Historical roots of women's sorting into STEM occupations

Women continue to be underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), which represent an important and well-remunerated set of occupations that are expected to grow in significance in the future. In this paper, we show that this phenomenon is deeply rooted in historical processes that have contributed to the emergence and persistence of gender roles and stereotypes transmitted down to children by their parents or society at large. Using a sub-population of second-generation immigrants from the European Social Survey (ESS), we find that the pre-1500 ancestral factors related to stronger family ties and gender norms significantly reduce the probability of women sorting into STEM occupations. The causal link between norms and occupation is both direct and indirect, passing through contemporary cultural traits. Ancestral factors do not have any effect on men's occupational choices as well as on preferences for STEM professional careers. The results are robust to a rich set of potential confounding factors at the country of origin level and a battery of sensitivity checks.