When Sarah Meets Lawrence: The Effects of Coeducation on Women's College Major Choicest

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Calkins, Avery; Binder, Ariel J.; Shaat, Dana; Timpe, Brenden
• 署名单位: RAND Corporation; American Institutes for Research; University of Nebraska System; University of Nebraska Lincoln
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20210692
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 1-34
• 关键词: gender-differences; science; students; education; sex; environments; experiences; COMPETITION; OCCUPATION; threat

摘要

We leverage variation in the adoption of coeducation by US women's colleges to study how exposure to a mixed-gender collegiate environ-ment 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.