A recent study from Wharton Management professor Tiantian Yang found that women are less likely to continue searching for contract jobs in male-dominated STEM fields after facing rejection.
The study — titled “Approaching or avoiding? Gender asymmetry in reactions to prior job search outcomes by gig workers in female- versus male-typed job domains” and co-authored by Jiayi Bao and Ming Leung — focused on the information technology and computer programming industries. Scholars reviewed 700,000 applications for over 200,000 job postings for contract work before arriving at the results published in the journal, Social Forces.
“We often see young women initially choose STEM majors, only to switch to other fields after having negative experiences,” Yang said in an interview with Penn Today. “Staying in these fields is challenging for many women, not only because of limited opportunities, but also because of self-perception. Gendered expectations can also make it especially difficult to persist in the job search after facing repeated rejections.”
Women still only account for 28% of the STEM workforce in the world.
The study goes on to describe the current “leaky pipeline” in STEM, which the authors define as the reality where “women and minorities enter those careers only to leave at some point, their ambition crushed by experiences of discrimination, isolation, or lack of opportunity.”
Notably, women in female-dominated industries were not as likely to end their job search after rejection. For example, women in writing industries were actually more likely to continue the job-seeking process.
Yang also noted that transparent hiring practices can address the issue of gender gaps in job searching after rejection. These practices may include adding additional statistics to rejection letters such as the number of applicants or the competitiveness of the position.
“The takeaway is that as long as gender norms persist, they will shape both sides of the labor market — employers’ hiring decisions and job seekers’ behavior,” Yang concluded. “These norms don’t just influence how candidates are perceived; they also shape how individuals navigate the job search itself.”
Yang’s research focuses on entrepreneurship, career mobility, and social inequality. She has received many laurels for her work, including the Ewing Marion Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship in 2012, the Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in 2017, and the Wharton Teaching Excellence Award in 2022, 2024, and 2025.
