Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2024, 60(6): 603-621 | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2024.034

The Role of Educational Choices in Support of Gender Equality in Unpaid Domestic Work: A Case Study of Psychology and STEM Students in Slovakia

Magdalena Adamus ORCID...1, Denisa Fedáková ORCID...1, Vladimíra Čavojová ORCID...2
1 Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava
2 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy an Art, Trnava University

The present paper investigates female and male students’ perceptions of descriptive and prescriptive gender norms in Slovakia and their expectations of and preferences for unpaid domestic work in the students’ future family lives. We explore the Slovak subset of the ‘Understanding Communal Orientation in Men’ (UCOM) project, which aims to better understand the social‒psychological factors associated with students’ interest in taking care-oriented roles and occupations. Data were collected at several universities across Slovakia in 2018 at psychology (as an example of the HEED field of study) and STEM departments traditionally dominated by female and male students, respectively. Our final sample consisted of 129 psychology students (106 females) and 124 STEM students (39 females). The results point to differences between female and male students’ perceptions of gender norms regarding unpaid domestic work, with male students reporting both descriptive and prescriptive norms as being more equal than what female students note. Interestingly, the men and women agreed in their preferences and expectations of how unpaid work should and will be distributed in their future family lives. Regardless of biological sex, the students wanted—and expected—women to take on more of unpaid work, indicating that the decision to study does not foster the desire for gender equality in either female or male students. Next, we explored the associations between the decision to study traditionally gender-incongruent majors and our dependent variables. Because of the limitations of the sample and country-specific conditions, we can only cautiously suggest that the gender-incongruent major choices may become a meaningful indicator of the changing dynamics in how gendered roles and norms are understood in society.

Keywords: educational gender gap, educational choices, gender norms, unpaid domestic work, gender equality

Received: September 6, 2023; Revised: September 20, 2024; Accepted: September 23, 2024; Prepublished online: October 21, 2024; Published: January 13, 2025  Show citation

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Adamus, M., Fedáková, D., & Čavojová, V. (2024). The Role of Educational Choices in Support of Gender Equality in Unpaid Domestic Work: A Case Study of Psychology and STEM Students in Slovakia. Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 60(6), 603-621. doi: 10.13060/csr.2024.034
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