Women are still less likely to pursue careers in STEM fields, even though a gender gap in math test scores no longer exists. Some evidence suggests that this might be due to gender beliefs about math abilities. We explore the role of parents gender beliefs in the context of occupational plans.

1. Gender Beliefs and Occupational Plans
The Role of Parents
Magdalena Smyk
GRAPE|FAME
Warsaw School of Economics
Motivation
Women are still less likely to pursue careers in
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)
elds (Eccles, 2007), even though a gender gap
in math tests scores no longer exists (Hyde et al.,
2008).
Source: xkcd.com
Some evidence suggests that this might be driven
by gender beliefs related to math abilities (Nosek
et al., 2009).
Contribution
⇒ We explore the role of own and parents' gender beliefs about math abilities for occupational plans of
high-school pupils.
⇒ The eects of gender beliefs are compared in the study with objective factors, such as GPA in math
subjects.
Data
High School Longitudinal Study of 2009:
• A representative study among 9th graders in
the US (over 20 thousands pupils)
• Surveys conducted among students, their
parents and teachers
• Questionnaires concerned objective mea-
sures of educational achievements and on
gender beliefs, occupational plans, parents'
background, etc.
Gender beliefs
Question:'`In general, how would you compare males and females in Math:
PUPILS PARENTS
Boys Girls Fathers Mothers
Males are better 24.34% 15.09% 31.21% 29.74%
Males and females are the same 56.21% 62.91% 58.18% 60.76%
Females are better 19.46% 22.01% 10.61% 9.49%
Notes: Statistics based on High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, National Center for Education Statitics. Answers are
agregated for better and much better options provided by the interviewer. Sample consist of 10 440 boys, 10 280 girls,
3 412 fathers and 11 354 mothers.
Model
Using a probit model, we estimate probability that pupil plans to work in STEM occupation at the age
of 30 (comparing to work in other eld):
P(STEM = 1|Xi) = α + β1OwnBeliefi + β2ParentalBeliefi + γXi + i
Independent variables of interests:
• pupils' opinion that males are better in math than females (OwnBeliefi)
• parental opinion that males are better in math than females (ParentalBeliefi)
• GPA in math subjects
Controls: gender of the pupil, gender of the parent participating, parents' occupations, race, school xed
eects, various interactions.
Occupations
Figure 1. Parents' actual occupations and pupils'
planned occupations at the age of 30:
STEM occupations are similarly popular among fa-
thers (actual occupations) and boys (planned) in
HSLS2009 sample, but among women STEM elds
seem to gain more attention among younger co-
hort. Among girls especially popular are occupa-
tions related to health care.
Results: odds ratios from probit regression
Figure 2. Eects of interest variables on probability that high school student will plan career in STEM.
Probit regression included (apart from presented variables) gender and race of a pupil, school xed eect,
gender of parent participating in the study, parents' occupations (parent in STEM vs. in other eld) and
various interactions. The eect for GPA in math is presented for one point dierence, but in the case of
girls even three points dierence has smaller eect than parental beliefs on males superiority in math.
Conclusions
• Gender beliefs of math abilities play a signicant role for the high-school pupils occupational plans
to work in STEM eld.
• For girls, parental beliefs can discourage, but not necessarily incourage to pursue career in STEM
elds.
• The eect of parental beliefs is stronger than subjective factors (own beliefs) and objective factors
(GPA in math).
Acknowledgements
This paper has received valuable comments from
I. Kotowska, J. Tyowicz, K. Staehr, L. van der
Velde and participants of LEER Workshop on Ed-
ucation Economics 2017. This research was sup-
ported by a grant from the National Science Cen-
tre, UMO2016/21/N/HS4/02109. The remaining
errors are ours.