STEM Major Choice and the Gender Pay Gap

By Andresse St. Rose, research associate, AAUW

A college education remains the most reliable path to economic mobility and security for millions of Americans. As women’s college enrollment continues to grow, so does the public’s perception that women are now on equal footing with men. Over the past fifty years, women’s increasing educational achievements have indeed helped to raise women’s earnings and narrow the overall gender pay gap from 59 cents for every dollar earned by men in 1960 to 77 cents in 2008 (Institute for Women’s Policy Research 2010). But although additional education has improved women’s earnings, it has not created a level playing field. Ironically, the pay gap among some college-educated workers is larger than it is for the population as a whole. While college-educated women working full time earn 80 percent as much as their male peers one year after graduation, after ten years, they earn only about 69 percent as much as their male counterparts (Dey and Hill 2007). In part, these gaps reflect different choices made by women and men, such as the critical choice of college major.

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