‘Choice and Confusion’ of Japanese Female Students: Focus on Choosing the Humanities or Sciences at High School

Abstract

Having achieved remarkable developments in science and technology recently, Japan has still fewer women playing active roles in these fields than those of other advanced nations.

While the previous researches have pointed out that a variety of aspects in gender bias including education, working condition and scientific knowledge hamper women’s entry into the field of science, my research this time took note of a trend of “course choice at high school”. Educational reform of high school in Japan is making a progress in that it allows students to have more freedom in choosing subjects they study, recognizing curriculum to be diversified. It, however, only remains true in institutions and systems, and in reality, courses are typically arranged as either humanities or sciences which are set up by individual high schools at their discretion.

A result of questionnaire survey I conducted in 2004 unraveled that more females wavered in choosing course compared with males in general, and a large gender gap could be witnessed in science course in special. The reason why females confused between humanities and sciences included lack of confidence, opposition from people around them, ambiguous vision over their future, and so on. Through analysis of cross tabulation and data from free comments questionnaire, I stressed that course choice either humanities or sciences is likely to spur the gender differentiation so called men or women, and at the same time, is considered as a remote cause of scarcity of women in science course.