Women continue to predominate in healthcare, early education, domestic work (HEED), and service occupations, whereas men dominate in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and skilled trades occupations globally. Educational materials can influence adolescents’ career aspirations and play a crucial role in reinforcing or challenging occupational segregation. Although previous studies have documented gender representation in textbooks broadly, analyses of occupational orientation materials that examine both horizontal and vertical segregation in a differentiated manner are lacking. We analyzed 19 German secondary school textbooks from subjects focused on occupational orientation (Economics and Careers and Economics and Communication), assessing the gender distribution across different occupational domains and hierarchical levels in 1,195-character portrayals (959 textual, 236 visual). Results revealed that women were depicted significantly less frequently than men overall, primarily due to textual representations. Regarding horizontal segregation, women were overrepresented in HEED/service occupational roles (64.0%), while men dominated STEM/skilled trades occupational roles (77.9%). Vertical occupational segregation was only found in textual representations. Within female-dominated occupational domains, women were disproportionately represented in low-status roles, comprising 78.7% of characters at that level. Within male-dominated occupational domains, men were significantly overrepresented across all hierarchy levels, with the disparity being most pronounced at the lowest hierarchy level, where no women were depicted. These results suggest the need to revise educational materials, offering a constructive perspective for creating more equitable gender representations in occupational fields that can genuinely expand adolescents’ career horizons.
Fruehwirth et al. (Thu,) studied this question.