The gender pay gap has remained stubbornly fixed for many years, despite various proposals for narrowing it.  New research from the University of Chicago suggests that the problem may begin way back to our universities.

They argue that despite female graduates now outnumbering male graduates, many have specialized in lower-pay fields, such as education, but this is a situation that is beginning to change.

“Why have we seen women moving into fields as disparate as pharmacy, accounting, biology—in fact, becoming the majority of graduates for those fields of study,” the researchers say, “and not seen them make as much progress in other disciplines, such as engineering, computer science and economics?”

Career choices

The researchers concede that it’s difficult to distinguish between those women who aren’t interested in areas such as engineering, from those who are but avoided it for fear of discrimination.

To try and find out, the researchers assessed data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, with a particular focus on the career choices of college-educated people.

The analysis revealed that among the baby boomer generation, just one woman graduated from engineering for every 20 men.  By the time of the millennial generation, this had shifted to one woman for every five men.  Similar trends are also seen in the physical and life sciences, and among biology majors women now outnumber men.

“The knowledge we develop and use in our occupations is built upon all the specialized learning investments we’ve made our entire lives,” the researchers say. “For that reason, people who work as biochemical engineers have science and not humanities majors as their primary undergraduate major.”

Sliding doors

The researchers assigned each individual a potential wage based upon their choice of major at school.  This was determined by the typical wage such a person would receive if they were a native-born white male in his peak earning years.

This allowed the team to identify the potential wages of graduates across a number of years, and this revealed that, on average, women were often choosing majors with lower earning potential than their male peers.  While this has remained the case to the present day, it’s a gap that is certainly narrowing.

The researchers also point out that even if a woman chooses a ‘high-earning’ major, it’s still quite probable that they will end up working fewer hours and earning a lower salary.  For instance, when men study education, they were roughly twice as likely as women to end up in managerial roles, with women 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,” the researchers explain. “We see this in potential wages based on occupation, in the rank or prestige of the occupation, and even in the variety of occupations.”

They suggest that when the typical market returns are low, men will often disperse across a much wider set of occupations, whereas when the market returns of a degree are high, they focus on a narrow set of occupations.  The reasons for this happening is something the team plan to return to in future research.

“Campuses have a lot of women relative to men,” the researchers conclude. “I think firms have got to get ready for the new era. You’re going to have a lot of talented people that are, quote, ‘the wrong gender’ by the firms’ own standards. Keeping these women in the workforce and working is going to be very important.”