The Role of College Major Departments in the Reproduction of Sexual Inequality

Abstract

We propose that, in their choices and evaluations of major departments, all students react positively to supportive internal organizationalfeatures and to rewarding links to the external socio-economic system. We also propose, however, that men and women attach differing weights to internal and external features in selecting and reacting to major departments, and that, organizationally, favorable internal characteristics will rarely be coincident with favorable external characteristics. In our analysis of public university seniors and departments, it was found, as expected, that students confronted an array of departments in which internal supportiveness was negatively related to status rewards, and that men tended to opt for unsupportive departments providing high status rewards whereas women exhibited the opposite pattern. For women not making the standard choices, supportive interactions with individual faculty members appeared critical to their satisfaction levels,. The implications of these results for the continuation of sex differences in career-building and attainment processes are discussed.