A Study Of Gender Differences On The Choice Of Discipline Or Major In Higher Education

In recent years, with the development of higher education, more and more women are learning to enjoy the popularity, but the trend of gender division on major develops increasingly accordingly. Related survey shows that in the major selection process, gender differences exist cause of cultural and psychological factors, which mainly reflects on that women generally tend to choose liberal art majors,while men prefer science and engineering more.The "gender imbalance" directly results in the "girl country" phenomenon especially in some liberal art colleges, in order to change this situation, many colleges and universities even set sex ratio at the enrollment, of course, the "gender discrimination" attracts great concern of whole society. In the labor market, men-dominated majors of "science and engineering" enjoy more favor by employers, in contrast, female-dominated liberal art majors are in a weak position. Thus, the disciplines of gender segregation is not only a personal choice or a simple education problem, but also a social issue related to women’s gender equality and employment. Tracing back, what causes gender segregation? How to ease the problem? It is a theoretical and practical significance to research and answer these questions.The study begins with the major choice of higher education students, and sets a theory framework with the social gender perspective, to analyze current situation of undergraduates in gender differences in the process of major choice, then puts forward some feasible suggestions to ease the major gender segregation. First, this paper would introduce the origin and significance of the study, and then sort out and review the relevant literature, then define and analyze relevant core concepts.And based on this analyze, The second chapter is to explore theoretical perspective, which is gender theory. According to the empirical investigation of undergraduates about discipline or major choice found that in the process of selection of discipline has gender differences, which is: the gender segregation exists in discipline or major choice for undergraduates;There are gender differences on the reasons about the choice of educational institutions and majors; Undergraduates are affected by the gender perspective in the process of selecting a major, but with no significant gender differences; For undergraduates, the gender differences exist on the satisfaction of the major they choose, but don’t reflects too much on the gender segregation. And then from four different expectations,to describe the impact of the gender on the undergraduate discipline or major choice,which is the subordination of women under the patriarchy, the gender stereotypes of the discipline, occupational gender segregation under the gender differences and gender discrimination, the expect on the differences genders roles from the society and family. At last, based on the results above, in view of the existence of the major gender segregation, proposes countermeasures and suggestions to solve the professional gender segregation respectively from the community, school, family and individual aspectsAccording to the study, we expect to solve the problem of the major gender segregation in higher education, thus relieve women employment problem caused by women excessive concentration and same-sex competition pressure.