An Investigation Into the Impact of Gender on

Major Choice at Dartmouth College

Shannah FeldmanKate Schuerman

Tricia ShalkaKate Wendell

Introduction

•Classic Gender Stereotypes - women major in Humanities and men in the Sciences•30th anniversary of coeducation at Dartmouth and Title IX•After 30 years of coeducation, have women at Dartmouth achieved equality in the area of major study?

Objective

•To determine whether or not a Dartmouth undergraduate’s major is independent of his or her gender

Data Collection•Decided to look at the past 5 graduating classes; years 1998-2002•At first attempted to get information from registrar•Information not readily available - this made us more curious about the ramifications of our topic•After discovered registrar was not going to help us, opted to look through yearbooks to gather data of seniors’ majors - our group members met in the Aegis office for hours of tedious yearbook examination and subsequently tabulated results•Divided majors into five main categories (see next slide) the same way Dartmouth classifies majors: Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Academic Programs, Special Majors

•Double majors counted twice•Counted primary subject if student had a modified major

Data Collection, Continued

Humanities•Art History•Asian/Mideast Lang.•Classics•English•Film & TV Studies•French•German•Italian•Music•Philosophy•Religion•Russian•Spanish•Studio Art

•Theater

Classified the majors into five main categories. (See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~oir/factbook/enrollments/undergrad/divisions.html for more information.)

Sciences•Biology•Chemistry•Computer Science•Earth Sciences•Engineering•Environmental Earth Sciences•Mathematics•Physics

Social Sciences•Anthropology•Economics•Geography•Government•History•Psychology•Sociology

Academic Programs•African Am. Studies•Asian/Mideast Studies•Comp. Lit.•Environ. Studies•Lat. Am & Carr. Studies•Linguistics•Cognitive Science•Math & Social Sci.•Native Am. Studies•Women’s Studies

Special Majors•Student designed majors•Senior Fellows

Mathematical Calculations•Chose the chi-squared independence test, which tests the independence of two variables

•Gender: male or female•Category of choice of major: Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Academic Programs, Special Majors

•Null hypothesis: Major choice is independent of gender•Alternate hypothesis: Major choice is dependent on gender•Data arranged into a 2 x 5 contingency table (see next slide)•Degrees of Freedom = (2-1) x (5-1) = 4•Calculated new table with expected values under the assumption that the null hypothesis was true (see next slide)•Chosen confidence level = .01 - holds our test to a very high standard

ScienceSocial

ScienceHuman-

itiesAcademic Programs

Special Total

Male 850 1253 573 141 21 2838

Fem. 624 1095 784 225 25 2753

Total 1474 2348 1357 366 46 5591

Observed Frequencies with Marginal Totals (‘98-’02)

Mathematical Calculations, Continued

Science Social Science

Human-ities

Academic Programs

Special

Male 748.2 1191.8 688.8 185.8 23.3

Fem 725.8 1156.2 668.2 180.2 22.7

Expected Frequencies

Mathematical Calculations, Continued

•At df = 4 and = .01, 2 value necessary to reject null hypothesis = 13.277•Computed test statistic:

(observed-expected)2/expected = 96.45•Since 96.45 > 13.277, reject the null hypothesis•Thus,we can reject the hypothesis that choice of major is independent of gender

Sources of Error

•Main problem our group experienced was manpower and time constraints•Human Error

•Different methods in collecting data•Fatigue/monotony possibly lead to misclassification of major (sex and/or category)•Not able to double check results due to time crunch

•Transfer of Information•Source error: yearbook may have had some incorrect information•116 “unknown” majors, due either to major not being listed, or ambiguity of gender or major category

Conclusions•Gender and major are dependent variables; men tend to lean toward the Sciences and Social Sciences, whereas women are more likely to major in the Humanities or Academic Programs•Question of why this trend occurs could be answered by further studies:

•Run same test at other academic institutions to determine if problem is unique to Dartmouth•Determine if gender of faculty within different departments influences students’ choice of major•See if progress has been made (test data from first five years of coeducation; determine influence of WISP program)•Are men or women more likely to double major?•Do double majors usually select both majors from one category, or do they branch between two fields?

•Possibly begin a Men in Humanities program to work alongside WISP•Now, important for college to address issue to ensure a comfortable learning environment for both genders in all academic areas