Jobs and Gender: Implicit Assumptions about Women in the Workplace

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of my experiment is to see if people think that women typically have lower paying jobs than men. Women still face bias in the workplace and some people who would not admit to being biased might still have a view that women should have lower paying jobs than men. Since women are now more common in high paying professions, this assumption is changing over time. My questions are: Do people still have a subconscious bias about women in the workplace? Do adults and children differ in their subconscious bias about women in the workplace? Do people take longer to associate women with high paying jobs? and Do adults take longer to associate women and high paying jobs than children do? Methods/Materials My test involves a deck of cards that you sort into two different piles.These cards include high and low paying jobs and names relating to females and males. My procedures are have my volunteers sign human subjects forms, have them take the color practice test and time it,randomize the layout with the category cards,have them take the test and time it,switch the category cards and have them take it again timed,and record each time in my notebook.There are two tests, each with a different deck of cards. I will test my hypothesis by calculating how much longer it takes for people to sort cards into women and high paying jobs vs. women and low paying jobs.I decided on 20 high paying jobs out of the top 100 jobs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I also decided on 20 low paying jobs out of the 100 lowest jobs.I came up with 20 names relating to females such as Grandmother and Rebecca. I also came up with 20 names relating to males such as Grandfather and Robert.Each word has its own card and makes up the decks. Results Most participants took longer to sort cards when it was women and high paying jobs than when it was women and low paying jobs.On average adults took more time to sort cards into women and high paying jobs than children did.The children didn#t show much preference with a certain gender and job pay. Conclusions/Discussion My results supported my hypotheses. Adults took more time to sort cards into women and high paying jobs, but children didn#t.This means that adults typically have an subconscious bias against women in the workplace.Children don#t have this subconscious bias.

Competition history

• CSEF 2015 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry J0406

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