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  • Item type:Publication,
    Relative Grades and Gender Differences in STEM Enrollment
    (University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany, 2025)
    Fuchs, Larissa;Pinger, Pia
    ;
    Seeger, Philipp
    Based on novel administrative and survey data from Germany, this study investigates the importance of relative STEM performance in high school for the gender gap in STEM enrollment. We first document that males display a higher relative STEM performance than females, which however mainly emerges from females' stronger achievement in non-STEM subjects. Our findings further reveal that a one-standard-deviation increase in grade-based STEM advantage raises the likelihood of pursuing a STEM degree by approximately 19 percentage points for males, but only by half as much for females. A decomposition analysis shows that 26% of the STEM gender gap could be attributed to differences in grade-based STEM performance if major preferences resembled those of males. However, relative grades are largely unimportant in an environment where preferences mirror those of females. This suggests that STEM performance differences have limited influence on females' decisions to pursue STEM degrees. While STEM advantage significantly impacts observed gender gaps in STEM enrollment, this effect is primarily driven by males.
  • Item type:Publication,
    A Model for Bridging the Gender Gap in STEM in Higher Education Institutions
    (Springer Nature, 2022)
    García-Holgado, Alicia
    ;
    García-Peñalvo, Francisco José
    ;
    García-Peñalvo, Francisco José
    ;
    García-Holgado, Alicia
    ;
    Dominguez, Angeles
    Women present a historic and worrying gap in science and technology-related disciplines, generally knowns as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), except in the case of health professions. A holistic approach is needed to support policymakers worldwide in bridging the gender gap in STEM, in which higher education institutions have a crucial role. Promoting this active implication of the universities in this problem, in the European project Building the future of Latin America: engaging women into STEM (W-STEM), a model to modernise the government, management and operation of higher education institutions in Latin America to improve attraction, access to and retention of women in STEM programs has been developed. This situation is not exclusive to Latin American countries, it is a global problem, so the results of the W-STEM project are also applicable to European partners and transferrable worldwide. The main goal of this chapter is to describe the W-STEM model based on three years of working on strategies and mechanisms to improve the attraction, access, guidance, and retention processes to engage more women in STEM programs. The model has been thoroughly tested in eleven institutions in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Mexico, involving public and private institutions with different gender equality situations.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Explaining Course Enrollment Gaps in High School: Examination of Gender-Imbalance in the Applied Sciences Open PDF 
    (2023)
    Freeman, JA
    ;
    Gottfried, MA
    ;
    Odle, TK
    Federal policy in the United States has urged high schools to expand offerings in career and technical education (CTE) coursework to address persistent gender inequities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical (STEMM) fields. Unfortunately, gender composition in engineering and health sciences CTE enrollment is highly imbalanced and reflects postsecondary and labor market trends. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we use decomposition techniques to examine which student, family, and school factors explain gender-imbalanced enrollment in STEMM-focused CTE courses. The results indicate student occupational expectations were the largest contributor to gender gaps across content areas.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Preschool Children’s Beliefs about Gender Differences in Academic Skills Open PDF 
    (2013)
    del Río, M. Francisca
    ;
    Strasser, Katherine
    Evidence from different Latin American countries shows a gap in the academic achievement of girls and boys. Chilean children’s achievement is a case in point, with the gender gap being especially large for mathematics achievement. These differences can be explained partly from the viewpoint of beliefs and implicit theories. Research in this field has focused mainly on elementary and secondary students, and there is no relevant data on preschool children. This study examines Chilean kindergarten children’s beliefs about differences in the academicals skills of girls and boys. Eighty-one preschool children (34 girls, mean age 5 years and 11 months) were recruited from schools serving a middle SES population from downtown Santiago. An instrument to test children’s implicit beliefs about gender differences in academic ability was adapted from previous research. Results support the hypothesis that boys and girls at the age of 5 already hold stereotypical expectations about boys’ and girls’ academic achievement. When asked about which school subject a character liked more, was better at, and found easier, participants showed no preference between math and language when reasoning about a male character, but they indicated that a female character would find math harder, perform worse at it, and like it less than language. These responses did not differ according to the gender of the participating children. Implications of these findings are addressed and limitations and future research are discussed.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Gender Gaps at the Academies Open PDF 
    (2022)
    Card, David
    ;
    DellaVigna, Stefano
    ;
    Funk, Patricia
    ;
    Iriberri, Nagore
    Historically, a large majority of the newly elected members of the National Academy of Science (NAS) and the American Academy of Arts and Science (AAAS) were men. Within the past two decades, however, that situation has changed, and in the last 3 years women made up about 40 percent of the new members in both academies. We build lists of active scholars from publications in the top journals in three fields – Psychology, Mathematics and Economics – and develop a series of models to compare changes in the probability of selection of women as members of the NAS and AAAS from the 1960s to today, controlling for publications and citations. In the early years of our sample, women were less likely to be selected as members than men with similar records. By the 1990s, the selection process at both academies was approximately gender-neutral, conditional on publications and citations. In the past 20 years, however, a positive preference for female members has emerged and strengthened in all three fields. Currently, women are 3-15 times more likely to be selected as members of the AAAS and NAS than men with similar publication and citation records.