GENDER-PERCEPTIONS OF SCHOOL SUBJECTS AMONG 10-11 YEAR-OLDS

Summary. Sixty children, aged 11–12 years, rated 17 school subjects along seven 7‐point dimensions including masculine‐feminine. Physics, CDT, and information technology were rated as significantly masculine whereas typing, home economics, PSE and RE were rated as significantly feminine. In contrast to previous studies, chemistry, mathematics, biology and languages were rated as neither masculine nor feminine. Stepwise regressions using the mean ratings for each school subject were calculated for boys and girls separately: for boys, “interesting‐boring” predicted a large proportion of the variance on masculine‐feminine; for girls, “difficult‐easy” predicted a considerable proportion of the variance, as it did for the combined sample. These findings were related to observations of the social worlds of boys and girls. 1991 The British Psychological Society