Gender Differences in the Choice of Major: The Importance of Female Role Models

Abstract

We conducted a field experiment aimed at increasing the percentage of women majoring in economics. We exposed students enrolled in introductory classes to successful and charismatic women who majored in economics at the same university. The intervention significantly impacted female students’ enrollment in further economics classes, increasing their likelihood to major in economics by 8 percentage points. This is a large effect, given that only 9 percent of women were majoring in economics at baseline. Since the impacted women were previously planning to major in lower-earning fields, our low-cost intervention may have a positive effect on their future incomes. (JEL A22, C93, I23, I26, J16)

Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India

“…Our study contributes to the literature on endogenous preferences, specifically on the formation of gender-related preferences. 4 Besides political quotas (Beaman et al, 2009) and television (Jensen and Oster, 2009;La Ferrara et al, 2012), other factors that have been shown to make attitudes more gender-progressive include mothers' employment (Fernandez et al, 2004), having daughters or sisters (Washington, 2008;Healy and Malhotra, 2013), serving with women in the military (Dahl et al, 2018), having teachers who hold weaker gender stereotypes (Carlana, 2019), and having female role models (Porter and Serra, 2019).…”

Women’s empowerment, agricultural extension, and digitalization: Disentangling information and role model effects in rural Uganda

“…The number of children enrolled in school and school-related expenditures went up as well (Bernard et al, 2015). Porter and Serra (2019) observed an increase in female student enrollment in an intermediate economics class after women alumni's testimonies. The proximity of women promoters in Nicaragua positively affected investments in education and nutrition (Macours & Vakis, 2014).…”

“…For instance, an emerging literature investigates the importance of role models in challenging gender stereotypes and empowering women in domains where they are active but lack voice and agency. Role models are defined as individuals who inspire people to make similar choices, or adopt a similar set of values, and to achieve comparable results (Madhavan & Crowell, 2014;Porter & Serra, 2019).…”

“…Female students in the U.S. were more likely to opt for economics after women alumni pointed out the importance of studying economics for success in their careers (Porter & Serra, 2019).…”

Advisor Value-Added and Student Outcomes: Evidence from Randomly Assigned College Advisors

“…By showing that effective advisors increase female STEM degree attainment, we also join a growing literature aimed at identifying strategies to address women's persistent underrepresentation in the sciences. Previous work has highlighted that women are more likely to choose STEM majors and persist in STEM careers when they are exposed to female instructors, role models or advisors in the sciences (Blau et al, 2010;Carrell, Page and West, 2010;Canaan and Mouganie, 2019;Porter and Serra, 2019). However, having a sufficient number of women take on the role of mentors might be difficult given the shortage of females in these fields and since on average, women in academia already allocate more time for service than men (Guarino and Borden, 2017;Buckles, 2019).…”