Why Girls Disown Business Education: A Qualitative Study

Though differences in the choice of university major between girls and boys are well-documented in academic literature, there is no stand-alone study that explores as to why girls are less inclined to opt business education than boys. This qualitative study, therefore, explored the same phenomenon using semi-structured interviews of girls who have recently made or are about to make their choices of university major. As the first step, a focused group discussion resulted in five major areas to develop a protocol for the semi-structured interviews from 20 girls by a team of female interviewers across five different universities including University of Balochistan (UOB), Balochistan University of IT, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS), Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University (SBKWU), Iqra University, Quetta and Alhamd Islamic University. There emerged four major categories that explained why girls disown business education which include ideological, psychological, professional and socio-cultural barriers to account for women being less inclined towards business education. In essence, we found that girls make deliberate and intelligent decisions by avoiding business education as their major.