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.

中文翻译：

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本科生课程中的性别隔离和决策


不同研究领域的性别隔离是高等教育中一个长期存在的问题。尽管大量文献说明了专业选择的性别模式以及学术专业之间的整体性别隔离，但对性别不平等的一个重要组成部分——大学课程——的关注相对较少。在这项研究中，我们研究了学生如何选择课程的过程以及对性别隔离的影响。利用一个独特的数据集，其中包括来自选择他们第一门大学课程的整个大学生群体的个人层面的考虑和选择数据，我们研究了大学课程层面的性别隔离以及个人决策过程本身的性别化程度。我们发现，课程性别构成在考虑阶段起到筛选作用，这表明决策中的性别隔离出现在选择过程的一开始。一旦确定了所考虑的选项的子集，最终选择受课程性别构成的影响就会小得多。此外，我们发现，平均而言，课程的性别隔离程度比专业本身要严重得多，这表明隔离发生在比通常研究的更微观的层面上。