Girls' preferences for STEM and the effects of classroom gender composition: new evidence from a natural experiment

Damiano Pregaldini, Uschi Backes-Gellner and Gerald Eisenkopf

No 152, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: We analyze how preferences for STEM fields moderate the effect of classroom gender composition on the math grades of girls in high school. Using data from Switzerland, we compare students who have self-selected into a STEM specialization with students who have self-selected into a language specialization. Our identification exploits the random assignment of students to classrooms after they have chosen their specialization. In contrast to the average effects found in previous studies, we find a negative effect of the proportion of female peers in the classroom on math grades for girls who have self-selected into the STEM specialization and a positive effect for girls who have self-selected into a language specialization. These results are important for policies affecting the gender composition of classrooms.

Keywords: classroom gender composition; girls' preferences for STEM; students' selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2018-06, Revised 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-gen and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/leadinghouse/0152_lhwpaper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Girls’ preferences for STEM and the effects of classroom gender composition: New evidence from a natural experiment (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0152

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sara Brunner (sara.brunner@business.uzh.ch).