{"id":23247,"date":"2018-02-07T12:40:46","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T17:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/?p=23247"},"modified":"2022-03-16T12:11:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T16:11:40","slug":"career-women-inspires-young-women-male-dominated-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/career-women-inspires-young-women-male-dominated-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Brief Exposure to Charismatic Career Women Inspires Young Women to Choose Male-Dominated Field"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top female college students were more likely to consider majoring in economics when exposed briefly to inspiring and charismatic women in the field, <\/span>according to an easy and inexpensive study<\/span><\/a> led by <\/span>Danila Serra<\/span><\/a>, assistant professor of economics at the Southern Methodist University (SMU).<\/span><\/p>\n

The study was funded by the <\/span>Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge<\/span><\/a>, which was created by Harvard University economics professor Claudia Goldin to address the the gender gap in economics majors. Currently, the national average is just one female student for every three male students, with SMU falling below at one female student for every four male students. <\/span><\/p>\n

The study was conducted by Serra and <\/span>Catherine Porter<\/span><\/a>, associate professor<\/span> of economics at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland<\/span>, after SMU was randomly chosen as one of 20 universities to participate in the Challenge. Each university was given $12,500 to develop a program that would test the <\/span>effectiveness of a deliberate intervention strategy to recruit and retain female majors.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe gender imbalance in economics has been in the news a lot lately, and much of the discussion has been very negative,\u201d Porter said in a statement. \u201cThis study offers something positive: a cheap way of improving the gender balance. The results can hopefully be used by other schools in order to redress the low numbers of women that major in economics \u2013 women have a lot to offer and should consider economics as a subject that is interesting and varied for a career.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In designing SMU\u2019s program, Serra was influenced by her own experience as a Ph.D. economics student at the University of Oxford.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs a student, I had met many female professors in the past, but my own experience taught me that inspiration is not about meeting any female professor \u2014 it\u2019s about meeting that one person that has a huge charisma and who is highly inspiring and speaks to you specifically,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

The project<\/b><\/h2>\n

In the spring of 2016, two professional women were invited to speak at four large introductory economics courses for just 10-15 minutes. The classes were comprised of about 700 students of all majors. <\/span><\/p>\n

The following year showed that among those female students exposed to these speakers, there was a 12-percentage point increase in the percentage of students enrolled in the upper-level Intermediate Microeconomics course. This was a 100 percent increase for that demographic. <\/span><\/p>\n

T<\/span>he experiment had the largest impact on the highest ranked female students. There was a 26-percentage point increase for students with a GPA of 3.7 or higher. <\/span><\/p>\n