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More women should major in business or engineering to close pay gap: Study

David Brancaccio Dec 10, 2013
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More women should major in business or engineering to close pay gap: Study

David Brancaccio Dec 10, 2013
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If young women want to close the gender pay gap, they should pay more attention to their major than their university. A new study suggests that having more women getting degrees from Stanford or Harvard matters far less than having more women getting degrees in engineering or business. Gokhan Savas, co-author of the study and an assistant professor at Luther College in Iowa, speculates that it’s probably* about the enduring power of old boy networks.

“Male students who go to those elite institutions, but major in literature or history or social sciences or art, they are still able to get fancy jobs in Wall Street,” Savas says.

Women? No such luck.

Click the player above to hear more, and see the study’s abstract here


CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misrepresented Gokhan Savas’ statement about “old boys clubs.” The text has been corrected.

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