Beyond the Entry Point: A Cross-National Analysis of Gender Gaps in College Enrollment by Academic Disciplines

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12: Expansion of Higher Education

Abstract

Since the 1980s, women’s enrollment in higher education has grown dramatically and gradually surpassed their male counterparts in many countries around the world. However, women have made uneven inroads into various fields of study and remain severely underrepresented in historically male-dominated disciplines such as engineering. Existing research tends to treat these dynamics as products of domestic forces, thereby overlooking the important role that international organizations and initiatives play in shaping women's participation in higher education. Using an originally collected, vastly expanded longitudinal dataset of 155 countries derived from UNESCO sources, I pay close attention to both domestic contexts and particularly global discursive changes that shape gender ratios in college enrollment by study fields. Extending prior work on educational sex segregation (e.g. Charles and Bradley 2009), I examine whether liberal-egalitarian societal institutions – while generally supporting women’s participation in higher education – may paradoxically lead to greater gender inequalities in STEM fields, as students empowered to choose their own majors indulge in traditional gender ideologies. In addition, I explore the effect of an increasingly nuanced and globalized definition of gender-based educational inequality, which has recently included women’s underrepresentation in STEM, on narrowing enrollment gaps in traditionally male dominated fields. My project offers a cultural sociological analysis of both national characteristics and especially global influences that have shaped gender inequality beyond the entry point of college.

Author

• Zaoying (Cherry) Ji, University of Massachusetts, Amherst