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We leverage variation in the adoption of coeducation by U.S. women’s colleges to study how exposure to a mixed-gender collegiate environment affects women’s human capital investments. Our event-study analyses of newly collected historical data find a 3.0-3.5 percentage-point (30-33%) decline in the share of women majoring in STEM. While coeducation caused a large influx of male peers and modest increase in male faculty, we find no evidence that it altered the composition of the female student body or other gender-neutral inputs. Extrapolation of our main estimate suggests that coeducational environments explain 36% of the current gender gap in STEM.

We leverage variation in the adoption of coeducation by US women’s colleges to study how exposure to a mixed-gender collegiate environment affects women’s human capital investments. Our event-study analyses of newly collected historical data find a 3.0–3.5 percentage point (30–33 percent) decline in the share of women majoring in STEM fields. While coeducation caused a large influx of male peers and a modest increase in male faculty, we find no evidence that it altered the composition of the female student body or other gender-neutral inputs. Extrapolation of our main estimate suggests that coeducational environments explain 36 percent of the current gender gap in STEM majors. (JEL I23, I26, J16, J24)