The Impact of Gender Stereotype on Womens Career Choice and Relevant Factors

Women have always been treated unfairly in society because of their gender. Society often has biases on the working and studying ability of female. Gender stereotype, which is the origin of these bias, may significantly affect behavior and cognition of women. This suggested that the fact of women and men showed different career patterns might be influenced by gender stereotypes. These types of biases are not only explicit, but also can be implicitly associated to peoples mind. Both explicit and implicit stereotypes may cause negative impacts on career choices of women, as women might believe themselves as untalented in specific fields, which are referred to the masculine fields. People live in a social world, so that when they betray the gender stereotype, they might feel threatened on their social identity. Although gender stereotypes may all have negative effects towards all womens selection of career, the impacts can have a variety of extents under different conditions. Most previous studies mentioned in this report are cross-sectional studies and did not include interventions. Therefore, the comparison between distinct influential factors and the dynamic changes of stereotype across different periods remain unclear. In future research, longitudinal and intervention studies should be conducted to further understand the negative impacts of gender stereotype.