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Men don't care for caring : fundamental goals and men's interest in HEED roles.

University of British Columbia

Whereas women are increasingly moving into the workforce in general, and formerly male-dominated careers in specific, men continue to be underrepresented in the fields of healthcare, early education and the domestic sphere (HEED; Croft, Schmader, & Block, 2015). The current work sought to understand why men continue to show little interest in HEED careers and don’t perceive them as broadly valuable to the same extent women do. Previous research suggested that men and women show differing interest in Science and Technology careers to the extent that women are more communally oriented than men (Diekman et al., 2011). In three studies, the current research tested the hypothesis that men see HEED careers as less interesting and valuable than do women to the extent that men hold less communal (vs. agentic and competitive) goals than women. Study 1 and 2 show that gender differences in interest in and value assigned to HEED roles were indeed mediated by men’s relatively lower communal goals. In addition, study 2 suggested that competitiveness may play a special role in explaining why men, more so than women, tend to expect a breadwinner rather than a primary caregiver role in their future. Study 3 provided first experimental evidence that activating men’s communal goals can increase their interest in HEED occupations.

Text

2015-08-20

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/54549

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/