Educational Research and Evaluation

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Trends in women's employment in the early 21st

century

Judith L. Meece

To cite this article: Judith L. Meece (2006) Trends in women's employment in the early 21st
century, Educational Research and Evaluation, 12:4, 297-303, DOI: 10.1080/13803610600765539

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Educational Research and Evaluation
Vol. 12, No. 4, August 2006, pp. 297 – 303

Introduction
Trends in Women’s Employment in the
Early 21st Century
Judith L. Meece*
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

One of the most striking changes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is the growing
proportion of women in the labor force. Within the United States, the labor force
participation of women has more than doubled since the 1950s (National Science
Foundation, 2002). Similar trends of increasing paid employment of women can be
found in other industrialized countries, such as Australia, the UK, and Canada. In
the United States and the European Union, women make up approximately 45 – 48%
of the labor force (World Bank, 2004). These global employment trends are most
representative of women in industrialized and transitional economies. In the Middle
East, South Asia, and North Africa and other developing economies, women are
less economically active. Thus, for the world as a whole, there are approximately
63 women per 100 men in the labor force (International Labor Office, 2004).
While women in industrialized countries have made significant gains in paid
employment, there is still considerable gender segregation in the work force, even
though women today have more career options than ever before. In the United States,
for example, the majority of women tend to be found in traditionally female occupa-
tions. Approximately 90% of elementary and middle school teachers, nurses,
secretaries, receptionists, and domestic workers are women (US Department of
Labor, 2003). By contrast, women represent 10% of engineers, 30% of computer
system analysts, and 8% of physicists and astronomers (US Department of Labor,
2003). If college enrollment patterns forecast the future, these gender-segregated
employment trends are likely to continue for several more years. Although women’s
enrollment in higher education in North American, European, and Asian countries
has been increasing steadily over the last 30 years, only slight increases for women’s

*School of Education, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.

E-mail: meece@email.unc.edu
ISSN 1380-3611 (print)/ISSN 1744-4187 (online)/06/040297–07
Ó 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13803610600765539
298 J. L. Meece

participation in traditionally male degree programs have occurred. In the United

States, Canada, and the European Union, there are high concentrations of women in
Education, Humanities and Arts, Health and Social Services, and Agricultural and
Veterinary Sciences, but the majority of bachelor degrees in Computer Sciences,
Mathematics, Physical Science, and Engineering are earned by men (European
Commission, 2003; National Science Foundation, 2002).
The impact of a gender-segregated work force is well known. Its impact on the
differential wage earnings for men and women has been documented since the
beginning of the 20th century (Cohen, 2000). Economists, psychologists, and
sociologists have also summarized the impact of women’s occupational choices on life
satisfaction, childbearing, psychological well-being, and family income (see Eccles,
1987). Like men, women need to utilize their talents and abilities and to derive
satisfaction from productive work and achievement outside the home. Beginning with
the longitudinal studies of Terman’s gifted children in the 1960s, research has shown
that career women tend to report higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of
distress than non-career or non-employed women (Sears & Barbie, 1977). Growing
evidence further shows that combining work and family roles does not result in role
stress and conflict. In fact, a large volume of evidence suggests multiple roles benefit
women’s physical and mental health (Barnett & Hyde, 2001). These benefits are less
evident when women’s employment conditions provide limited challenges, variety,
autonomy, or financial rewards.
Women’s employment and career choices also have important consequences for
family income and the woman’s own standard of living (Eccles, 1987). Since the
1970s in the United States, wage differentials between men’s and women’s earnings
have declined, from 63% in 1979 to 76% in 1998 (US Department of Labor, 1999).
Income gaps are less evident for young, college-educated, and professional workers
(US Department of Labor, 1999). Differences in earning potential are important
because women are more likely than men to be single, widowed, or single heads of
households with children under the age of 18. Single women are more likely than
single men to have incomes below the poverty line, and 39% of children who live in
poverty are in female, single-headed households (Lichtenwalter, 2005). Additionally,
women have longer life expectancies than men, and fewer than 30% of older women
in the US are receiving retirement incomes (US Department of Labor, Women’s
Bureau, 2004b). Accordingly, the likelihood that women will need to care for
themselves financially, for an elderly parent or family member, and for their children
is quite high. In countries such as the United States, without social programs to
adequately support women and children, the choice of a career or vocation has
important and enduring consequences.
In summary, women’s educational and vocational pursuits play an important role
in their lives. Although women are making inroads into male-dominated careers in
industrialized countries, a large proportion of women continue to enter traditionally
female occupations, with lower wages and benefits, despite their greater participation
in the paid labor force and their increased educational status. In a study of 70 US
cities, Lichtenwalter (2005) reported that gender gaps in poverty rates are explained
 Introduction 299

largely by women’s concentration in the lowest wage occupations. Sixty-one percent

of minimum wage workers are women. These conditions extend to other regions of
the world as well. Women worldwide have a higher likelihood of being among the
working poor; they are working full time but are unable to earn enough to lift
themselves and their families above poverty (International Labor Office, 2004). For
scholars focused on women’s and children’s development and well-being, the
economic empowerment of women is a matter of human rights and social justice.

