Becoming who you are
Despite important progress toward greater gender equality, men are still clearly underrepresented in communal roles in health care, elementary education, and the domestic sphere (HEED). This contributes to many vacant HEED jobs and valuable HEED talents unused. The aim of this project is to identify the developmental processes that underlie men’s underrepresentation in HEED. We focus on the critical self-concept formation period of middle childhood (ages 7-9) within the family and school setting as major agents in the socialization of gender roles. We use a mixed-methods three-wave longitudinal design to capture developments in gender beliefs and career aspirations.
Children are often unaware of the many professions they can choose. They often base their interests in certain professions on what their parents do or what their friends want to do, rather than on their own interests and talents.
We want to better understand how children develop their interests and how they contribute to what they want to become later.
We can use the knowledge from this research to encourage children to choose an education and profession that matches their talents and interests.