It is well-established that women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields; however, the variability in women’s participation among STEM fields is often underreported. Women received 60% of bachelor’s degrees in biology but only 18% of computer science degrees in 2009. One explanation for this variation may be the differing social stereotypes of the fields. Male-dominated STEM fields are typically stereotyped as asocial, which may lead women to think that these fields will not fulfill their communal goals; that is, these fields will not give them opportunities to work with and help others. Three studies examined how communal goals relate to interest in six STEM fields. Study 1 (N = 120) found that women were more likely than men to endorse communal goals. Additionally, women were more interested in STEM classes they thought would fulfill their communal goals. Participants’ personal communal goal endorsement was negatively correlated with their interest in male-dominated STEM fields like computer science. Study 2 (N = 296) examined group work as a potential factor that could affect perceptions of communal fulfillment in science classes. We found that classes with group work were perceived to be higher in communal fulfillment. Classes low in female representation, engineering and computer science, were perceived to have less group work than classes with higher female representation, biology and psychology. Additionally, preference for group work was positively correlated with communal goals. In Study 3 (ongoing) we experimentally manipulated group work in an introductory computer science syllabus, to see whether adding group work to a class would increase women’s interest by appealing to their communal goals. These findings suggest that emphasizing the potential for communal interactions may be effective in recruiting women into STEM fields where they are currently underrepresented.

In recent years, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields have made strides towards reducing gender disparities. However, in the field of computer science, women continue to receive less than 20% of bachelor’s degrees awarded. In the current research we explore if this continuing disparity is partly due to a perceived lack of group work in computer science. Previous research has shown that women tend to endorse communal goals (e.g., working with and helping others) more than men do, and that the perception that an academic field fulfills communal goals predicts women’s interest in those fields. In the current research, 293 undergraduate students (184 female, 109 male) answered questions measuring preference for group work, perceptions of goal fulfillment in classes where students work individually and classes where students work in groups, perceptions of group work in different science classes, and personal goal endorsement. Consistent with our prediction, results indicated that classes with group work were perceived as having more communal goal fulfillment than classes with individual work, and male-dominated STEM fields (i.e., computer science and engineering) were perceived as having less group work than female-dominated STEM fields (i.e., biology and psychology). These results show that group work is related to communal goal fulfillment. Because communal goal fulfillment predicts women’s interest in academic fields, we expect that women would be less interested in academic fields that are perceived to have less group work, such as male-dominated STEM fields. Based on our results, we predict that increasing perceptions of group work in computer science may increase women’s interest by boosting perceptions that computer science is able to fulfill communal goals.