Editorial: Gendered Paths into STEM. Disparities Between Females and Males in STEM Over the Life-Span

1 Institute of Education, Universität der Bundeswehr München, Neubiberg, Germany, 2 Institute for Early Childhood and Primary Teacher Education, University College of Teacher Education Styria, Graz, Austria, Department of Education, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany, Department of STEM Education, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, United States, Department of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

Choosing a career path into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is a longitudinal process rather than an ad-hoc decision: experiences in childhood and school form individuals' interests, motivation, and ability beliefs-their expectations according to Eccles et al. (1983). These serve as basis for a decision against or toward STEM. However, while youth are considering careers, barriers can emerge, for example students may form stereotyped impressions of STEM as a "male" domain or develop perceptions that brilliance is a prerequisite for STEM attainments. Such assumptions downgrade expectations and often shape women's as well as minority students' self-evaluation of not being suited to a career in STEM.
Altogether, deciding for and following a specific career path is a developmental process (Gottfredson, 2005) of circumscription and compromise and female students often rule out STEM professions during this process. According to expectancy-value theories (EVT; e.g., Eccles et al., 1983), an individual evaluates during this process the balance between the personal expectations for success (resp. activity specific ability beliefs) and the subjective task value for achievement-related values, engagement, and persistence. This evaluation is influenced by the broader context of socializers and the milieu that frame the individual's perceptions and interpretations of experiences. Many papers in this Research Topic refer to this theoretical approach.
While EVT focus the interactions of the different factors during balancing expectancies and values, the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; Lent et al., 1994Lent et al., , 2018 proposes a step-wise model how personal and environmental variables interact to finally shape choices for performance domains and attainment. The model proposes that (1) person inputs (like predispositions and gender) as well as (2) background contextual affordances and societal characteristics (like cultural norms) shape (3) learning experiences that lead to individual attainments (10) which then may receive feedback from the environment. These learning experiences contextualize an individual's expectations regarding one's self-efficacy (4) and consequently also one's expectations about outcomes of one's actions and attainments (5). Task values such as utility values or interest (7) develop out of self-efficacy and outcome expectations and provide a basis for choice goals (8) and choice actions (9). However, contextual influences proximal to choice behavior (6) also influence interests and choices. Finally, (10) performance domains and attainments result from choice actions. When connecting the model of the SCCT with Gottfredson's (2005) assumptions of developmental processes, it becomes clear that choice actions do not simply result from predispositions, aptitudes, learning experiences, self-assessments, and interests but that contextual factors moderate such processes. While EVT describe the complex interactions of this moderation process (see Eccles et al., 1983), SCCT rather focuses the steps from the individual's personal inputs toward choice actions moderated by expectancies and contextual factors. These are especially important for female students' career paths into STEM because cultural stereotypes of STEM as a "male" domain as well as interactions with teachers and significant others may influence women to steer away from STEM to more "female" domains or to not consider a STEM career at all (see Ertl et al., 2017).
Against this background, the present Research Topic investigates career decisions, to illustrate the complexity and difficulties of steering more females onto a STEM career path, as well as to summarize evidence about female students' career paths into STEM. The Research Topic comprises 30 articles by 94 authors from ten countries in Europe, America, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. We will structure the editorial according to the factors of SCCT that include expectancies as well as the steps toward a decision for STEM.
(1) Person Inputs Person inputs may affect self-assessments, motivation, behavior, and thus attainments and can be seen as a starting point for a career path into STEM. If, for example, a person finds his or her aptitude in STEM lacking and conceives her or his talents being outside of STEM, she/he is hardly likely to go into a STEM field. (3) Learning Experiences Learning experiences play a major role in the model of Lent et al. (1994) by shaping a student's self-efficacy and outcome expectations. (4) Self-Efficacy and Self-Concept Expectations Self-efficacy expectations, for example, are subject-specific academic self-concept or ability beliefs. Self-efficacy expectations are a crucial aspect of career paths into STEM and often vary by gender. Large scale studies such as PISA (OECD, 2015) confirm that-even in case of identical academic outcomes and assessments-the self-concept for STEM is lower for female than for male students. Consequently, several contributions delve deeper into selfconcept and ability beliefs. For example, Watson et al. looks closer into the gender-related decline of the self-concept in mathematics. Factors contributing to such processes and to the development of a student's self-concept for STEM in general are investigated by Heyder et al. who explore the impact of teacher expectations as well as by Höhne and Zander who analyze the impact of belongingness. The impact of the self-concept on further developments is investigated by Han who analyzes the relationship between self-concept and achievements, by Luttenberger et al. as well as by Sobieraj and Krämer who focus on the relationship between self-concept and motivation in STEM, and by Saß and Kampa who investigate the impact of self-concept profiles on course selection. Finally, Dietrich and Lazarides as well as Vinni-Laakso et al. analyze to which degree motivational belief patterns are associated with math-related career plans.
(5) Expectations About Outcomes While self-efficacy expectations focus on the estimation of one's own ability, outcome expectations result from an assessment to which degree one's own skills are sufficient to achieve satisfactory outcomes in a field. In this sense, Kessels

