Work

When Sarah Meets Lawrence: The Effects of Coeducation on Women’s College Major Choices

Year: 2023

Type: article

Abstract: 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.

Source: American Economic Journal Applied Economics

DOI: 10.1257/app.20210692

Authors: Avery Calkins, Ariel J. Binder, Dana Shaat, Brenden Timpe

Institutions: RAND Corporation, United States Census Bureau, American Institutes for Research, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Language: English

Topic: Career Development and Diversity

Subfield: Safety Research

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Gender equality, Reduced inequalities, Quality education

Open Access status: green