Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate how strongly Korean college students hold occupational sex stereotypes. Stereotype differences based on sex, sex-role, and culture were also examined. With a 7-pont scale, college students rated the 100 occupations according to the degree persons in these occupations contained masculine or feminine traits. Overall, the most masculine occupation was military soldier and the most femine occupation was nurse. Women had higher scores than men. This suggests that women perceived masculine occupations as having less masculine traits and feminine occupations as having more feminine traits. Stereotype differences were also found within a sex-role type category. Feminine-typed students perceived masculine occupations as having more masculine traits and feminine occupations as having less feminine traits. Finally, Korean college students had stronger occupational sex stereotypes than Americal college students. Especially, Korean college students perceived traditional masculine occupations as having more masculine traits. The plausible reasons of the above results were discussed. The problems with this study and a number of ways to reduce occupational sex stereotypes were also discussed.