THE MASCULINE IMAGE OF CAREERS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - FACT OR FANTASY

Gender has been linked to disparity in the uptake and experience of ed ucation, both within schools and in further and higher education. Desp ite an overall rise in the proportion of female undergraduates, the ph ysical sciences and technological courses have failed to attract incre ased numbers of female applicants. The career aspirations of school pu pils were investigated to identify disparities between the aspirations of males and females, and their schematic representations of social a nd technical roles. One hundred and six school pupils, aged 16-18, wer e presented with a 34-item Q-sample relating to career choice. The car ds were sorted twice, once from the perspective of a hypothetical male or female sixth year school pupil who had decided to enter a technica lly or a socially oriented career, and once from their own perspective . Analysis was undertaken in two stages utilising Q-methodology and di scriminant function analysis. Discriminant function analysis of the as piration data failed to discriminate between the career aspirations of male and female school pupils. Further analysis between male and fema le pupils' perceptions of the 'technical' and 'social' roles, derived from the Q-factor analysis, produced two discriminant functions. Male and female group means veered in the 'expected' direction; however the y were in fact closer to each other than to the stereotypical 'technic al' or 'social' group means. The authors suggest that it is not techno logy per se that females find off-putting but their expectations of th e work place.