Gender inequality : Stereotype effects on career choices and academic achievement – STECCIE

The under-representation of girls in science courses not only contributes to gender inequalities at school and in the labour market, but also represents a significant loss of potential talent in high-demand fields such as computer science and artificial intelligence. This under-representation of girls is already evident in their choice of speciality courses (EDS).
Understanding this disparity in students' career or orientation choices is a major societal challenge. The present project is specifically designed to address this goal by conducting a longitudinal study over the three years of high school with a national sample of nearly 8,500 students.
We will examine the impact of stereotyping and inter- and intrasex comparisons on students' achievement gaps, orientation choices, and cognitions. We will use an innovative, synthetic index of gender stereotyping (ISS-gender) based on students' estimates of the probability of success for each gender in the various EDS selected in the 10th and 11th grade.
Our hypothesis is that students' greater or lesser propensity to engage in inter- or intra-sex comparisons will significantly influence both their level of gender stereotyping and their orientation choices, as well as their performance and cognitions, among those crucial to success in their educational pathways.
Thus, greater use of intersex rather than intrasex comparisons (i.e., between boys and girls rather than within their respective gender groups) should be associated with less stereotyping. At the same time, paradoxically, this more frequent use of intersex comparisons should increase girls' evaluative anxiety and their perceived vulnerability to stereotypes. We expect that more frequent use of intersex comparisons will weaken their self-concept and sense of self-efficacy. We also expect that lower ISS-gender scores will be associated with more gendered causal attributions of success and failure for both boys and girls.