Overview of the Special Issue

This special issue is focused on women’s participation in mathematics and science.
Historically, women and minorities have been underrepresented in mathematics and
science careers. These career fields currently offer some of the fastest growing and
highest paying occupations, and it is expected that demand for mathematicians,
scientists, and engineers will continue to increase over the next decades (National
Science Foundation, 2002). Other evidence suggests that 70% of all jobs today
require technical skills, and it is expected that all jobs will require such skills by 2010
(Schoenfeld, 2002). Women who are mathematically, scientifically, and technologi-
cally literate will have greater access to these jobs than women without those skills.
The articles of this special issue examine different explanations for women’s
underrepresentation in mathematics and science. Four of the articles explicitly
employ the Expectancy-Value Model of Academic and Occupational Choice
developed by Eccles and colleagues (Eccles, 1987, 1994; Eccles et al., 1983). This
model links achievement-related decisions to expectations for success and to the
value attached to the particular choice. These perceptions and beliefs are in turn
shaped by achievement experiences, interactions with parents, teachers, and peers,
goals for the future, identity processes, and cultural norms and stereotypes. Other
articles examine the role of parental expectations, competing interests and self-
concepts, and perceptions of job demands. Together, the articles in this Special Issue
provide a stronger analysis of women’s participation in mathematics and science than
any one psychological theory alone would offer.
While Eccles’ expectancy-value theory has become one of the most prominent
theories for understanding gender differences in achievement behavior, it has not
been widely applied outside the United States. Studies in this volume were conducted
with large samples of secondary students in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the
United States. The countries selected vary in the difficulty and sequence of mathe-
matics and science courses offered in the last years of high schools. For example,
college-bound students in Germany attend a Gymnasium high school, which enrolls
about one third of all German students (Nagy, Trautwein, Baumert, Köller, &
Garrett, this issue). In this highly competitive school environment, students must
choose only two advanced courses in mathematics or in a particular area of science
(physics, chemistry, and biology), a system that is quite different from the United
States. The State of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia also provides a very
unique opportunity to examine the ways in which the structuring of math courses may
300 J. L. Meece

influence gendered patterns of course enrollment and participation. Here, math

courses are explicitly organized according to course demands and difficulty rather
than content (Watt, this issue). In the Canadian province of Québec, college-bound
students in their last year of high school choose to enroll in those science courses they
plan to pursue in college; students enter either a general science program or a
technological program (Larose, Ratelle, Guay, Senécal, & Harvey, this issue). Across
these varying educational contexts, gendered patterns of participation in advanced
courses were found to be quite similar to what is found in the United States. Young
women were less likely to enroll in the more demanding math courses or course
sequences. If young women did enroll in science courses in late high school, they
were more likely to choose biology than the physical sciences. With the exception of
two studies in this volume (Nagy et al., this issue; Shapka, Domene, & Keating, this
issue), these differences occurred even when female students were achieving as well, if
not better, than their male peers. Thus, the studies in this volume suggest that
women’s participation in math- and science-related occupations is laid during the
high school years through students’ course enrollment selections.
Because several of the studies are grounded in a common theoretical perspective, it
is also possible to identify common themes across the international studies included
in this volume. As suggested by the expectancy-value model, both students’ ability
and value perceptions reflect gender-differentiated patterns. Two of the studies (Nagy
et al., this issue; Watt, this issue) report gender differences favoring males in math
ability perceptions. In a study of students transitioning into a college program in
science, Larose and colleagues (this issue) reported lower science self-efficacy beliefs
for girls than boys, but girls showed significant increases in their self-efficacy
following high school if they enrolled in a technological program. Girls enrolled in the
German Gymnasium reported stronger ability and value perceptions for biology than
boys, and these beliefs developed independently of their ability perceptions in math.
In contrast, boys who perceived their math abilities as high reported lower intrinsic
value for biology, and a strong self-concept in mathematics discouraged male
students from enrolling in biology. This finding is consistent with Marsh’s (1986)
Internal/External Frame of Reference Model and extends expectancy-value theory to
show how students form specialized self-perceptions and interests by comparing their
abilities across different domains of performance.
All of the studies in this volume also use a longitudinal design to examine the long-
term impact of achievement and self-perceptions on adolescents’ intended as well as
actual course and occupational decisions. Consistent with the expectancy-value
model, gendered value and ability perceptions formed early in high school predicted
their course selections of advanced mathematics and science courses, as well as their
career plans (Larose et al., this issue; Nagy et al., this issue; Watt, this issue). By late
adolescence, young people had a fairly differentiated view of their abilities and values
related to mathematics and science. As found in earlier studies by Eccles and
colleagues (Eccles et al., 1983; Eccles-Parsons, Adler, & Meece, 1984; Meece,
Wigfield, & Eccles, 1990), value perceptions play a particularly strong role in
women’s mathematics and science career plans (Nagy et al., this issue; Watt, this
 Introduction 301

