Yuki Takahashi

Female students may not choose STEM programs in college, even when they excel in mathematics, because these programs are male-dominated and would make them a minority. Using an incentivized discrete choice experiment, we show that the gender ratio affects both female and male students' college choices: they prefer gender-balanced programs over male- or female-majority programs, and they prefer being a majority rather than a minority, especially female students. A decomposition reveals that students avoid being a minority mainly because they anticipate difficulty fitting into those environments. Because of these preferences, the low female share in STEM decreases female students’ probability of choosing STEM, especially among those with high mathematics ability, and leads male students with low mathematics ability to crowd out female students with high mathematics ability. These findings suggest that the low female share in STEM is self-perpetuating despite being inefficient, calling for policy interventions to break this vicious cycle.

Introductory STEM courses may disproportionately deter women by understating these fields' societal relevance or presuming prior technical knowledge. Leveraging a curricular reform in an introductory computer science course at a liberal arts college that shifted emphasis from technical foundations to social relevance, we show that the reform increased women's likelihood of majoring in computer science compared with men without diminishing their academic performance. This effect operates primarily through greater retention of women who entered intending to major in computer science. The reform also increased women's earnings after graduation by shifting them into higher-paying occupations.

While successful teamwork often involves correcting colleagues' mistakes, it may have negative interpersonal consequences. In an experiment, I show that it also has negative economic consequences: individuals are less willing to collaborate with those who have corrected them, even when the correction benefits the team. The data are consistent with negative feedback aversion: individuals who initially received positive feedback about their ability are significantly less willing to collaborate with those who corrected their mistakes, but not with those who corrected their right actions. Additionally, I find that men, but not women, are more tolerant of women who corrected their right actions. It is potentially due to men's beliefs about women's abilities, making women's corrections of their right actions less ego-threatening. This reluctance to work with those who provide corrective feedback can undermine teamwork, and mixed-gender teams may attract less competent women due to gendered sorting.

Light abuses and threats to receive them at home can deteriorate individuals' well-being, even in the absence of severe physical injury. Leveraging Russia's criminal law reform that decriminalized minor domestic violence, I first confirm that the number of domestic violence incidents classified as criminal offenses against female partners indeed decreased sharply after the reform. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I then show that the reform reduced married women's life satisfaction, increased depression, and increased college-educated married women's alcohol intake. Suggestive evidence indicates that the reform contributed to a decline in new marriages, while the divorce rate remained unchanged. These changes are unlikely to stem from shifts in violence outside the household, as there were no significant changes in gender-based violence or other crimes during the same period. These findings suggest that even minor intimate partner violence decreases married women's well-being and highlights the importance of legal institutions in addressing household violence.