Women in male-dominated technology study programmes - Findings of a survey conducted at the Kiel University of Applied Sciences

Abstract

Despite all the efforts of policy makers, educators and researchers to go against gender stereotyped study choices and to overcome structural barriers, especially in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects/SET (science, engineering and technology) field over the last 25 years, study choices in German universities remain fairly gender specific. Although the top leading study, business management, is the number one choice of both genders, the following subject choices in the ranking are prominent: The five dominating subjects chosen by women are German philology, medicine, law, pedagogy and English language and literature studies; by men, mechanical engineering, computer sciences, electrical engineering, law and business information systems. The difference in higher education results, further on, in occupational segregation, horizontal as well as vertical.