research
Women in STEM
Research on the global gender gap in STEM that uses coordinated college admissions systems — where eligibility depends only on academic performance — to separate gender differences in preparation (the pipeline) from differences in what students choose to apply to (the choice gap). Women make up only 35% of STEM graduates worldwide, a share unchanged for a decade.
Target population
High-achieving university applicants in countries with centralized, score-based admissions; researchers and policymakers working on gender gaps in STEM
Key outcomes
- Pipeline gaps vary widely across countries and track stages of development — from female disadvantage in Uganda to advantage in Sweden
- The choice gap is large, negative and remarkably consistent across settings: even among top scorers, women are 23.7 percentage points less likely to rank a STEM program first
- Submitted to the Economics of Education Review (2026); 13 co-authors across 12 institutions