Where the girls are: Examining and explaining the gender gap in the nursing major
| Author | Jamin D. Speer |
| Date | 01 July 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12234 |
| Published date | 01 July 2020 |
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wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/sjpe Scott J Polit Econ. 2020;67:322–343.
© 2019 Scottish Econ omic Society
1 | INTRODUCTION
Gender differences in college major are well known. Men are overrepresented in engineering, physical sciences,
and business fi elds, while women make up the majo rity of most humanities, a rts, and health field s. These differ‐
ences have largely p ersisted over time (Turner & Bowen , 1999) and contribute to the gender wage g ap (Brown &
Corcoran, 1997).
Most studies of ge nder gaps in majo r focus on areas in whi ch women are under represented. T he lack of
women in STEM (scie nce, technolog y, engineering, an d mathematics) fi elds has drawn par ticular intere st from
Accepted: 30 September 2019
DOI: 10 .1111/sjpe.1 2234
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Where the girls are: Examining and explaining the
gender gap in the nursing major
Jamin D. Speer
I thank Marga ret Leighton an d Erica Blom for he lpful convers ations, and tw o anonymous refe rees for their e xcellent sugge stions.
Departm ent of Economics, Uni versity of
Memphis, Memphis, USA
Correspondence
Departm ent of Economics, Uni versity of
Memphis, Memphis, USA
Email: jspeer@memphis.edu
Abstract
The nursing major, at almost 90 % female, has one of the largest
gender gaps of any US college maj or. In trying to explain this
gap, I sort throug h candidate explanations and sh ow that nurs‐
ing is an outlier on many dim ensions. Relative to other majors,
it has some of the slowest e arnings growth, by far the highest
occupational concent ration, among the lowe st penalties for
part‐time work, among the l owest unemployment r ates, and
the highest level of job t asks focused on "hel ping others" and
"interacting wit h people". These factor s collectively acco unt
for most of nursing's huge ge nder gap. While I can not deter‐
mine causal mecha nisms, a major's associated job tasks (espe‐
cially "helping other s") account for most (55%) of the variance
in majors' gender compo sition, while nursin g's low part‐time
penalty is also imp ortant. Ear nings growth, ea rnings variance,
and the share of women out of t he labor force from the major
are less import ant, and acade mic factors like cours e require‐
ments and test scor es are unrelated to major gender gaps.
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SPEER
researcher s and policymakers (e.g., Be ttinger (2010, Griffit h (2010), Ost (2010), Fischer (2017)), and other r ecent
work has focused o n the scarcity of women i n the economics major (e. g., Owen (2010),Avilova and G oldin (2018)).
Differences in pre‐college academic preparation can explain a portion of some gender gaps in major, including in
STEM,(Speer 2 017), but other factors like la bor market preferences se em to explain more (e.g., Wis wall and Zafar
(2015), Turner and Bowen (1999)). However, to learn wha t drives gender ga ps, we must look not o nly at what
keeps women out of certain fields but also what attracts women to fields in which they are overrepresented.
In this paper, I focus on t he nursing major, which—at almo st 90% female in the Un ited States—has one of the lar g‐
est gender imba lances of any major. I ask why nursing is s o much more attract ive to women than to men. As a m ajor
that offers st rong earnings returns (espe cially early in the career) wi thout requiring high college ent ry test scores,
nursing would se em to be attractive to anyo ne, yet men continue to avoid it. T his puzzle motivates the a nalysis.
I proceed by seek ing candidate ex planations for th e extreme gende r imbalance in nur sing. I document t hat
nursing is an out lier on several dime nsions, all of which could contribu te to the gender gap. It of fers high initial
earnings (desp ite students having relati vely low college entry test sco res) but very slow growth in ear nings. This
could appeal to t hose who expect to take t ime off later in life and thus v alue early‐career ea rnings highly. Nursing
also has by far the hi ghest concentration of occ upational outcomes, whic h could appeal to ambiguit y‐averse stu‐
dents. Its gr aduates see among the l owest part‐time penaltie s of any major. Finally, nursing scores h igher than any
other major in the d egree to which its related j ob outcomes feature intera ction with people and h elping others.
Once these fac tors (and others) are a ccounted for, there is no puzzl e. The outlier chara cteristics of nur sing pre‐
dict its gend er composition fairly we ll in a regression. In other w ords, once you account for how ab normal nursing
is in so many areas, it i s no longer abnormal in term s of gender composition.
While I cannot de termine any causal mecha nisms for the gender gap in nur sing (or any other major), I can ask
which charac teristics best account fo r a major's gender compositio n. Job tasks—particular ly the “helping others"
nature of jobs—are the s trongest predictor of t he female share of a major. Given that n ursing ranks first of a ll ma‐
jors on this meas ure, it is a key reason that nursin g is so overwhelmingly fem ale. “Mechanical" ta sks, on the other
hand, are stro ngly associated with a major bei ng mostly male. The low par t‐time penalty a ssociated with nursing
is also import ant. Earnings, earni ngs growth, unemploymen t rates, and occupational con centration explain littl e.
In a separate anal ysis, I show that the average test sco res and course requirements o f the major also have little
relation to its ge nder composition.
While nursing is n ot the only overwhelmingl y female major—elementary e ducation is actually mo re heavily fe‐
male—it is worthy of p articular stud y for at least three key rea sons. First, give n the concerns with the l ack of women
in engineerin g and physical science s, it is critical to unde rstand why women are s o attracted to ascience‐related field
like nursing. Nur sing is not typically con sidered a STEM field,1 but it is pl ausible that if more women wer e to be at‐
tracted to th e traditional STEM field s, some of them would be drawn f rom the current pool of nursi ng majors. It is
thus import ant to understan d why so many women choose nur sing, not just why they do not c hoose a STEM major.
Second, we may be con cerned about the lack of men in n ursing and the persisten ce of its gender gap. As the
population of th e US ages, there is more demand for he alth care workers, and nursin g wages have risen rapidly
over time. The Bur eau of Labor Statistics pro jects that employment of nur ses will grow 15% between 2016 and
2026, much faste r than the average for all occupation s (Bureau of Labor St atistics, 2016). Filling these jo bs will
be easier if men be come more likely to choose the f ield. Why has this not happene d yet, and can we expect it to
change? As with wome n in STEM, understan ding why men do not choose nursi ng is important.
Third, nursin g carries high so cial returns in ad dition to the priva te returns. In a rece nt paper, for example,
Friedrich and Hac kmann (2018) show that n urses have large ef fects on pati ent health and mor tality. They esti‐
mate that a 10% fall in nur sing workers in Den mark led to a 13% increa se in nursing home p atient deaths. It is
thus critica l to understand who selec ts into nursing and why, given that th e health of the population is af fected,
and what might be kee ping other students cap able of being good nurses fro m enrolling. While I am not aware of
1 A recent except ion is Card and Pay ne (2017), which in cludes nursi ng as a STEM field.
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