Women continue to be underrepresented in mathematically intensive majors like economics in the US. This column examines whether women’s colleges, and in particular Wellesley College, affect choice of major. Women who are accepted to Wellesley and choose to enroll there are about 81% more likely to major in economics than those who choose to enroll elsewhere. The authors attribute some of this ‘Wellesley effect’ to the fact that women make up more of the faculty in economics at Wellesley than at other institutions that Wellesley-admitted students attend. These results strongly suggest that the environment affects major choice.
At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her father, sister, grandmother and uncles fled Saigon for America. Beth’s mother stayed - or was left - behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was 19. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than 24 hours together. OWNER OF A LONELY HEART is a memoir about parenthood, absence and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years - sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, sometimes with her mother alone and sometimes with her sister - Beth tells a coming-of-age story that spans her own Midwestern childhood, her first meeting with her mother, and becoming a parent herself.