Pathways to Science and Engineering Bachelor's Degrees for Men and Women

Despite the striking reversal of the gender gap in educational attainment and the near gender parity in math performance, women pursue science and engineering (S/E) degrees at much lower rates than their male peers do. Current efforts to increase the number of women in these fields and close the gender gap focus on different life-course periods but lack a clear understanding of the importance of these periods and how orientations towards S/E fields develop over time. In this paper, we examine the gendered pathways to a S/E bachelor degree from middle school to high school and college based on a representative sample from the 1973-1974 birth cohort. Using a counterfactual decomposition analysis, we determine the relative importance of these different life-course periods and thereby inform the direction of future research and policy. Our findings confirm previous research that highlights the importance of early encouragement for gender differences in S/E degrees. But our findings also attest to the crucial role of the high school years as a decisive period for the gender gap while challenging the focus on college in research and policy. Indeed, if female high school seniors had the same orientation towards and preparation for S/E fields as their male peers, the gender gap in S/E degrees would be closed by as much as 82%