Yuki Takahashi

Why do fewer female students enter STEM despite negligible gender gaps in mathematics and science? Using an incentivized discrete choice experiment with high school students, we show that both females and males prefer gender-balanced college programs and prefer being a majority to a minority, driven by anticipated difficulty fitting in. High-math-ability females show stronger minority avoidance in STEM, while males show the opposite. Combined with STEM’s low female share, these preferences lead to inefficient talent allocation: high-math-ability students, especially females, forgo STEM, and low-math-ability students enter. These findings suggest STEM's gender composition itself deters female entry.

Does teaching STEM's real-world relevance in introductory courses affect women's major choice? Leveraging a curricular reform in an introductory computer science course at a liberal arts college that placed greater emphasis on real-world applications, we find that the reform increased women's likelihood of majoring in computer science relative to men without diminishing academic performance. This effect primarily reflects greater retention of women who entered intending to major in computer science. The reform raised women's earnings through improved occupational sorting while reducing graduate school attendance. These findings suggest introductory course content can shape who persists in STEM and early-career outcomes.

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.