CHICAGO, March 3 (Xinhua) -- A study posted on the website of the University of Chicago (UChicago) on Monday found that the gender gap in major choice strongly predicts gender wage gaps, even when accounting for occupation choice.
To examine the wage effects of these decisions, the researchers assigned each person a potential wage solely on the basis of their major choice: the wage the individual would receive if they were compensated like a native-born white male in his peak earnings years who studied the same subject. The idea was to isolate the specific effect of these choices.
When the researchers documented patterns in potential wages across five-year birth cohorts by gender, their analysis revealed that, on average, women chose majors with lower potential wages than men did.
But while there is an ever-present female penalty in potential wages, that gap has narrowed. Overall, women born in 1950 chose majors that reduced their potential wages, relative to their male counterparts, by 12.5 percent. For those born in 1990, that gap narrowed to 9.5 percent.
However, the research also suggested that women who major in a high-wage field such as chemical engineering may still end up working fewer hours and making less money.
Curious about the connections between educational specialization and occupational specialization, the researchers found that conditional on making the same major choice, women still sort into occupations with lower potential pay and fewer hours than their male peers.
The researchers also pointed out that although women are twice as likely to major in education, men who choose the same major are twice as likely to end up in high-level management roles. Women, on the other hand, are twice as likely to end up in administrative support roles.
"The differences in occupational paths for men and women who major in the same subject are stark," said Carolyn Sloane, a UChicago alum who is now an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Riverside. "We see this in potential wages based on occupation, in the rank or prestige of the occupation, and even in the variety of occupations.
"When market returns to a major are low, men tend to disperse into a wider set of occupations, kind of throw anything at the wall. In contrast, when market returns to a major are high, men hone in on a narrower set of occupations."
In the next step, the researchers will study why this happens.
A study of recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey found for baby boomers born between 1950 and 1954, only one woman majored in engineering for every 20 men. For millennials born 40 years later, the ratio changed to one woman for every five men. This trend is also recorded in the physical and life sciences. Among biology majors, women outnumber men.
