Gender salience and social identity: The impact of sex of siblings on educational and occupational aspirations

Suggests that an understanding of sex differences in educational and occupational aspirations of adolescents would benefit from a perspective that emphasizes gender identification. The social identification approach (J. C. Turner, 1982) hypothesizes that these differences are a function of the degree of gender identification, which in turn is a function of salience of sex. According to W. J. McGuire and C. V. McGuire's (1981) distinctiveness postulate, gender becomes more salient as the number of opposite-sex siblings increases. To explore these gender salience effects, 50 male and 31 female 16–18 yr old students completed a questionnaire concerning their self-perceptions, examination performance, occupational choice, and comparisons with members of each sex. Large sex differences were obtained, showing that educational and occupational ambitions were inhibited among females. Correlational analyses revealed that number of opposite-sex siblings was more closely related to responses than were number of same-sex or total number of siblings. In particular, females' choice of science O-levels decreased as number of brothers increased. Results suggest that sex of sibling effects have an intergroup dimension.