IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/econjl/v133y2023i653p1773-1809..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Effective are Female Role Models in Steering Girls Towards STEM? Evidence from French High Schools

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Breda
  • Julien Grenet
  • Marion Monnet
  • Clémentine Van Effenterre

Abstract

We show in a large-scale field experiment that a brief exposure to female role models working in scientific fields affects high school students’ perceptions and choices of undergraduate major. The classroom interventions reduced the prevalence of stereotypical views on jobs in science and gender differences in abilities. They also made high-achieving girls in grade 12 more likely to enrol in selective and male-dominated science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs in college. Comparing treatment effects across the 56 role model participants, we find that the most effective interventions are those that improved students’ perceptions of science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers without overemphasising women’s under-representation in science.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Breda & Julien Grenet & Marion Monnet & Clémentine Van Effenterre, 2023. "How Effective are Female Role Models in Steering Girls Towards STEM? Evidence from French High Schools," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(653), pages 1773-1809.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:133:y:2023:i:653:p:1773-1809.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/uead019
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Angus Holford & Sonkurt Sen, 2023. "Racial Representation Among Academics and Students’ Academic and Labor Market Outcomes," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_471, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    2. Gomez-Ruiz, Marcela & Cervini-Plá, María & Ramos, Xavier, 2024. "Do Women Fare Worse When Men Are Around? Quasi-Experimental Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 16782, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:133:y:2023:i:653:p:1773-1809.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.