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Even With Modern Advances In Sexual Equality, Occupational Preference Is ...

Even with modern advances in sexual equality, occupational preference is strongly gender-stereotyped. This study raised the question of whether occupations are gender-stereotyped because of social reasons or because different sexes do have certain affinities for particular professions that stem from their cognitive structures. The researchers sought to examine the neurocognitive processes of people in sex-typed and sex-atypical professions. Both females and males in male-dominated occupations were examined; conversely, females and males in female-dominated occupations were investigated. The researchers hypothesised that individual occupation would provide an indicator for intra-gender variations on cognitive processes that had previously been characterised as either male or female.(Govier and Feldman, 1999)
The subjects were asked to perform a synonym task and a spatial task. The results showed that on the synonym task, the affect of gender upon performance was not significant, but that females and males gave similar performances within their own professional category. Individual occupation was the only factor directly related to performance on the given tasks. For the spatial task, males and females in typically masculine occupations fared better than males and females in typically feminine occupations. Considering both gender and occupation in relation to performance showed that the combination of these factors was statistically significant. Again, males and females in each occupation gave similar performances.
So, the results of this experiment confirmed the hypothesis, indicating that occupational choice is determined not necessarily by sex, but by the nature of individual cognitive processes. The results bolster the hypothesis that generic assumptions about gender and cognitive ability should not be allowed without further examining cognitive factors within the sexes. As cognitive factors have been shown to be influenced by testosterone and indicated by digit ratio, this study is further evidence that digit ratio and cognitive functioning are related and may influence individuals even more than their gender.

The Present Study
The present study builds upon the studies already conducted in this area for the purposes of investigating the relationship between various cognitive functions and 2D:4D ratio in both males and females from an array of academic disciplines. In particular, the study sought to examine verbal fluency in participants from Arts and Sciences disciplines, both university students and individuals in professional occupations. Previous studies have examined the links between 2D:4D and spatial ability as discussed above; however, it seems that none of the available data focuses on the correlations between 2D:4D and short-term memory retention in verbal tasks.

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