Abstract
This paper studies the relationship between cultural values and gender distribution across fields of study in higher education. I compute national, field and subfield-level gender segregation indices for a panel dataset of 26 OECD countries for 1998–2012. This panel dataset expands the focus of previous macro-level research by exploiting data on gender segregation in specific subfields of study. Fixed-effects estimates associate higher country-level religiosity with lower gender segregation in higher education. These models crucially control for potential segregation factors, such as labor market and educational institutions, and gender gaps in both self-beliefs and academic performance in math among young people.
Highlights
Women currently outnumber men in virtually all higher education systems in Western countries.women and men are strikingly concentrated in specific fields of study
The current paper considers whether cultural values play a role in horizontal gender segregation in higher education
This paper studies whether cultural values, in particular gender equality and religion, play a role in horizontal gender segregation in higher education
Summary
Women currently outnumber men in virtually all higher education systems in Western countries. The literature associates religiosity with more traditional gender roles and less favorable attitudes towards working women (Guiso et al 2003; Algan and Cahuc 2006) These accounts motivate the current paper to assess the impact of two focal cultural values, namely gender-egalitarian social norms and levels of religiosity, on the gender distribution of higher education graduates across fields of study. Gender gaps in math beliefs among young people are found to be correlated with higher gender segregation, which hints at an important link between attitudes acquired in early stages of a lifetime and later education choices. The disaggregated results suggest that religiosity might be conducive to lower gender segregation in the fields of agriculture and health and welfare, and in the subfields of mathematics and statistics, agriculture, forestry and fishery and social services.
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