Micronesian Educator Vol. 17, 2013, Self-Efficacy for Science Careers:

the mechanics class; girls play softball, boys play hardball. This is further supported by Giddens (1989) who emphasized the influence of school and peer-group stating that by the time children start school, they have a clear consciousness of gender differences. Schools are not usually supposed to be differentiated by gender. In practice, however, an an-ay of factors affects girls and boys differently.

As a result of the striking difference being offered in school between girls and boys, career choices as well as career opportunities also become segregated between genders. In fact, a recent study was conducted by Beede et al. (2011) of the US Depatiment of Commerce. Their findings showed that women were vastly unden-epresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STE:tvi) jobs and among STE:tvi degree holders. Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25o/o of STEM jobs. This has been the case throughout the past decade, even as college-educated women have increased their share of the overall workforce. To understand gender disparity in career decision, a lot of previous studies demonstrated the importance of self-efficacy. Bandura (1977; 1986) defmed self-efficacy as belief in one's capability to successfully perform a designated task. It has been pointed out that self-efficacy could influence the actions of individuals in many ways. It can influence how much effort individuals are willing to make, which areas individuals will choose to invest their etTorts in, and how resilient individuals would be in the face of difficulties (Bandura, 1995).

Since Betz and Hackett ( 1981) applied the concept of self-efficacy to the career decision fields, a lot of research has reported the important role of self-efficacy in career decision process among university students. With the many facets to be considered for choosing the tnost suitable career of an individual, it is essential that schools and universities broaden the horizon of students and challenge both men and women to exercise critical reflection and analytical thinking in making decisions that have such an important effect on their future. TI1ey need to increase their awareness so that they become more empowered men and women who can promote gender equality and eventually become actively involved in the dynamic process of crafting policy directions that will promote gender equality locally and globally.

In Asian countries, Matsui and Tsukamoto (1991) from Japan examined work activities for six occupational domains proposed by Holland ( 1985), that is, realistic, investigative, atiistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. The results indicated that women were significantly lower than men in self-efficacy for the realistic domain which included activities such as repairing electrical equipments, processing raw materials, and assembling machines. As Betz and Schifano (2000) insisted, it was assumed that with lower self-efficacy, females might exclude technology or scientific career options from their career altetnatives. Presumably it causes gender disparity between men and women in those fields. In the cun-ent study, self-efficacy for science careers among university students wac;; assessed and the gender gap and difference between Japanese and Filipinos were examined. Secondly, the relationships between self-efficacy for work activities and for science careers were investigated. The results stemming from those examinations could provide guidance for policies aimed at promoting gender parity in science careers.

Method Participants

Data were gathered from 262 Japanese university students ( 132 men and 130 women) and 250 Filipino students (124 men and 126 women). Among Japanese students, 15.6% were

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very obvious, male students also possessed higher self-efficacy than female students for biology, chemistry and pathology and for humanities, astronomy, and agricultural science.

The results were consistent with the report from Rare Job (2012) which summarized that IT industries were experiencing a lack of skilled IT experts especially among women and that less than 10~/o of CIO (Chief Information Officers) in United State was women. The result was also consistent with the ratio of men to women in science fields in Japan. Atnong Japanese university students, men tend to choose engineering or science courses, while women tend to choose education, domestic science, social science and humanities courses. The gender gap becon1es stark at the doctorate level. According to the statistics from The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, the percentages of women in doctoral courses was 51 % for human sciences, 36.9% for social sciences, 19째/o for sciences, and only 15% for engineenng.

While there have been previous studies supporting the results of the cunent research, there had not been previous studies that showed that science and technology may be rejected disproportionately by women simply because of their self-efficacy beliefs towards such fields. The correlation results further indicated that self-efficacy was related to female students' plans to persist in predominantly male disciplines (Mana, Rodgers, Shen, & Barbara, 2009).

The findings of Williams (2006) who studied primary school children showed glaring contrast which was noteworthy to consider. The findings of \Villiams ' study revealed that girls scored significantly higher than the boys on all the five measures of self-efficacy and were found to perform significantly better than the boys on the science perfotmance measure. Williatns further posited that gender differences in self-efficacy did exist, with girls having higher selfefficacy beliefs than boys. Future study should include wide range of participants to examine international and cultural difference in career self-efficacy. In addition to this, longitudinal studies which enable the assessment of changes in self-efficacy caused by aging and development are also required.

Generally, Filipino students had higher scores than Japanese students in tetms of selfefficacy for science careers. The higher self-efficacy score may be attributed to the environment which facilitates students to engage in various activities. Aside from studying inside the classroom, they have times spent in nature, and chances to use tools which will eventually lead to the higher self-efficacy to performing well in science careers. A.nother interpretation is the effect from general self-efficacy to more specific self-efficacy. As Datu Alfonso (20 12) found out, Filipino students possess higher general self-efficacy. It means that generally, Filipino students have optimistic sense of their competence, and this optimistic sense might be linked to the higher self-efficacy for science fields .

On the other hand, an analysis made by Adachi (2013) revealed that Japanese youth had low levels of involvement in various kinds of activities such as time in nature and experiences to use tools and equipments during childhood. Japanese youth focused on studying hard to pass the entrance exam for university and thereby gained highly specialized knowledge, but this came at the cost of experiencing a wide range of different activities in their childhood. This may be one ofthe factors of the lower in self-efficacy among Japanese students and could have led to the observed score differences between the two countries. However, those findings are from a limited sample. Future study should extend the samples and examine the generalization of the cunent results.

The results from regression analyses between self-efficacy for work activities and selfefficacy for science careers confitmed that, generally, self-efficacy scores for technical and in-

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