(7) Interests and Task Values
Interests develop and deepen partly due to an individual's self-efficacy and outcome expectations-however, they are also shaped by contextual influences, for example, when interests are regarded as being inappropriate for a specific gender or when pursuing them seems to require too much effort (see for example Gottfredson, 2005) or task values (see Eccles et al., 1983). In this line, Song et al. investigate the impact of interest and effort on persistence. However, as Schorr discusses, interest is often subject to pre-conditions including personal competency and outcome expectations. Similarly, Sobieraj and Krämer analyze to which degree self-perceptions are conjoined with interestrelated characteristics such as intrinsic motivation. In this sense, Ertl and Hartmann as well as Watt et al. bridge the gap between interest and motivational profiles and respective choice goals and actions. Lazarides and Lauermann investigated this relation with respect to task values and career aspirations.

(8) Choice Goals
Choice goals can be defined as students' career aspirations that either can go along with a student's interests or reveal deviations. Here, Ertl and Hartmann analyze to which degree students' interests fit to their career aspirations and they find a worse fit between interest and aspirations for STEM than for other subjects. Watt et al. identify different motivational profiles and discuss that especially disengaged students show lower STEM aspirations. Motivation and motivational beliefpatterns and their impact on career plans are also discussed by Dietrich and Lazarides as well as by Lazarides and Lauermann, while Vinni-Laakso et al. analyze the impact of self-concept profiles on science course selection. Makarova et al., finally, expand the view on choice-goal section by discussing the impact of gender-science stereotypes on students' choice goals.
(9) Choice Actions Specific choice actions are less predominant in the Research Topic, possibly because the transformation from a choice goal to a choice action is difficult to observe and to operationalize. Despite of such difficulties, Saß and Kampa aim at explaining science course selection by the impact of self-concept profiles. Sobieraj and Krämer apply a retrospective approach for explaining differences between STEM and non-STEM master students with respect to competence, motivational, and volitional variables.
(10) Performance Domains and Attainment Ideally, those who have embarked on a STEM career and show persistence should experience satisfying outcomes such as high attainments (grades, professional success), feelings of belonging, joy, or life satisfaction. The two contributions which look closer into these concepts show that students' persistence in STEM is related to a feeling of belonging (Banchefsky et al.) and to interest (Song et al.

HETEROGENEITY OF STEM SUBJECTS
Although the term STEM raises the impression of being a homogeneous academic domain, there are different definitions which vary in their broadness and some of them even include life sciences and social sciences into STEM (for a discussion, see Ertl et al., 2017). This Research Topic focuses on the core of STEM that covers natural sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics. However, also within this narrow definition of STEM, authors point at differences between the subjects. They can be distinguished with respect to the proportion of women in a field (Ertl and Hartmann; Luttenberger et al.), with respect to specific subjects as for example in comparisons of mathematics and biology (Hoferichter and Raufelder); research can also refer to science in general (Watt et al.)

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
BE, SL, RL, MJ, and MP wrote this editorial.