The Global Gender Gap in STEM Applications: Pipeline vs. Choice

Isaac Ahimbisibwe, Adam Altjmed, Georgy Artemov, Andrés Barrios-Fernández, Aspasia Bizopoulou, Martti Kaila, Jin-Tan Liu, Rigissa Megalokonomou, José Montalbán, Christopher Neilson, Jintao Sun, Sebastián Otero and Xiaoyang Ye

No 176, Working Papers from VATT Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Women make up only 35% of global STEM graduates, a share unchanged for a decade. Using administrative data from ten centralized university admissions systems, we provide the first cross-national decomposition of the STEM gender gap into a pipeline gap (access and preparedness) and a choice gap (application decisions). The pipeline gap varies widely—from female disadvantage in Uganda to advantage in Sweden—yet the choice gap is strikingly consistent: even among top scorers, women are 25 percentage points less likely than men to apply to STEM. This stability across diverse contexts points to structural forces beyond local conditions.

Keywords: gender inequality; STEM gender gap; centralized application platforms; Labour markets and education; I23; I24; J24; fi=Koulutus|sv=Utbildning|en=Education| (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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