Violating an Occupational Sex-Stereotype: Israeli Women Earning Engineering Degrees

Abstract

The percentage of women engineering graduates in Israel has increased fourfold during the last two decades, but only a small percentage of Israeli women opt for these fields. We account for the current trend by a general theory of patterned deviance, viewing the recent increase of women's studying for engineering degrees as a case of nonconformity with a traditional norm. A simulation model of that theory reproduced 85.8% of the variance in the data on women engineering graduates between 1966 and 1987, indicating that the theory applies also in this case. The simulations show that it is becoming increasingly legitimate for women to study engineering and informal social control keeping women from enrolling in engineering has almost disappeared, but the internalized sex-stereotype still deters many women from taking such courses.