12th Annual IGSS Conference • October 28-29, 2021

Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences 2021

Get Married and Be a Scientist? The Effects of Biology and Gendered Marriage Expectation on Having a STEM Job

Meng-Jung Lin, Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Women's underrepresentation in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields has been studied for decades across disciplines. Two broad explanations of the gender gap in STEM are the gender differences in math-related abilities and the gender socialization theory. With the recently available education and math polygenic scores, this study used the data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; N=3,094) and the UK Biobank (N=101,930) to examine the two explanations again using the molecular level genetic measure and other social factors. The four main findings from the study are: Firstly, individuals with a standard deviation higher math polygenic score were 42) than for men (36), which indicated that women needed to be outstanding in their math ability to work in STEM. Finally, marriage expectations, age at first marriage, and age at first birth interacted with gender and genetic ability significantly. Among those who had planned to delay marriage in adolescent years and gave birth later, the gap between talented men and women in having a STEM job was narrower than their counterparts who would like to marry earlier. This suggested that men and women might have already planned their work and family life differently depending on their ability, and occupational and family goals during their teenage years. The results show the influences of gender socialization on the realization of genetic potentials for men and women.