What teens want to be: Gender differences in careers and majors

The question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” is a common one, and the responses shed light on what potential futures children have been exposed to, what they believe is possible, and what they believe might be a fit for them.

Although girls and women have made remarkable advances in education and the workforce, boys have become increasingly less likely to enroll in college and men are less likely to be working than in the past. At the same time, there are large gender imbalances in some professions, with a notable lack of men in health, education, and literacy (HEAL) jobs. Men represent less than a quarter of HEAL workers, a share that has declined over recent decades even as the share of women in STEM has increased.

In this research brief, we shed light on high school students’ career expectations and college pursuits.

In this brief, we ask:

• How much do 9th graders think about their future careers?
• What are the gender differences in adolescent career expectations? In particular, to what extent do boys consider HEAL occupations?
• To what extent are college students pursuing college majors aligned with their 9th grade expectations and does this differ between men and women?

To approach these questions, we use data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, a nationally representative survey of 23,000 high schoolers that follows 9th graders through postsecondary education.

What are boys’ and girls’ career expectations?

While boys and girls both claim to have thought a lot about their expected job, about a third of 9th grade boys are almost 50% more likely than girls (34% v. 23%) to say that they “don’t know” what job they want at age 30.

Figure 2

Ninth grade boys are more likely than girls to say they “don’t know” what job they expect to have at age 30. It is also, by far, the most common response that boys give. In contrast, the most popular choice for girls was some type of HEAL profession: about 2-in-5 girls expect some type of job related to education, healthcare, or social services. A full list of HEAL jobs is in the figure 3 data note.

Figure 3 also highlights that while STEM is the most popular career desire among boys, it’s not nearly to the same degree that HEAL professions are popular among girls. Boys are nearly as interested in arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media (13%), HEAL (11%), and protective services and the military (10%).

Figure 3

In figure 4, we clearly see some degree of gender imbalances in 9th grade career ambitions across the board. Over 60% of students who expect a STEM or business career are male, but only one boy for every four girls expects to go into a HEAL profession. While considered a stereotypically male career field, the desire for STEM roles among boys is not nearly as lopsided as the desire for HEAL roles among girls. Girls account for 78% of those expecting a HEAL career. By comparison, boys account for only 61% of those expecting a STEM career. We do observe that jobs in manual labor—maintenance, construction, farming, and transportation—and protective services are overwhelmingly preferred by boys, outnumbering girls 9:1 and 4:1, respectively.

Overall, high school students’ career expectations—mirroring the gender splits that characterize fields like HEAL and STEM—remain fairly gendered.

Figure 4

Conclusion

Of course, we would expect that a student’s stated career ambitions would have at least some alignment with their ultimate choice of college major. But it seems especially important for boys whose major choices track more closely with their stated career expectations in adolescence, while girls seem to gravitate toward majors that would allow entry into HEAL professions, regardless of their stated expectations.

One implication of this is that early exposure may matter: boys who express interest in HEAL careers during adolescence often follow that desire in college. This suggests an opportunity to better understand what sparked that interest, and how more boys might be encouraged to see these careers as a good fit.

Even when 9th graders say “I don’t know” about their future career, the majors they eventually pick are not random: boys are more likely to land in STEM and girls in HEAL. While some of this may be a function of innate interest or sense-of-fit, social cues like who they identify with and what they see others doing likely play an important role. Highlighting HEAL careers as arenas for saving lives or high-tech problem-solving or connecting them with male mentors in some of these fields could open more young men’s eyes to these paths.

While this research brief has documented some key findings about career expectations and pursuits, a follow-up piece will dig deeper into the drivers of those patterns—examining which agents and experiences shape adolescents’ career goals (and whether those influences differ for boys versus girls), how expectations vary by race, family structure, and parents’ schooling, and how teens adjust their ambitions as they learn what different careers actually demand.