Gender and scientific vocation: A mechanisms-based case study

Despite the advances towards equality, the academic staff of the Spanish universities is still predominant by masculine. From the different filters that are avoiding the academic progress of women towards superior categories, those that take place in the application and enjoyment of research grants are especially important. In that period, it is taking place a differential process of subjectivities construction for women and men, the principal effect of which is a differential elaboration of professional expectations and preferences for the future. From the analysis of 40 interviews (18 conducted with grant staff and 22 with academic staff of the Autonomous University of Barcelona), and an online survey made to 258 scholarship holders of the AUB, we try to identify some causal mechanisms that help us to explain why is there a difference in the probability of forming of a preference order that places the scientific activities as a priority professional goal, that is to say, why men develop a scientific vocation more often than women.