Anything you can do, I can do better (I just don't want to)

Robin and I were discussing Loretta's post about gender differences in self-efficacy and came to two different conclusions. Robin (as she states much more articulately in her reply on Loretta's post) thinks that the context/domain is a really important piece of this and that there are instances that we inspire less efficacy in boys. While we were talking about this, she brought up things like doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning around the house - things that are typically viewed as "female duties" - as some examples of when domains where men likely feel less efficacious than women. I responded that, on the contrary, I feel very efficacious in those things. In fact I think that I am better at those tasks that my girlfriend.

While that may just be me personally, I think it speaks to a larger topic that I brought up last week, the role of value. I think, and this is especially true for white men/boys, our culture inspires tons of efficacy, whether it be through providing them more opportunities to gain experiences (because of systemic racism and sexism, etc.) or having more visible role models from which to vicariously learn from. I think the reason most (white) men don't do things is not because they don't feel like they can (believe me, we do), but is that they don't see value in the pursuit. For example, fields like nursing and K-12 teaching are female-dominated careers. I think the reason for this gender disparity is not because men don't feel like they can't do these things (there are plenty of men in medical-related and other educational fields), but it is that these jobs are stereotypically female and thus do not fit into the "male identity", thus making pursuing these types of careers less valuable.

This is where my biggest hang-up with self-efficacy being the be-all end-all explanation for all of human behavior: alone, efficacy beliefs cannot explain why two people, who have the same level of efficacy for a particular task/pursuit, can still choose different things to engage in. Which is why I lean towards motivational theories like Expectancy-Value theory, which take all the good parts about self-efficacy and add in that value piece as an explainer of human motivation and behavior.