The persistence of horizontal gender segregation in educational and occupational fields contributes decisively to the spread of gender-stereotypic beliefs about a natural fit of women in careers in more expressive and human-centered fields and men in technical and math-intensive fields ( Charles and Bradley, 2009). Moreover, on the basis of the occupational aspirations of 15-year-old adolescents, the prognosis for change in gender-based disparities in occupational and academic choices suggests that gender segregation in the education and labor market will remain persistent ( OECD, 2017). The persistence of gendered paths in career choices has recently been reflected in the current Global Gender Gap Report of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which states that on average men are underrepresented in the fields of education, health and welfare whereas women are underrepresented in the STEM fields ( WEF, 2017, p. Gender segregation in the vocational orientation of adolescents has been well documented for decades in most OECD countries ( OECD, 2006, 2012). Finally, the paper discusses ways of changing the image of math and science in the context of secondary education in order to overcome the disparities between females and males in STEM.

Our findings also suggest that gender-science stereotypes of math and science can potentially influence young women's and men's aspirations to enroll in a STEM major at university by showing that a less pronounced masculine image of science has the potential to increase the likelihood of STEM career aspirations. Within the group of male students however, the attribution of masculinity to math compared to chemistry and physics differs significantly, whereas the attribution of masculinity to chemistry and physics does not. With respect to gender differences, our findings have shown that among female students, the attribution of masculinity to the three school subjects does not differ significantly, meaning that female students rated all subjects similarly strongly as masculine. The results indicate that for both sexes, math has the strongest masculinity attribution, followed by physics as second, and, finally, chemistry with the lowest masculinity attribution. By means of a standardized survey, data on students' perception of masculinity of science school subjects were collected using semantic differentials. The data originated from a cross-sectional study among 1'364 Swiss secondary school students who were close to obtaining their matriculation diploma. This paper investigates the impact of the masculinity image of three school subjects-chemistry, mathematics, and physics-on secondary students' career aspirations in STEM fields. However, the impact of the gender image of school science subjects on young people's career choice has not yet been analyzed. Studies have repeatedly reported that math and science are perceived as male domains, and scientists as predominantly male.

3Institute of Educational Science, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.

2Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training SFIVET, Bern, Switzerland.1Institute for Educational Sciences, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.Elena Makarova 1 *, Belinda Aeschlimann 2 and Walter Herzog 3

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