Gender Equality Eliminates Gender Gaps in Engagement With Female-Stereotypic Domains

Abstract

Although prior work reveals that gender bias against women produces gender gaps favoring men in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics engagement, research has yet to explore whether gender bias against men produces gender gaps favoring women in health care, early education, and domestic (HEED) engagement. Supporting preregistered predictions, results from an online study with MTurkers (N = 296) and a laboratory study with college students (N = 275) revealed that men expressed less sense of belonging, positivity toward, and aspirations to participate in HEED (and anticipated more discrimination) than did women when exposed to the reality of antimale gender biases in these domains. However, when told that HEED displays gender equality, men’s engagement matched women’s. Moderated mediation analyses revealed the importance of sense of belonging (and to a lesser extent, anticipated discrimination) in explaining why gender bias leads men to express less HEED positivity and aspirations than women. The current research thus provided novel evidence suggesting that gender bias contributes to men’s underrepresentation in HEED, with important implications for broader occupational gender segregation.