St. Catherine University SOPHIA Antonian Scholars Honors Program School of Humanities, Arts and Sciences 5-2021 Educating Women to Lead: The Role of Women-Focused Institutions Adriana Cortes-Mendosa Follow this and additional works at: https://sophia.stkate.edu/shas_honors Part of the Higher Education Commons, Leadership Studies Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Draft #3 Updated: 5/29/21 Educating Women to Lead: The role of women-focused institutions Adriana Cortes-Mendosa Abstract This paper explores the importance of women-focused institutions in the choice of college major for women. There is ample literature showing that post-schooling specialization, such as occupation choice, has a significant impact on the gender wage gap (Petersen, Trond, and Laurie A. Morgan. 1995, Rita Asplund and Sami Napari 2011, Hsiung 2020, Sterling, Adina D., et al. 2020). However, there is less evidence in the existing literature on how pre-market human capital specialization, such as major choice impacts the gender wage gap. In this research I use institution level data by major from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for the year 2016. The data includes 30 women-focused institutions, which is based on a 95% women fall enrollment threshold, and 2,159 co-educational institutions in the U.S. In my analysis I find a positive relationship between attending a women-focused institution and majoring in a male- dominated field. There are many endogenous and exogenous variables for which I have no control over that can be impacting my results. For example, not considering the impact that staff and faculty role modeling has on student major choice or the fact that students are choosing the college they attend which may imply inherit differences in people who chose to attend a women’s institution versus a co-educational institution may cause omitted-variable bias and thus my results cannot be interpreted as a causal relationship between women-focused institutions and choice of major, but the correlation suggests a need for future research. Women-focused institutions may be particularly well placed to encourage women to pursue fields that have been traditionally male-dominated. Draft #3 Updated: 5/29/21 Introduction: Women make up about half of the U.S. population. Women also make up the majority of undergraduate students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, according to the NCES 57% of college students were female in 2017 (NCES 2017). With the increasing growth in the supply of college-educated women, it is important to consider the factors that affect the ever-prevalent gender wage gap, especially among highly educated men and women. There is a large pool of literature with evidence that post-schooling labor market specialization, such as occupational choice, is an important determinant of gender wage gap and gender employment gap (Sloane, et al. 2019). However, pre-market specialization, such as major choice, has not received nearly as much attention as occupational choice. The list of major choices offered by U.S. higher education institutions is extensive, making it a crucial part of pre-market labor specialization. Another factor that has not received much attention in the literature but is of high importance in major choice is institution choice. Most majors are offered at a wide range of institutions and students must choose where to study in addition to what to study. In this paper I investigate whether attending a women-focused institution1 increases women's probability of pursuing a male-dominated major2 and add to the existing literature which has primarily focused on the impact that women's colleges have on women's overall academic success. Women’s academic success has been described in many ways in past literature, not only focusing on women's grades as a sign of academic success but also considering academic challenge, leadership roles held, campus engagement, and connectedness to faculty and other students on campus (Kinzie et al. 2007). Given this evidence that women- focused institutions impact academic outcomes, it seems plausible that these institutions will also impact major choice. Using institution data by major from the NCES data base I use an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression to test my hypothesis that women focused institutions positively impact female students’ decisions to pursue a male dominated major. I find that women-focused institutions do have a positive relationship with women majoring in a male-dominated field, even when measuring male-dominated majors at different male enrollment thresholds. 1 Women-focused institutions are described in this paper as colleges or universities with a 95% or higher enrollment rate of women. 2 Male-dominated majors are majors that have historically had more men than women pursuing a degree in the major and are more specifically subject to a percentage threshold in future analysis. Draft #3 Updated: 5/29/21 Literature Review: Historically women's colleges had an enormous impact on women's ability to attend college, especially in the mid-19th century a time in which many people believed that the place of a woman was in the home, therefore making it unnecessary for them to receive any education (Women’s College Coalition 2021). However, now that women make up most of the college undergraduate population it is important to re-evaluate the added value that women's colleges have to offer. It is especially important to re-evaluate the importance of women’s colleges because the number of women’s colleges has been steadily decreasing with more and more women colleges shifting to co-ed institutions to mitigate the decreasing enrollment of women in women colleges. Fewer than 5% of female college students attend women’s colleges and as of March 2021, there are only 37 women’s colleges in the U.S, a stark decrease from 230 in 1960 (Women’s College Coalition 2021). Previous literature has shown that women's colleges positively impact women's academic success – this is important because even though women make up 57% of the undergraduate population (NCES 2017), women still face gendered discrimination. Gender bias and gendered norms and expectations contribute to women avoiding male-dominated majors due to biases against women (Bettinger and Long 2005). Research by the American Association of University Women and American University has shown that pervasive gender stereotyping exists in the typical mixed-gender classroom, preventing girls from reaching their full potential. This research has shown that 1) boys receive more praise than girls when calling out in class, 2) teachers call on and respond more positively to boys than girls, and 3) teachers let boys problem solve on their own but help girls with problem-solving tasks (AAUW, 1995). Single gender classrooms avoid this dynamic. Women who attend women's colleges are more engaged in educationally purposeful activities, receive higher levels of academic challenge, have more opportunities to be in leadership positions, and interact more frequently with faculty in the college (Kinzie, et al. 2007). This behavior is important as it can impact student’s success while in college and their future success when they enter the labor market. The welcoming environment that is found in women's colleges can in part be attributed to the differences in the faculty/staff composition of the college with regards to gender. Women's colleges employ an average of 61.4% female Draft #3 Updated: 5/29/21 faculty, an overwhelming amount when compared to coeducational institutions which employ less than 50% of female faculty (Sax, Lozano, and Korgan 2014). There is evidence that differences in leadership styles between women and men exist, with men's leadership encouraging more individualized work which can lead to competition while women's leadership often encourages working together which in turn creates a more welcoming environment for staff and faculty and in extension for students as well (Gardner 2019). The environment created by different leadership styles can in turn affect students’ major choices and their academic success. Research shows a key mechanism is a role-model effect on women and minority undergraduates from faculty at the universities. There is strong evidence that suggests that female faculty are instrumental in encouraging women to enroll and excel in subjects in which they are underrepresented (Bettinger, Long 2005). The proportion of classes taken with a professor that is “like-you” has shown to have positive effects on the probability that a student will choose that major (Rask and Bailey 2002). Women’s colleges have many positive impacts on female students’ college experience which is why it is imperative that research be done to find out whether they can be more a vital resource to encourage women to pursue fields that have been traditionally male dominated. Women tend to major in fields that often lead to lesser paying jobs than those of men who, for the most part, major in male-dominated fields (Altonji, et al. 2016). Studying women’s undergraduate major choice can help us better understand gender differences in the labor market. Differences in major account for a significant part of the wage gap, given that most male- dominated fields are higher paying than those that women typically choose. Seminal studies have shown that gender differences in majors account for about 20 percent of the total male-female wage gap which is significantly higher than the within-major wage gap (Charles Brown and Mary Corcoran 1997). Data and Methodology: To determine whether women-focused institutions impact women's choice of major, more specifically whether they are more likely to choose a male-dominated major, I used data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) that was accessed through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The data allowed me to create a women- focused institution variable coded as 1 for women-focused and 0 otherwise.