By Andrew Chamberlain, Ph.D.
Chief Economist, Glassdoor
and
Jyotsna Jayaraman
Senior Data Analyst, Glassdoor

During college, men and women gravitate toward different majors, often due to
societal pressures. This puts men and women on different career tracks — with
different pay — after college. How does this contribute to America’s gender pay gap?
• Using a unique dataset of more than 46,900 resumes shared on Glassdoor, we
illustrate how men and women sorting into different college majors translates into
gender gaps in careers and pay later.
• Many college majors that lead to high-paying roles in tech and engineering are
male dominated, while majors that lead to lower-paying roles in social sciences
and liberal arts tend to be female-dominated, placing men in higher-paying
career pathways, on average.
• The most male-dominated majors are Mechanical Engineering
(89 percent male), Civil Engineering (83 percent male), Physics
(81 percent male), Computer Science and Engineering (74 percent male),
and Electrical Engineering (74 percent male).
• The most female-dominated majors are Social Work (85 percent female),
Healthcare Administration (84 percent female), Anthropology
(80 percent female), Nursing (80 percent female), and Human Resources
(80 percent female).
• Nine of the 10 highest paying majors we examined are male-dominated. By
contrast, 6 of the 10 lowest-paying majors are female-dominated.
• Even within the same major men and women often end up on differe nt career
tracks, resulting in a pay gap that could follow them for a lifetime. In our sample,
across the 50 most common majors, men and women face an 11.5 percent pay gap
on average in the first five years of their careers.
• Majors leading to the largest pay gaps favoring men include Healthcare
Administration (22 percent pay gap), Mathematics (18 percent pay gap)
and Biology (13 percent pay gap).
• Majors leading to the largest pay gaps favoring women — a reverse pay
gap — include Architecture (-14 percent pay gap), Music (-10.1 percent
pay gap) and Social Work (-8.4 percent pay gap).
• Choice of college major can have a dramatic impact on jobs and pay later on. Our
results suggest that gender imbalances among college majors are an important and
often overlooked driver of the gender pay gap.