Gendered Career Expectations of Students: Perspectives from PISA 2006

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of adolescent career plans reported in PISA 2006. Its main focus is on the differences in the status and area of employment expected by girls and boys in high school. In almost all countries, girls lead boys in their interest in non-manual, high status professional occupations. This can be seen as a vertical dimension of gender segregation in occupational preferences. Students also differ by gender in selecting particular fields of employment within status categories. These differences make up the horizontal segregation of students' expectations and, in PISA 2006, are prominent in the gendered choices of specific subfields of science. Both the vertical and the horizontal dimensions must be considered to appreciate the cultural and institutional factors which promote and reinforce systematic divides in career choices of adolescent boys and girls.

[1]  Marsha Lakes Matyas,et al.  Science and Engineering Programs: On Target for Women?. , 1992 .

[2]  F. W. Vondracek,et al.  Career Adaptability in Childhood. , 2008 .

[3]  Philip N. Cohen,et al.  Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men , 2006 .

[4]  G. Marks.  Gender Differences in the Effects of Socioeconomic Background , 2008 .

[5]  L. Saha,et al.  New directions in national education policymaking: student career plans in international achievement studies , 2010 .

[6]  P. Bourdieu.  Forms of Capital , 2002 .

[7]  L. Saha.  Gender, School Attainment and Occupational Plans: Determinants of Aspirations and Expectations among Australian Urban School Leavers , 1982 .

[8]  L. Saha,et al.  Gender and professional career plans of high school students in comparative perspective , 2009 .

[9]  Cynthia Feliciano,et al.  Gendered paths: Educational and occupational expectations and outcomes among adult children of immigrants , 2005 .

[10]  T. Tracey,et al.  Issues of Stability and Change in Interest Development , 2008 .

[11]  T. Gerber.  On Sociology, Second Edition, Volume One: Critique and Program, On Sociology, Second Edition, Volume Two: Illustration and Retrospect , 2008 .

[12]  H. Goldstein,et al.  Weighting for unequal selection probabilities in multilevel models , 1998 .

[13]  E. Looker,et al.  Gender and work: The occupational expectations of young women and men in the 1990s , 2000 .

[14]  R. Hauser,et al.  Cross-National Variation in Occupational Distributions, Relative Mobility Chances, and Intergenerational Shifts in Occupational Distributions. , 1988 .

[15]  Ben Dalton,et al.  Interpersonal influences and educational aspirations in 12 countries: The importance of institutional context: , 2002 .

[16]  G. Marks.  Meritocracy, modernization and students’ occupational expectations: Cross National evidence , 2010 .

[17]  A. C. Kerckhoff.  The Status Attainment Process: Socialization or Allocation? , 1976 .

[18]  R. Hausmann,et al.  The global gender gap report 2007 , 2007 .

[19]  L. Gottfredson.  Circumscription and Compromise: A Developmental Theory of Occupational Aspirations. , 1981 .

[20]  L. Saha,et al.  Corrosive inequality? Structural determinants of educational and occupational expectations in comparative perspective , 2013 .

[21]  Luther B. Otto,et al.  Level of Occupational Aspiration: An Empirical Analysis. , 1974 .

[22]  Anthony S. Bryk,et al.  Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods , 1992 .

[23]  E. Greenberger,et al.  Sex Differences in Occupational Aspirations and Expectations , 1978 .

[24]  G. Psacharopoulos,et al.  Returns to investment in education: a further update , 2004 .

[25]  P. Bourdieu.  Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste* , 2018, Food and Culture.

[26]  Andrew A. Helwig.  From Childhood to Adulthood: A 15‐Year Longitudinal Career Development Study , 2008 .

[27]  Anne McDaniel,et al.  Cross‐National Gender Gaps in Educational Expectations: The Influence of National‐Level Gender Ideology and Educational Systems , 2009, Comparative Education Review.

[28]  Harry B. G. Ganzeboom,et al.  Internationally Comparable Measures of Occupational Status for the 1988 International Standard Classification of Occupations , 1996 .

[29]  K. Goyette,et al.  College for some to college for all: social background, occupational expectations, and educational expectations over time. , 2008, Social science research.

[30]  Andreas Ammermueller.  Poor Background or Low Returns? Why Immigrant Students in Germany Perform so Poorly in the Programme for International Student Assessment , 2007 .

[31]  Nicole A. Lazar,et al.  Statistical Analysis With Missing Data , 2003, Technometrics.

[32]  A. M. G. Ramos.  Women in Scientific Careers Unleashing the Potential , 2010 .

[33]  Patrick White.  Education and Career Choice: A New Model of Decision Making , 2006 .

[34]  Karen Bradley,et al.  Indulging Our Gendered Selves? Sex Segregation by Field of Study in 44 Countries1 , 2009, American Journal of Sociology.

[35]  P. Croll.  Occupational choice, socio‐economic status and educational attainment: a study of the occupational choices and destinations of young people in the British Household Panel Survey , 2008 .

[36]  D. Super.  A life-span, life-space approach to career development , 1980 .

[37]  Zena R. Mello,et al.  Gender variation in developmental trajectories of educational and occupational expectations and attainment from adolescence to adulthood. , 2008, Developmental psychology.

[38]  Robert J. Mislevy,et al.  Estimating Population Characteristics From Sparse Matrix Samples of Item Responses , 1992 .

[39]  D. Treiman,et al.  A standard international socio-economic index of occupational status , 1992 .

[40]  Kristin J. Kleinjans.  Family background and gender differences in educational expectations , 2010 .

[41]  C. Hill,et al.  Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. , 2010 .

[42]  N. Khattab.  Explaining Educational Aspirations of Minority Students: The Role of Social Capital and Students' Perceptions , 2003 .

[43]  Klaus Hüfner,et al.  UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific And Cultural Organization , 2010 .

[44]  Shelley J. Correll,et al.  Gender and the Career Choice Process: The Role of Biased Self‐Assessments1 , 2001, American Journal of Sociology.

[45]  Scientific.  International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED 1997 , 2003 .

[46]  J. L. Holland,et al.  Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers , 1973 .

[47]  Ryan Macdonald,et al.  Have Adolescents Become Too Ambitious? High School Seniors' Educational and Occupational Plans, 1976 to 2000 , 2006 .

[48]  R. Rindfuss,et al.  Young Adult Occupational Achievement , 1999 .

[49]  Claudia Buchmann,et al.  Stratification and the formation of expectations in highly differentiated educational systems , 2009 .

[50]  Lihong Huang.  Gender segregation in student career aspirations in Norwegian secondary schools , 2009 .

[51]  H. Nielsen,et al.  An Economic Analysis of Identity and Career Choice , 2007 .