Exposure to More Female Peers Widens the Gender Gap in STEM Participation

Brenøe, Anne Ardila; Zölitz, Ulf

doi:10.1086/706646

Cited by 97 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…11 A large existing literature documents and analyzes the gender gap in STEM fields—see e.g., Ceci, Williams, and Barnett (2009), Hill, Corbett, and St. Rose (2010), Ceci et al (2014), Perez‐Felkner, McDonald, and Schneider (2014), Dasgupta and Stout (2014), Wiswall et al (2014), Ellis, Fosdick, and Rasmussen (2016), Fischer (2017), Sax et al (2016), Sassler et al (2017), and Brenoe and Zolitz (2018). Kahn and Ginther (2017) provide a review of this literature.…”

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confidence: 99%

HIGH SCHOOL CHOICES AND THE GENDER GAP IN STEM

2020

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Women who graduate from university are less likely than men to specialize in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM). We use detailed administrative data for a recent cohort of high school students in Ontario, Canada, combined with data from the province's university admission system to analyze the dynamic process leading to this gap. We show that entry to STEM programs is mediated through an index of STEM readiness based on end-of-highschool courses in math and science. Most of the gender gap in STEM entry can be traced to differences in the rate of STEM readiness; less than a fifth is due to differences in the choice of major conditional on readiness. We then use high school course data to decompose the gap in STEM readiness among university entrants into two channels: one reflecting the gender gap in the fraction of high school students with the necessary prerequisites to enter STEM, and a second arising from differences in the fractions of females and males who enter university. The gender gap in the fraction of students with STEM prerequisites is small. The main factor is the lower university entry rate by men-a difference that is due to the lower fraction of non-science oriented males who complete enough advanced level courses to qualify for university entry. We conclude that differences in course-taking patterns and preferences for STEM conditional on readiness contribute to male-female differences in the rate of entering STEM, but that the main source of the gap is the lower overall rate of university attendance by men.

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confidence: 99%

HIGH SCHOOL CHOICES AND THE GENDER GAP IN STEM

2020

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“…Male students increase their probability of enrolling in predominantly male majors by approximately 13 percentage points when attending an all-male class. Brenøe and Zölitz (2018) find that a ten percentage point increase in the proportion of female high school peers lowers women's probability of enrolling in STEM studies in college by approximately 7%. For men, a similar change in the gender composition raises STEM enrollment by approximately 2%.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Anelli and Peri (2019), on the other hand, studies a positively selected group in college preparatory high schools. Brenøe and Zölitz (2018) also study a positively selected group of students in the math track in high school, and also Zölitz and Feld (2017) study a positively selected group of students in their last year of their bachelor's program. Taken at face value, therefore, it seems that increasing the share of female peers increases STEM participation for low ability female students (Schneeweis and Zweimüller 2012) but decreases STEM participation for high-ability female students (Brenøe and Zölitz 2018; Zölitz and Feld 2017).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They show that the probability of male students enrolling in predominantly male majors increases when attending a > 90% male class. In contrast, Brenøe and Zölitz (2018) use data from high school math tracks in Denmark and find that a higher share of female high school peers lowers women's probability of enrolling in STEM studies and raises men's STEM enrollment. Similarly, Zölitz and Feld (2017) use data from the last year of a bachelor's program in business school in Maastricht and find that female (male) students have a lower (higher) probability of choosing a male-dominated major if the female share is higher.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Peer gender and educational choices

2019

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We use idiosyncratic variation in gender composition across cohorts within Norwegian lower secondary schools to analyze the impact of female peers on students' educational choices. We find that having more female peers in lower secondary school increases the probability of choosing STEM over language subjects in upper secondary school for both girls and boys. It also increases the probability of choosing a vocational track instead of an academic track. Registry data and survey evidence suggest that potential mechanisms are related to relative performance in STEM subjects, as well as less gender discrimination for girls and increased willingness to compete for boys.

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“…Although several papers study how peer gender affects specialization decisions, there is no consensus on the size or direction of these effects (Lavy and Schlosser 2011, Oosterbeek and Van Ewijk 2014, Hill 2015, Brenøe and Zölitz 2020, Hill 2017, Goulas et al 2018, Park 2018, Anelli and Peri 2019, Schøne et al 2019. These mixed results suggest it is important to pay attention to the specific context in which peer effects are studied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Peer Gender on Major Choice in Business School

Zölitz

Feld

2021

Management Science

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Business degrees are popular and lead to high earnings. Female business graduates, however, earn less than their male counterparts. These gender differences can be traced back to university, where women shy away from majors like finance that lead to high earnings. In this paper, we investigate how the gender composition of peers in business school affects women’s and men’s major choices and labor market outcomes. We find that women who are randomly assigned to teaching sections with more female peers become less likely to choose male-dominated majors like finance and more likely to choose female-dominated majors like marketing. After graduation, these women end up in jobs where their earnings grow more slowly. Men, on the other hand, become more likely to choose male-dominated majors and less likely to choose female-dominated majors when they had more female peers in business school. However, men’s labor market outcomes are not significantly affected. Taken together, our results show that studying with more female peers in business school increases gender segregation in educational choice and affects labor market outcomes. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, decision analysis.

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Exposure to More Female Peers Widens the Gender Gap in STEM Participation

Cited by 97 publications

References 40 publications

HIGH SCHOOL CHOICES AND THE GENDER GAP IN STEM

HIGH SCHOOL CHOICES AND THE GENDER GAP IN STEM

Peer gender and educational choices

The Effect of Peer Gender on Major Choice in Business School

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