Gender and Occupational Outcomes: Longitudinal Assessment of Individual, Social, and Cultural Influences

Women no longer have to choose among secretarial work, nursing or teaching as their only available professions, but the fact remains they are significant under-represented in engineering, technological, mathematical and science careers. Here the question of why women do not enter these fields of endeavor gets a rigorous longitudinal analysis combining commentary from social and developmental psychologists and experts in human development, biology, education and sociology. They address such concerns as the relations among gender and math achievement with occupational aspirations of Canadian youth, curricular effects on gnedered career choices, motivations for sex-stereotyped careers, high school course selection as a precursor of gendered careers, predictors of self-perceived ability in math, sociomotivational analyses of gender effects on persistence in science and technology studies, desires for family-friendly jobs, long-term impacts of gendered jobs, prenatal androgen effects and gendered occupational outcomes, and social and institutional constraints on women's career development. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)