Believing in equality, acting on stereotypes: implicit and explicit gender bias in students’ professional judgements in post-compulsory education

Gender stereotypes continue to shape students’ educational trajectories and professional aspirations in post-compulsory education, often through mechanisms that operate below conscious awareness and therefore resist conventional equity interventions. This study examines how implicit and explicit gender beliefs influence university students’ predictive judgements about professional roles. Using a concurrent nested mixed-methods design, we combined the Implicit Association Test, the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, the Gender Role Attitudes Scale and a gender–career pronoun prediction task with qualitative analysis of open-ended justifications from 51 first-year students across Chilean universities. Results showed no significant gender differences in explicit measures; however, longer reaction times in stereotype-inconsistent blocks indicated increased cognitive load when processing counter-stereotypical information. Regression models identified implicit associations as the strongest predictors of stereotype-consistent responses, with explicit beliefs exerting weaker, complementary effects. Qualitative findings revealed persistent gendered narratives linking women with communal roles and men with agentic attributes, even among participants who expressed egalitarian attitudes. This disconnect between consciously endorsed values and applied judgements has direct consequences for academic guidance, student retention and institutional equity policy. The findings underscore the need for interventions addressing both automatic and deliberate forms of bias in pedagogy, careers advice and institutional equity frameworks.