How Gender Stereotypes Influence Emerging Career Aspirations

Shelley Correll presents to the audience stereotypes that exist in today’s workplace and career field and why men are dominant in the areas of math and science. She gives reasons for why stereotypes cause certain results and shows many studies that have proven these ideas.

Dr. Correll has been appointed as the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Michelle R. Clayman InstituteThe Clayman Institute for Gender at Stanford University.

As Director, Correll plans to address the question:  Can we move beyond the stalled gender revolution? Twenty years ago, Arlie Hochschild described the gender revolution as stalled, noting that while women had flooded into the paid labor market, men had not increased their involvement in the household, thereby limiting the potential of women in the workplace. More recently, scholars have identified further evidence of a stall in the movement towards gender equality.  Whether we look at metrics in the workplace such as the gender gap in wages, or the participation of women male dominated fields, the paid labor market, and state-level politics, measures of equality have remained relatively constant since the mid 1990s.

Correll’s own research focuses on what she calls the “micro-foundations of gender inequality,” identifying how social psychological processes reproduce structures of gender inequality. In particular, she studies how differing expectations shape the everyday experiences of women and men in work and school environments.