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Why do so many more women study abroad?
The ratio is about 2-1. And it's not just because women are concentrated in the "study abroad intensive" humanities:
The National Science Foundation reports that men earn 80 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering. But women’s participation in a study abroad consortium for engineers, the Global Engineering Education Exchange, typically ranges from 30 to nearly 40 percent (39.3 percent this academic year) — far outstripping their 20 percent representation in the field.
Here is what the experts think:
Among the many conventional wisdom-type explanations pervading in the study abroad field: differing maturity and risk-taking levels among 18- to 21-year-old men and women; a sense that females, concerned about safety, are more inclined to attend a college-sanctioned study abroad program than travel on their own; and, again, varying study abroad participation rates in male versus female-dominated fields.
I favor a more Hansonian explanation, such as this:
“The three main factors I found were motherhood, age and safety,” said McKinney, associate director of the Center for Global Education at Butler University. “Essentially, my informants shared with me that they really hope someday to be mothers and they can’t imagine being able to travel abroad and also be a mom. So if they’re going to have an overseas experience, they’re going to do it before they become mothers,” she said, adding that her informants “really felt plagued by the age of 30. They have a very long to-do list.”
If that hypothesis is true, what are the other testable implications? What other forms of intertemporal substitution should we observe?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 4, 2008 at 12:51 PM in Education | Permalink
Comments
That doesn't sound very Hansonian to me. I'd say it is more like why more women go to college and more live in NYC; women see travel as more high status and as ways to meet high status men.
Posted by: Robin Hanson at Dec 4, 2008 1:04:25 PM
I would have expected this to be an unstable equilibrium... One guy comes back from studying abroad outnumbered by adventurous, less-than-totally-academically-focused (part of the study abroad experience) girls and tells his friends about it, and you'd think there'd be college guys lined up out the door to get into study abroad programs. Especially since, in my experience, women tend to be much less interested in dating local men than male students are in dating local women (esp. in asia and the Mediterranean) you'd get a lot more of the fierce competition for eligible bachelors that Tim Hartford lays out in the Logic of Life.
The question is, how are so many college aged males missing out on this opportunity to give themselves such good odds with women? Maybe the dynamics of study abroad programs, being as typically small as they are, end up stifling hookups?
Posted by: david Stearns at Dec 4, 2008 1:10:24 PM
Need more data:
1) What's the ratio of women to men (in the appropriate age group) that travel abroad on their own?
2) Is there a difference based on english / non-english speaking destinations?
3) Why not ask: why do so few men study abroad?
Posted by: efp at Dec 4, 2008 1:14:53 PM
Here's another hypothesis, from The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/34198
Posted by: anon. at Dec 4, 2008 1:16:32 PM
My girlfriend works in urban development planning and wants to go abroad soon because you can't (or it's significantly harder, especially in a 3rd world country) when you have a kid.
Guys don't have the same biological timeline.
I know at least a few of her friends (in the same field) have the same plans for the same timeline-related reasons.
Posted by: mk at Dec 4, 2008 1:16:56 PM
I think that women still (rationally) feel freer to approach higher education from an 'expanding horizons' perspective than a vocational perspective -- hence the preponderance of women in pleasant-and-interesting-but-not-lucrative fields like Art History.
Posted by: Slocum at Dec 4, 2008 1:21:03 PM
Leave the kid with the folks and head to Italy for six months!
The parents love that sort of thing.
Posted by: Mercutio.Mont at Dec 4, 2008 1:23:30 PM
I'd be curious about this too:
2) Is there a difference based on english / non-english speaking destinations?
I wonder if it has something to do with proficiency in foreign languages.
Posted by: joe at Dec 4, 2008 1:23:58 PM
So they can be promiscuious without any consequences. No joke this is it, anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong. Look at all the movies about women going abroad, that's what they think it's all about.
Posted by: Ben at Dec 4, 2008 1:29:34 PM
My theory: accents are (usually) hot.
Posted by: Liz at Dec 4, 2008 1:29:50 PM
How about: college majors for which study abroad is more advantageous and encouraged are disproportionately female. E.g., Spanish vs Comp Sci.
Posted by: Josh at Dec 4, 2008 1:29:52 PM
Hm, maybe I should read the post closer.
Liz: Not an exclusively female phenomenon.
Posted by: Josh at Dec 4, 2008 1:31:50 PM
Josh: True, but it's a bit of a running joke that men are not interested in hearing women talk*rimshot*
Apologies for the jokes; I realize it's a legitimate inquiry.
I've never traveled aroad - do schools shoulder costs that one would have to pay for if she traveled independently? Art history and spanish majors might have a harder time financing independent travel. after school.
Posted by: Liz at Dec 4, 2008 1:40:06 PM
How about an evpsych preferences-shaping story:
In our EEA, women going to/captured by foreign tribes likely were prized as they added value to the tribe by increasing genetic diversity. Women who enjoyed/tolerated this more (less) were selected for (against).
Men however were more likely to be killed by foreign tribes.
Posted by: NinjaBill at Dec 4, 2008 1:41:51 PM
So they can be promiscuious without any consequences. No joke this is it, anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong.
