– Gender streaming among STEM fields appears already in secondary school.
– Girls are under-represented in physics, IT and advanced mathematics.
– This pattern is not driven by gender differences in prior achievement in numeracy.
– Socio-economic disadvantage has a greater adverse effect on boys than on girls.
– There is significantly less gender streaming among STEM fields in all-girls schools.
– Students with a language background other than English choose STEM fields with greater frequency than other students, reflecting their comparative advantage, while exhibiting more markedly gendered subject choices, indicating a role for cultural factors.
2018 - Gendered Choices of STEM Subjects for Matriculation Are Not Driven by Prior Differences in Mathematical Achievement
The data were provided by the Victoria Department of Education and Training (DET). The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA), which delivered the VCE assessments, also collected unit record administrative data from NAPLAN, matched it to VCE records and provided the data to DET. This study follows the full 2008 cohort of seventh-grade students in Victoria through to 2013, when they reach twelfth grade. There were 66,686 seventh-grade students in 2008. From these were omitted: 3,744 students aged 13 or over in May 2008; 1,076 students who lacked both seventh-grade and ninth-grade NAPLAN scores; and 3,395 students who lacked both ninth-grade NAPLAN scores and VCE completion. The remaining 58,471 students serve as the main sample for this analysis.
DV: STEM subject choice
Student-level IVs: gender, race, SES, language background
School-level IVs: government affiliation; school median standardized seventh-grade numeracy score among all students, among female students and among male students (3 variables); median SES category; and share of female students in the school