Peer gender and educational choices
- PDF / 430,300 Bytes
- 35 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 59 Downloads / 214 Views
Peer gender and educational choices Pål Schøne1 · Kristine von Simson1
· Marte Strøm1
Received: 10 April 2018 / Accepted: 8 April 2019 © The Author(s) 2019
Abstract We use idiosyncratic variation in gender composition across cohorts within Norwegian lower secondary schools to analyze the impact of female peers on students’ educational choices. We find that having more female peers in lower secondary school increases the probability of choosing STEM over language subjects in upper secondary school for both girls and boys. It also increases the probability of choosing a vocational track instead of an academic track. Registry data and survey evidence suggest that potential mechanisms are related to relative performance in STEM subjects, as well as less gender discrimination for girls and increased willingness to compete for boys. Keywords Gender · Education · Peer effects JEL Classification I21 · J16
1 Introduction Girls are underrepresented in STEM subjects at all educational levels (Osborne et al. 2003; Charles and Grusky 2004). Field of education directs occupational paths (Altonji et al. 2012), and STEM education often leads to higher wages in the labor market
We thank seminar participants at the Institute for Social Research, EEA 2015, EALE 2016, University of Torino, and Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research for their valuable comments. This paper is a part of the projects “Education Trajectories: Choices, Constraints, and Contexts” and “Education to work transitions: the role of work capacity, skills and health” financed by the Norwegian Research Council (Grants 212340 and 247996). The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Data made available by Statistics Norway were essential to the research project.
B
Kristine von Simson [email protected] Pål Schøne [email protected] Marte Strøm [email protected]
1
Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway
123
P. Schøne et al.
(Kirkeøen et al. 2016). Policy makers have therefore been concerned about how to increase female participation in these subjects. The low participation rates among girls are somewhat puzzling as girls tend to perform as well as or better than boys in STEM subjects in lower grades.1 A possible explanation is that educational choices are also guided by social mechanisms connected to gender. We use Norwegian data to study how the gender composition of the learning environment affects educational choices of boys and girls. More specifically, we investigate whether the gender composition of students’ peers in lower secondary school (grades 8–10, age 14–16) influences educational choices in upper secondary school (grades 11–13, age 16–19). We also analyze the importance of two potentially significant mechanisms: the role of school performance (measured by grades in lower secondary school) and the role of social mechanisms (measured by pupils’ stated perceptions of discrimination and competitive behavior). Norway scores high on most gender equality indices.2 However, it is also a
Data Loading...