Uh oh! I'd better keep my girlfriend under heavy surveillance when we're over there, then. Thanks for the tip! And all this time I thought she had a developed career interest in urban planning, combined with a genuine wish to better understand the world outside our borders. Boy, was I a prejudiced, completely knowledge-free schmuck, eh?.
Posted by: mk at Dec 4, 2008 1:47:42 PM
In our sexist society, if a man sows his oats it is something to be proud of... if a woman does the same thing, she is shamed. Therefore, a woman might want to study abroad to sow her oats, without having to worry about embarrassing herself in her home community.
Posted by: Abnoxious Flamebait Spammer at Dec 4, 2008 1:50:34 PM
Hope it's not on your dime, mk!
Posted by: Mercutio.Mont at Dec 4, 2008 2:00:29 PM
I do not think the consideration of children is a big contributor in general (although it may be for some people) for two reasons. First, college-age women (18-22) are increasingly unconcerned with their fertility timeline. Second, if this were the case we would expect young women to engage in many other time-intensive and risk-taking ventures to a greater extent than men because they will not be able to do so after they have children. Do female college students do more drugs than male college students? Do they travel more outside of study abroad programs? I don't know the answers, but I suspect not.
I think Slocum is right - women often consider their college education as primarily a vital component of their personal development and secondarily as preparation for a career, while men are generally more focused on their career success. Additionally, in my (limited, of course) experience, I have noticed men tend to self-restrict their interests: a male engineering student typically wants to get the best possible grades in his engineering classes but does not really consider or develop his interests in, say, music or Spanish culture. I think women are often more well-rounded, and that this is particularly true in technical fields.
Posted by: Erica at Dec 4, 2008 2:09:08 PM
FYI, I don't believe it's physically possible for a woman to "sow oats" - ie "scatter seeds" - ie have children by many different mates in a short period of time (in the case of studying abroad, that's typically 6-12 months) leaving them to be brought up without her assistance.
Posted by: Mercutio.Mont at Dec 4, 2008 2:09:14 PM
Abnoxious Flamebait Spammer, the sexism goes both ways. If you want to treat male and female infidelity or promiscuity identically (ignoring for the moment the quite different implications of fathering a child vs giving birth in terms of commitment and physical effects), then you'd better treat men and women equivalently in child custody cases during divorce, in alimony or child support decisions, etc.
Of course we don't do the latter, not even close. Heck, if a woman cheats on her husband and has a child as a result and this is discovered and leads to a divorce the man is typically forced to pay child support for this child (at least in the US).
Eliminating preferential treatment based on gender is a reasonable goal if you're going to apply it to both genders.
Posted by: Boris at Dec 4, 2008 2:12:23 PM
What about that women more often attend smaller liberal arts schools - schools which encourage more traveling abroad. That's got to factor in.
Posted by: Erik at Dec 4, 2008 2:16:55 PM
I'm a girl who just got back from a year abroad, and my decidedly non-empirical impression is that:
1) Study abroad programs require students to be a little bit more willing to get forms in, adjust their schedules, and generally have their academic shit together, for something that will not earn them money. This group of students skews female.
2) Guys tend to place more value on the drinking beer with your friends aspect of the college social life than do girls.
Posted by: Katie at Dec 4, 2008 2:17:28 PM
I'm a girl who just got back from a year abroad, and my decidedly non-empirical impression is that:
1) Study abroad programs require students to be a little bit more willing to get forms in, adjust their schedules, and generally have their academic shit together, for something that will not earn them money. This group of students skews female.
2) Guys tend to place more value on the drinking beer with your friends aspect of the college social life than do girls.
Posted by: Katie at Dec 4, 2008 2:18:35 PM
In any academic field, even engineering, the men are going to feel more pressure to finish their degree quicker, on average, than do the women. For social status or to provide for families, they need to start making money faster, and study abroad gets in the way of that. I went to law school (not exactly a touchy-feely field), and I will never forget the following conversation I had with a married, pregnant woman.
Woman: "I don't know why you're so concerned about grades."
Me: "You don't?"
Woman: "No. I'm not worried about it."
Me: "Do you already have a job lined up after graduation?"
Woman: "Well, actually, I'll probably be staying home with my baby for a while."
Posted by: MC at Dec 4, 2008 2:20:02 PM
satoshi kanazawa wrote about a broader version of this observation. genetic studies have shown women in general throughout the ages in all regions of the world have been more likely to travel than men. his hypothesis was that women's status is easily transferable, while men's status is not.
women's status is transferable b/c female attractiveness is, in large part, universal. men's status, which consists primarily of power and wealth, has historically not been as easily transferable to a new culture. if u're a high status female, u might be able to increase the fitness of ur offspring by mating w/ high status males wherever u might find them. if u're a high status male moving into a new culture, the new culture will likely have a different power structure and ur wealth might or might not be evident to high status females. why would a high status male risk losing his position when he already has high status?
u could argue that college students have already attained one measure of high status, which is entrance into an institution of higher learning. unless u're from an ivy league school which is recognized around the world, how likely is it that a female in another part of the world will hold u in high status? males of non-ivy league schools would have less reason to travel than the females.
Posted by: wongba at Dec 4, 2008 2:41:20 PM
