Violating an Occupational Sex-Stereotype: Israeli Women Earning Engineering Degrees

The percentage of women engineering graduates in Israel has increased fourfoldduring the last two decades, but only a small percentage of Israeli women optfor these fields. We account for the current trend by a general theory ofpatterned deviance, viewing the recent increase of women's studying forengineering degrees as a case of nonconformity with a traditional norm. Asimulation model of that theory reproduced 85.8% of the variance in the data onwomen engineering graduates between 1966 and 1987, indicating that the theoryapplies also in this case. The simulations show that it is becoming increasinglylegitimate for women to study engineering and informal social control keepingwomen from enrolling in engineering has almost disappeared, but the internalizedsex-stereotype still deters many women from taking such courses.