While women have reached or surpassed the educational attainment of men, gender segregation across higher education fields has changed relatively little in recent years (Barone, 2011; England, 2006; Mann & DiPrete, 2013). Female students continue to choose fields within the arts and humanities while male students continue to be overrepresented in math, sciences and engineering. This gender specific pattern of field of study choices is consequential because it contributes to gender income gap (Bobbitt-Zeher, 2007; Kim, Tamborini, & Sakamoto, 2015; Ochsenfeld, 2014) – but also gender inequalities across other labour market outcomes such as unemployment or occupational attainment (Reimer & Steinmetz, 2009; Roksa, 2005). Comparative research can identify features of educational systems that are related to higher or lower levels of gender segregation across fields of study. However, only very few papers can be found that have systematically studied determinants of gender segregation in higher education in a cross country perspective (Charles & Bradley, 2009; Charles & Bradley, 2002). Research about the possible intersection between students’ social origin and gender segregation is even scarcer and to our knowledge, no paper has systematically studied whether the linkage between social origin and gender segregation in higher education varies systematically across different country contexts.

To this end the goal of this paper is to analyze to what extent and why levels of gender segregation in higher education fields vary across different social groups in a cross-country comparative perspective. We expect three mechanisms to produce differential gender effects by social origin: 1) socialization according to gender norms; 2) status maintenance; and 3) performance differentials:

1) Following socialization theories, we expect that levels of gender segregation in field of studies will be higher among offspring from lower social origins since higher origin females (or males) might be more prone to make more untraditional field choices (Helbig & Leuze, 2012). This socialization argument should hold in particular when it comes to preference building during adolescence. In a comparative  perspective, we expect lower levels of gender segregation in countries with large class-based inequalities, as the upper classes represent a smaller portion of the population.  2) Based on the results of Charles and Bradley (2009) we expect higher levels of gender segregation in countries with higher levels of postindustrialism, female labor force participation and a larger tertiary sector. At the same time, gender-based decisions should be less pronounced in countries with relatively strong class-based inequalities, as the upper classes seek to secure the competitive advantage for sons and daughters likewise and thus guide them to traditional prestigious (male) fields of study. 3) Intergenerational transfer of cultural capital seems to be more important for reading and language skills than for MINT skills (e.g., Hansen/Mastekaasa 2006). Thus, higher class boys should have a smaller comparative advantage, compared to lower class boys, and higher class girls should have a higher comparative advantage, compared to lower class girls.

Taking these mechanisms together, we do expect a significant and relevant interaction between gender and social origin on choice of field-of-study. However, we do expect only moderate variation across countries. The comparative advantage mechanism should work similarly across countries. For socialization and status maintenance mechanisms, we expect limited variation due to different class structures in the observed countries. 

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