The downstream effect of gender bias on academic performance and career aspirations amongst female students in STEM via Gender-Professional Identity Integration (G-PII)

Gender imbalance in STEM, characterized by a significant underrepresentation of women, remains a significant challenge. Although gender bias is a well-known contributor to women’s attrition from STEM, the psychological mechanisms linking gender bias to departure are less well understood. Our research investigates early antecedents of attrition and the psychological processes that precede leaving the STEM pathway in tertiary education. Drawing upon identity integration research, we propose that perceived gender bias exerts undermines female STEM students’ academic performance and career aspirations by reducing their Gender-Professional Identity Integration (G-PII), a construct that captures individual differences in the perceived compatibility between a woman’s gender identity and her professional identity within a male-dominated STEM field. Across two studies, we examined 344 college students from the field of Computing and Information Sciences (CIS). In a cross-sectional study (Study 1), we first demonstrated that gender moderates the relationship between perceived gender bias and G-PII among STEM students. We then conducted a longitudinal study (Study 2) to further examine this moderation effect, assessing how perceived gender bias in CIS influences G-PII, in turn, influences female students’ academic performance and future career aspirations in the field. This pathway is not observed among their male counterparts. Our findings showed that the perceived bias—G-PII—career aspirations/academic performance link emerged only among female students. This highlights how gender bias within STEM fields undermines the perceived congruity between female students’ gender and their STEM identities, negatively impacting their academic performance and reducing their interest in pursuing STEM careers after graduation. These insights reveal the psychological factors driving women’s attrition in STEM post-college and highlight the need for educators and practitioners to address gender bias through an identity-focused lens. Strengthening female students’ internal congruity through interventions that increase G-PII may enhance their academic performance and confidence in pursuing STEM careers.