THE ROOTS OF GENDER INEQUITY IN TECHNICAL AREAS

This article describes a study of the academic self‐concepts, attributions and achievements of male and female Asian American and Caucasian students who won Westinghouse Awards in 1984 and 1985. The results of the study showed that fewer Caucasian female recipients anticipated college majors in the technical areas. Furthermore, this group of females scored lower on both parts of the SAT, scored lower on all of the self‐concept scales, and also scored lower on both attribution scales. In contrast, the Asian females optimized courses for the gifted and specialized research courses to distance themselves from the American females in almost all areas. The author linked these ethnic, gender differences to underlying psychological and sociological forces that are responsible for the self‐concept and attribution differences. It is these forces that must be altered for Caucasian females to rectify the gender inequalities that exist in the technical areas. Copyright © 1991 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company