to performance in the classroom in junior high school or high school usually dependent on students completing their homework.