Who Studies in Non-traditional Fields?: An Analysis of the Relationship between Female Graduates’ Choice of Field of Study and Their Social Background

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between choice of field of study in the university and social background among Japanese women. Previous studies regarding the social origin of the women who choose those fields of study that had low female representation offer contradicting results. This article integrates those results in an “Integrated Market Model,” assuming that there are two functions of higher education for women: one is status-asserting, in which women of upper-middle class are supposed to invest; the other is status-attaining, in which women of lower class but with high ability are supposed to invest. This model is tested by analyzing the data of the 2005 and 2015 National Survey of Social Stratification and Social Mobility (SSM). The results partially support the model: women of lower class but with high ability tend to choose STEM, education, and medicine. Women studying the social sciences tend to have non-graduate parents. Some implications for increasing the number of women in STEM, and the limitations, are discussed.