Gender Segregation and Decision-Making in Undergraduate Course-Taking

Marissa E. Thompson, Tobias Dalberg, Elizabeth E. Bruch

Sociological Science November 8, 2024
10.15195/v11.a37


Gender segregation across fields of study is a persistent problem in higher education. Although a large body of literature has illustrated both gendered patterns in major choice as well as overall gender segregation across academic majors, comparatively less attention has been paid to an important building block for gender inequality: college courses. In this study, we examine the process of how students choose courses and the implications for gender segregation. Drawing on a unique data set that includes individual-level consideration and choice data from an entire cohort of university students choosing their first college courses, we examine both gender segregation at the college course level as well as the extent to which individual decision-making processes are themselves gendered. We find that course gender composition serves as a screener at the consideration stage, which suggests that gender segregation in decision-making emerges at the outset of the choice process. Once a subset of considered options has been established, final choices are much less influenced by course gender compositions. Furthermore, we find that courses are much more gender-segregated, on average, than majors themselves, illustrating that segregation is occurring at a more microlevel than commonly studied.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Marissa E. Thompson: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: marissa.thompson@columbia.edu

Tobias Dalberg: Department of Education, Uppsala University
E-mail: tobias.dalberg@edu.uu.se

Elizabeth E. Bruch: Department of Sociology, University of Michigan and the Santa Fe Institute
E-mail: ebruch@umich.edu

Acknowledgements: This research was supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences through grants R305B140009 (to Stanford University) and R305B170015 (to the University of Michigan). Results, information, and opinions solely represent the analysis, information, and opinions of the authors and are not endorsed by, or reflect the views or positions of, the grantors. In addition, we would like to thank Tom DiPrete, Sonia Giebel, Monique Harrison, Kaylee Matheny, Michelle Niemann, Mitchell Stevens, and members of the Curricular Structure & Choice Lab (at the University of Michigan) and the Pathways Network for generous feedback and comments on earlier versions of this project. We would also like to acknowledge and thank Sorathan (Tum) Chaturapruek for his work in developing the course selection tool used in this study and Andreas Paepcke for his generous help with procuring and structuring the data.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Code for this study is available through the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/ya3t8/. Due to the fact that the data includes potentially identifiable information, as well as to protect the anonymous case institution and students involved, the underlying data and the identity of the case university cannot be made public. Author access to the data was facilitated through the Pathways Network, which has an institutional relationship and data use agreement for access to the data. Questions about data access and requirements should be directed to Pathways Director, Professor Mitchell Stevens (stevens4@stanford.edu) at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. Access to the data is at the discretion of the anonymous case university on a case-by-case basis, and data may not be available to external researchers. For more details on the specific course search platform leveraged in this study, see Chaturapruek et al. (2021).

  • Citation: Thompson, E. Marissa, Tobias Dalberg, Elizabeth E. Bruch. 2024. “Gender Segregation and Decision-Making in Undergraduate Course-Taking.” Sociological Science 11: 1017-1045.
  • Received: August 10, 2024
  • Accepted: October 6, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a37


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