WASHINGTON — The well-documented gender pay gap can be blamed, at least partially, on what men and women choose to study in college, according to a report from Glassdoor.
Men and women tend to cluster into different fields in college, and those choices, by career path, put male graduates on a path for higher career earnings potential than female graduates, according to the company’s study.
Glassdoor studied data from more than 46,900 resumes to demonstrate how men and women sort into different college majors and how that translates into gender gaps in careers and pay later.
The study found that many majors that lead to high-paying careers in tech and engineering are male-dominated, while majors that lead to lower paying careers in social sciences and liberal arts are female-dominated.
Among the findings:
- The most male-dominated majors are mechanical engineering (89 percent male), civil engineering (83 percent male), physics (81 percent male), computer science and engineering (74 percent male), and electrical engineering (74 percent male).
- The most female-dominated majors are social work (85 percent female), health care administration (84 percent female), anthropology (80 percent female), nursing (80 percent female), and human resources (80 percent female).
- Nine of the 10 highest paying majors Glassdoor examined are male-dominated, and six of the 10 lowest-paying majors are female-dominated.
- Even across identical majors, men still make more. Across the 50 most common majors, men and women face an 11.5 percent pay gap on average in the first five years of their careers.
“Choice of college major can have a dramatic impact on jobs and pay later on,” Glassdoor said. “Our results suggest that gender imbalances among college majors are an important and often overlooked driver of the gender pay gap.”
Read the full Glassdoor report.
