Individuals’ favorite subjects in school can predetermine their educational and occupational careers. If girls develop weaker preferences for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), it can contribute to macrolevel gender inequalities in income and status. Relying on large-scale panel data on adolescents from Sweden (218 classrooms, 4,998 students), we observe a widening gender gap in preferring STEM subjects within a year (girls, 19 to 15 percent; boys, 21 to 20 percent). By applying newly developed random-coefficient multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models on social network data (27,428 friendships), we investigate how social context contributes to those changes. We find strong evidence that students adjust their preferences to those of their friends (friend influence). Moreover, girls tend to retain their STEM preferences when other girls in their classroom also like STEM (peer exposure). We conclude that these mechanisms amplify preexisting preferences and thereby contribute to the observed dramatic widening of the STEM gender gap.

中文翻译：

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社会管道：朋友的影响力和同伴接触如何扩大STEM性别差距

个人在学校中最喜欢的科目可以预先确定他们的教育和职业生涯。如果女孩对科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）的偏好较弱，则可能导致收入和地位方面的宏观性别不平等。依靠有关瑞典青少年（218个教室，4,998名学生）的大规模面板数据，我们观察到在一年内偏爱STEM科目的性别差距不断扩大（女孩为19％至15％；男孩为21％至20％）。通过对社交网络数据（27,428个友谊）应用新开发的面向随机系数的多层次随机行为者导向模型，我们研究了社交环境如何促进这些变化。我们发现有力的证据表明，学生会根据自己的朋友的喜好调整自己的喜好（朋友的影响力）。此外，当教室中的其他女孩也喜欢STEM（同伴暴露）时，女孩往往会保留其STEM偏好。我们得出的结论是，这些机制放大了先前存在的偏好，从而促进了STEM性别差距的急剧扩大。