Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Bangalore, India.
Department of Economics, University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany.
Demography. 2021 Jun 1;58(3):987-1010. doi: 10.1215/00703370-9101042.
This paper investigates gender-based segregation across different fields of study at the senior secondary level of schooling in a large developing country. We use a nationally representative longitudinal data set from India to analyze the extent and determinants of gender gap in higher secondary stream choice. Using fixed-effects regressions that control for unobserved heterogeneity at the regional and household levels, we find that girls are about 20 percentage points less likely than boys to study in science (STEM) and commerce streams as compared with humanities. This gender disparity is unlikely to be driven by gender-specific differences in cognitive ability, given that the gap remains large and significant even after we control for individuals' past test scores. We establish the robustness of these estimates through various sensitivity analyses: including sibling fixed effects, considering intrahousehold relationships among individuals, and addressing sample selection issues. Disaggregating the effect on separate streams, we find that girls are most underrepresented in the study of science. Our findings indicate that gender inequality in economic outcomes, such as occupational segregation and gender pay gaps, is determined by gendered trajectories set much earlier in the life course, especially at the school level.
本文调查了一个大型发展中国家中学阶段不同学科领域的性别隔离现象。我们使用来自印度的全国代表性纵向数据集，分析了高中阶段选择不同学科方向的性别差距的程度和决定因素。通过固定效应回归控制了地区和家庭层面的未观察到的异质性，我们发现与人文科学相比，女孩选择科学（STEM）和商业学科的可能性比男孩低约 20 个百分点。考虑到即使在控制了个体过去的考试成绩后，差距仍然很大且显著，这种性别差距不太可能是由认知能力上的性别差异驱动的。我们通过各种敏感性分析来验证这些估计的稳健性：包括兄弟姐妹固定效应、考虑个体之间的家庭内关系，以及解决样本选择问题。对不同学科方向的效果进行细分，我们发现女孩在科学研究中代表性最低。我们的研究结果表明，经济结果中的性别不平等，如职业隔离和性别薪酬差距，是由人生早期，尤其是在学校阶段，设定的性别轨迹决定的。
