PhD pre-submission seminar: Helen Law

Larry Saha Room, Room 2175 Haydon Allen Building (#22), The Australian National University

Abstract: 

Although women in Australia have been steadily increasing their participation in tertiary education, they are still underrepresented in mathematically intensive fields including engineering, information technology and the physical sciences. Interestingly, the last decade saw a rapid growth of employment opportunities in these fields. As they require strong quantitative skills, women’s underrepresentation in relevant subjects in secondary and tertiary education might prevent them from gaining a competitive edge in this fast-growing niche of the labour market. Given this, it is surprising that not much is known about the extent to which teenage occupational aspirations shape the participation in advanced mathematics during high school and how this affects the completion of mathematically intensive university programs. The key question to consider is why engagement in advanced mathematics and cognate disciplines remains segregated by gender in the twenty-first century.

This thesis examines gender differentiation typical for mathematically intensive fields in Australian science education. Following gender structure theory, I regard gender as a social structure that organises males and females into different roles and specialisations of study. This allows me to empirically examine how individual, interactional and institutional processes shape educational decisions of contemporary Australian youth. I adopt a life course perspective to study how early experiences influence later pursuits of mathematically intensive specialisations. I use data from the 2003 Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth (LSAY) which comprises a nationally representative sample of adolescents who turned 15 around 2003. 

Early educational and occupational orientations explain to a considerable degree why boys are more likely than girls to enrol in advanced mathematics in Year 12. These expectations, however, are less influential than self-assessed mathematical competence and earlier academic achievement in mathematics. The gender gap in Year 12 advanced mathematics enrolment would disappear completely should we succeed in setting levels of self-assessed mathematical competence and early achievement in mathematics on a par between both genders. To achieve parity in university degree completion in mathematically intensive fields, we would also have to persuade teenagers of both genders to opt for similar careers.