Department of Psychology, Otterbein University, Westerville OH, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign IL, USA.
Front Psychol. 2015 Mar 11;6:235. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00235. eCollection 2015.
Women's underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a prominent concern in our society and many others. Closer inspection of this phenomenon reveals a more nuanced picture, however, with women achieving parity with men at the Ph.D. level in certain STEM fields, while also being underrepresented in some non-STEM fields. It is important to consider and provide an account of this field-by-field variability. The field-specific ability beliefs (FAB) hypothesis aims to provide such an account, proposing that women are likely to be underrepresented in fields thought to require raw intellectual talent-a sort of talent that women are stereotyped to possess less of than men. In two studies, we provide evidence for the FAB hypothesis, demonstrating that the academic fields believed by laypeople to require brilliance are also the fields with lower female representation. We also found that the FABs of participants with college-level exposure to a field were more predictive of its female representation than those of participants without college exposure, presumably because the former beliefs mirror more closely those of the field's practitioners (the direct "gatekeepers"). Moreover, the FABs of participants with college exposure to a field predicted the magnitude of the field's gender gap above and beyond their beliefs about the level of mathematical and verbal skills required. Finally, we found that beliefs about the importance of brilliance to success in a field may predict its female representation in part by fostering the impression that the field demands solitary work and competition with others. These results suggest new solutions for enhancing diversity within STEM and across the academic spectrum.
女性在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域的代表性不足是我们社会和许多其他社会的一个突出问题。然而，对这一现象进行更细致的观察会发现，在某些 STEM 领域，女性在博士层面上与男性达到了平等，而在一些非 STEM 领域则代表性不足。考虑到这种领域间的差异，并对此进行说明很重要。特定领域能力信念（FAB）假说旨在提供这样一种解释，即女性在那些被认为需要原始智力天赋的领域中可能代表性不足——这种天赋被认为是女性比男性拥有得更少的天赋。在两项研究中，我们提供了 FAB 假说的证据，表明被外行人认为需要才华的学术领域也是女性代表性较低的领域。我们还发现，有大学水平学科接触的参与者的 FAB 比没有大学接触的参与者的 FAB 更能预测该学科的女性代表性，这可能是因为前者的信念更接近该领域从业者的信念（直接的“把关人”）。此外，有大学学科接触的参与者的 FAB 预测了该领域性别差距的大小，超过了他们对所需数学和语言技能水平的信念。最后，我们发现，对一个领域的成功需要才华的信念可能会通过给人留下该领域需要独自工作和与他人竞争的印象，从而在一定程度上预测该领域的女性代表性。这些结果为增强 STEM 内部和整个学术领域的多样性提供了新的解决方案。
