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Gender differences in STEM university degrees: the Italian case
Marco Enea, Massimo Attanasio

##manager.scheduler.building##: Velodromo - Bocconi University
##manager.scheduler.room##: N05
Date: 2019-01-25 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Last modified: 2018-12-26

Abstract


The development of STEM competences is being considered as crucial for a continued innovation aimed to address societal problems. While, in the years, policies to promote and enhance STEM study courses were undertaken in several countries, the historically lower skill of girls in fields like science and mathematics still remains an issue in many OECD countries, as confirmed by the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). In this paper, we analyze gender differences in performance of students attending STEM and non-STEM Italian university degree courses, controlling for socio-demographic and territorial variables. We used the micro data of the 2015-16 freshmen cohort enrolled at an Italian bachelor university degree course, from the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research database. The number of University credits acquired in the first academic year was used as a performance measure as it is considered a proxy of the university success. The aim is to highlight any gender gap in the student performance, and the STEM courses where this gap is more critical, to increase the awareness and the sensibility to the problem.


Keywords


stem; gender gap; university