issue). Another longitudinal study in this volume (Frome, Alfeld, Eccles, & Barber,
this issue) shows how the low intrinsic value of science also plays a role in women’s
decisions to leave a science career.
Additionally, the studies featured in this volume suggest that the role of mathe-
matics achievement and ability cannot be ignored. In a Canadian study, Shapka,
Domene, and Keating (this issue) report that mathematics achievement, rather than
ability, explained university-bound students’ aspirations to careers in physical science
and technology. Similarly, Watt (this issue) reported that NSW Australian students’
course selections in mathematics were influenced by prior achievement, intrinsic
values, and self-perceptions of ability.
There are several other noteworthy longitudinal results in this Special Issue that
deserve a careful look. Frome, Alfeld, Eccles, and Barber studied the occupational
aspirations of US women from the ages of 18 to 27. Findings revealed that 83% of the
young women who had nontraditional career aspirations at age 18 had switched to
female-dominated or neutral professions 7 years later. Supporting the perceived
‘‘costs’’ of academic or occupational pursuits in the Eccles et al. (1983) expectancy-
value model, career decisions were influenced by high job demands, a desire for a job
that allowed more flexibility for family, as well as the low intrinsic value of science
discussed earlier. In another interesting longitudinal study of US students, based on
the parental socialization component of the Eccles et al. (1983) model, Jacobs, Chhin,
and Bleeker (this issue) reported that parental gender-typed expectations related to
adolescents’ occupational interests and aspirations. Even more striking, mothers’
gendered expectations at age 17 were significantly related to their daughters’ career
choices 11 years later. This pattern was not found for boys, but fathers’ gendered
expectations had an influence on both sons and daughters.
In summary, the studies included in this volume provide cross-cultural validation
of the role of students’ gendered achievement beliefs in course selections and career
plans. The countries included—Australia, Canada, Germany, and United States—
vary in the access, difficulty, and sequence of mathematics and science courses in
senior high school years. The studies were mixed in terms of their inclusion of high
ability or heterogeneous samples of secondary students, and a number of different
explanations were examined. Despite differences in student populations, school
environments, and theoretical perspectives, several common themes emerged.
Students’ perceptions of their abilities and values related to mathematics and science
continue to follow gender stereotypes of men’s superior abilities in mathematics and
science. The one exception to this pattern is biology, which tends to have less of a
masculine image for women (Kahle & Meece, 1994). Also, the studies indicate that
both women’s and men’s decisions to enter careers in science and mathematics are
determined well before the college years by their course selections in high school. As a
whole, the studies in this volume provide an interesting but somewhat disheartening
picture of young women’s academic and career choices in mathematics and science at
the beginning of the 21st century.
The articles in this collection highlight a number of issues that need to be addressed
in future research. First, the studies indicate that women continue to underestimate
302 J. L. Meece

their mathematics and science abilities despite diminishing gender differences in

achievement. Missing from the articles is an analysis of students’ learning experiences
within the classroom. Prior research suggests that girls take an active role and respond
favorably to learning environments where individualized and cooperative learning are
the primary mode of instruction (Kahle & Meece, 1994; Parsons, Kaczala, & Meece,
1982). In the last 15 years, there have been significant reforms in elementary and
secondary mathematics and science curricula and teaching practices to incorporate
more collaborative, problem-focused, and authentic instruction (Meece & Scantle-
bury, 2006). It is not yet clear how these reforms impact young women’s motivation
and performance in mathematics and science. Additionally, recent employment
trends indicate that women are entering nontraditional careers, such as medicine,
law, architecture, and veterinary sciences (US Department of Labor, 2003). Like
teaching and nursing, women may be attracted to these career fields out of a desire to
help others, improve society, give back to their communities, as well as familial
concerns (Eccles, 1987). Studies of women in these nontraditional occupational
careers may shed light on the issue of gendered participation in mathematics and
science today. Lastly, as school populations become more and more ethnically
diverse, it is critical to examine issues regarding how motivation models focusing on
expectations, self-efficacy, values, goals, and parental beliefs operate across different
ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups. For the most part, these issues have been
largely unexamined in research on women’s achievement-related decisions.

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