Gender inequalities in college major choices. The role of explicit and implicit stereotypes

College major choices are highly segmented by gender and generate persistent inequalities in the labour market at the disadvantage of women. The literature has underlined the role of gender stereotypes on college major choices and the costs both at individual and society level of the resulting mismatch of talents and wrong fields of education choices. Determinants of college major choices from a gender perspective are at the core of this paper which has also a special focus on the impact of gender stereotypes (implicit and explicit) and on the choice of economics as a college major. Microdata are generated by a field experiment involving different high schools in the last year of attendance when students are close to the college major choice. The schools are located in two Northern districts of Italy a country characterized by a very high gender gap in the labour market at the disadvantage of women. Activities include role models, board game addressing gender stereotypes in professional choices and documentaries highlighting the impact of gender stereotypes in the labour market. A questionnaire including Implicit association tests has been submitted to the sample exposed to the treatment and to the control groups to measure gender stereotypes, individual and household characteristics and the impact of the treatment on college major choices and their determinants. We find evidence of gender stereotypes among students, and – differentiating by gender –female students appear to have a higher level of implicit stereotypes than males. Female students participating in the experiment appear to increase their awareness concerning college major choice and their propensity for STEM and for finance over marketing within the economics courses whereas male students taking part in the activities appear to be more interested in pursuing higher education instead of looking for a job, are more uncertain about their future field of studies and increase their interest in humanities while showing a higher propensity for marketing instead than finance when compared to the male students’ control group.