Do labour market outcomes influence why women are underrepresented in engineering?

Abstract Despite women outnumbering men in higher education, significant gender segregation persists in the choice of field of study. In the 2020/2021 academic year, only 8% of Spanish female students were enrolled in Engineering, compared to 29.5% of male students. This paper investigates the determinants of the underrepresentation of women in Engineering in Spain by examining whether differences in future labour market outcomes influence this anomaly. Using data from the 2019 University Graduate Employment Outcomes Survey, we find significantly worse labour outcomes for female Engineering graduates than for those in Health. Within fields, we find a larger gender gap in labour outcomes in Engineering than in Health. Our results suggest that gender segregation in higher education can be partly driven by differences in labour market expectations by field of study and gender. Many women who could pursue Engineering based on their pre-university track and accomplishments may opt instead for other fields like Health due to better career prospects: higher probability of finding a job and higher earnings, and lower likelihood of experiencing vertical and horizontal mismatches.