Data and Code for: Seeking the “Missing Women” of Economics with the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge

Economics is among the most popular undergraduate
majors, especially in top colleges and universities. However, even at the best research
universities and liberal arts colleges men outnumber women by two to one, and
overall there are about 2.5 males to every female economics major. We discuss
why women major in economics less than men and describe a project to increase
the number of female economics majors. The Undergraduate Women in Economics (UWE)
Challenge was a randomized controlled trial, with 20 treatment and 68 control
schools, that we ran for one year in AY 2015-16 to evaluate the impact of light-touch
interventions to recruit and retain female economics majors. Treatment schools
received funding, guidance, and access to networking with other treatment schools
to implement programs such as providing better information to incoming students
about the application of economics, exposing students to role models, providing
mentoring, and updating course content and pedagogy. Using 2001-2021 data from the NCES-Integrated Postsecondary
Education Data System (IPEDS) on graduating undergraduates (BAs), we find that
UWE was effective in increasing the fraction of female BAs who majored in
economics relative to men in liberal arts colleges. Large universities did not
show an impact of the treatment, although those that implemented their own RCTs
showed moderate success in encouraging more women to major in economics. We discuss
what we believe worked in the UWE program and speculate on the reasons for
differential treatment impact. <br>