Trapped in the gender stereotype? The image of science among secondary school students and teachers

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender stereotype of science by analysing the semantic attributes of gender in relation to three science subjects - chemistry, mathematics, and physics - among students and their science teachers. Design/methodology/approach - This cross-sectional study applied a survey of 3,045 students and 123 teachers in secondary schools. The gendered image of science was assessed using a semantic differential consisting of 25 pairs of adjectives with semantically opposite meanings. Findings - In summary, the results of the study demonstrate that from the female students ' perspective mathematics and physics are negatively related to female gender, whereas chemistry is neither significantly related to the male nor to the female profile. From the male students ' point of view mathematics is negatively related to the female gender, whereas chemistry and physics are positively related to the male gender. In the science teachers ' perception chemistry and physics combine feminine and masculine attributes, whereas the teachers ' perception of mathematics matches only with the male, but not with the female gender. Originality/value - In contrast to previous research, the study is the first to analyse the gender stereotype of chemistry as well as to assess the gender image of three science subjects from students ' and teachers ' perspectives.