Abstract

Women‘s underrepresentation in STEM fields is a concern in many societies. However, closer inspection of this gender gap reveals a more complex picture, with women achieving parity with men at the Ph.D. level in certain STEM fields, while also being underrepresented in some non-STEM fields. The field-specific ability belief (FAB) hypothesis aims to explain this variability across academic disciplines and suggests that women are underrepresented in fields where raw intelligence is seen as required for success. This study explored the FABs of 282 Korean high school students. We found that the academic fields believed by adolescents to require brilliance are the fields with lower female representation. Moreover, there was a gender difference in how these beliefs were related to students’ interests in majors. Male students were more inclined to choose majors in fields with high FABs, whereas female students were not. These findings support the field-specific ability belief hypothesis.