Race And Gender Differences In College Major Choice

Gender is defined as the socially produced differences between feminine and masculine, while, sex is defined as the biological differences between males and females (Mary Holmes 2007) . It was crucial to separate the definitions of gender and sex for this research. In my research, while the majority of my participants are cis-gender, I also interviewed queer people. Therefore, gender dynamics is not defined as the way cis-gender people interact, but the way that people of different genders interact. My research concerns itself with the differences in gender in one's decision to choose a major. For the purpose of this research, we define gender dynamics as how members of the department, student and faculty, interact with one another based on …show more content…
In her text titled Race and Gender Differences in College Major Choice, Dickson writes that the first is how prepared the student is for college, the second is how likely a student is to switch their major, the third is the monetary reward for each major and the fourth is that preferences may differ based on gender, race or ethnicity. (Dickson 2010) Furthermore, Dickson also writes that “The largest estimate is the 16 percentage point decrease in the probability of choosing engineering and computer science for white females. Similarly large estimates obtained for minority women. […] Thus, the gender effect is almost three times the size of a standard deviation increase in standardized test scores. Sample means revealed about a 20 percentage point gap between white women and white men in their tendencies to choose engineering and computer science as a major” (Dickson 2010. P. 117) In other words, Dickson`s research suggests that the gender differences in choosing major is larger than differences by ethnicity or race. (Dickson 2010)Furthermore, even though race and ethnicity goes on to affect major choice, gender impacts one's major choice