The Social Pipeline: How Friend Influence and Peer Exposure Widen the STEM Gender Gap

Abstract

Individuals’ favorite subjects in school can predetermine their educational and occupational careers. If girls develop weaker preferences for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), it can contribute to macrolevel gender inequalities in income and status. Relying on large-scale panel data on adolescents from Sweden (218 classrooms, 4,998 students), we observe a widening gender gap in preferring STEM subjects within a year (girls, 19 to 15 percent; boys, 21 to 20 percent). By applying newly developed random-coefficient multi Show more