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Women in Economics: Effects of a same-gender professor on students' educational outcomes and career choice

Grant number: 19/07424-7
Support Opportunities:Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
Start date: September 01, 2019
End date: March 27, 2020
Field of knowledge:Applied Social Sciences - Economics
Principal Investigator:Fernanda Gonçalves de La Fuente Estevan
Grantee:Bruna Pugialli da Silva Borges
Supervisor: Lena Cecilia Edlund
Host Institution: Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
Institution abroad: Columbia University in the City of New York, United States  
Associated to the scholarship:17/23593-8 - Gender in higher education, BP.DR

Abstract

Although women have surpassed men in many educational outcomes, female students remain underrepresented in math-intensive fields. The historic underrepresentation of women in math-intensive fields leads to a small share of female faculty members in those fields, generating a lack of role models to female students, which may influence their performance in higher education. This paper aims to test this hypothesis for the Brazilian case, investigating the existence of same-gender instructor effects in the Brazilian higher education system. Specifically, we will analyze whether having a higher share of female faculty members throughout undergraduate studies affects female students' educational outcomes and career choice. Our empirical analysis uses detailed administrative data from the Department of Economics at the University of Sao Paulo, containing information on students, teachers and courses characteristics. We merge this data with information on students that applied for a Master in Economics and data from the Brazilian formal labor market. We will exploit the random assignment of students to classes in the first semester to overcome endogeneity issues that arise from the self-selection of students into courses or professors. Our preliminary results suggest that female students' likelihood of passing a first-semester course increases by three percentage points when a female professor teaches the course.

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