As countries become richer, the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates tends to widen. This discovery is sexual roles.
Women are underrepresented in many STEM fields around the world, and one influential explanation for this pattern is the gender equality paradox, in which gender-equal societies actually widen the gender gap in STEM.
Recent research has questioned whether this pattern actually reflects gender equality itself. Rather, this problem may arise because countries with more gender equality tend to be wealthier and share other historical and cultural characteristics. These criticisms have prompted researchers to reconsider whether societal affluence, rather than gender equality, may play a more direct role in shaping educational choices.
Wilfred Uunk and Mingming Li investigated whether changes in a country’s level of economic prosperity are associated with changes over time in the gender gap in STEM graduation. Rather than relying on comparisons between countries at a single point in time, they investigated whether increases in national wealth within the same country predicted changes in the likelihood of men and women graduating from STEM programs.
The researchers conducted a large-scale longitudinal analysis using publicly available national education data. They analyzed UNESCO records covering 113 countries over a 25-year period (1999-2023). After excluding countries with incomplete or inconsistent educational performance, the final dataset consisted of 1,124 country-years of observations, with a longitudinal analysis including 1,013 country-years after applying a 4-year lag between the country’s economic situation and graduation performance. The researchers measured societal affluence using World Bank estimates of purchasing power parity-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
The researchers calculated the odds that women and men would graduate in a STEM field rather than a non-STEM field. STEM includes engineering, information and communication technology (ICT), and the natural sciences, while non-STEM includes fields such as business, education, health, humanities, agriculture, services, and social sciences. They also looked at each STEM field separately and compared emerging and developed countries.
To isolate the effects of changing economic conditions, the analysis considered stable country characteristics and overall historical trends, allowing researchers to determine whether increases in national affluence within a country predict subsequent changes in STEM graduation patterns.
Uunk and Li found that increasing societal affluence was associated with a widening gender gap in STEM graduation. As countries become richer over time, men are increasingly more likely to graduate from STEM programs than women. This relationship was observed both in cross-sectional comparisons between countries and in longitudinal analyzes following within-country changes over many years.
Remarkably, this association is observed in both emerging and developed countries, suggesting that this pattern is not limited to highly developed countries.
The findings also called into question some existing theories about why these patterns occur. The researchers expected that women’s participation in STEM might decline as societies become more affluent, but in reality, the effect may have been more due to an increase in male STEM graduates rather than a significant decline in women. The magnitude of the association also varied by field of study, with engineering and ICT showing the strongest effects, while natural sciences showed a much weaker relationship.
Additional robustness analyzes using different statistical specifications, different time lags, broader definitions of STEM, and controls for national gender equality all led to similar overall conclusions and strengthened confidence in these findings.
Because these results are based on nationally aggregated graduation data rather than individual-level decisions, this analysis cannot directly identify the individual psychological or social mechanisms that lead individuals to choose a particular field of study. Graduation patterns also cannot fully distinguish whether economic circumstances primarily influence students’ initial choice of major, persistence in the program, or both.
Overall, the findings suggest that increasing societal affluence is associated with a widening gender gap in STEM graduation around the world and highlight that economic prosperity is a key factor in understanding this persistent gender gap.
The study, “Does social affluence increase the gender gap in STEM graduation? A longitudinal assessment,” was authored by Wilfred Uunk and Mingming Li.
