TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Ahimbisibwe, Isaac
AU  - Altjmed, Adam
AU  - Artemov, Georgy
AU  - Barrios-Fernandez, Andres
AU  - Bizopoulou, Aspasia
AU  - Kaila, Martti
AU  - Liu, Jin-Tan
AU  - Megalokonomou, Rigissa
AU  - Montalban, Jose
AU  - Neilson, Christopher A.
AU  - Sun, Jintao
AU  - Otero, Sebastian
AU  - Ye, Xiaoyang
        TI  - Pipeline vs. Choice: The Global Gender Gap in STEM Applications
        PY  - 2025/Aug/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18092
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18092
        AB  - Women account for only 35% of global STEM graduates, a share that has remained unchanged for a decade. We use administrative microdata from centralized university admissions in ten systems to deliver the first cross-national decomposition of the STEM gender gap into a pipeline gap (academic preparedness) and a choice gap (first-choice field conditional on eligibility). In deferred-acceptance platforms where eligibility is score-based, we isolate preferences from access. The pipeline gap varies widely, from -19 to +31 percentage points across education systems. By contrast, the choice gap is remarkably stable: high-scoring women are 25 percentage points less likely than men to rank STEM first.
        KW  - centralized application platforms
KW  - STEM gender gap
KW  - gender inequality
        ER  -