  Current trends suggest that significant gender disparities exist within
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education at
university, with female students being underrepresented in physics, but more
equally represented in life sciences (e.g., biology, medicine). To understand
these trends, it is important to consider the context in which students make
decisions about which university courses to enrol in. The current study seeks
to investigate gender differences in STEM through a unique approach that
combines network analysis of student enrolment data with an interpretive lens
based on the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu. We generate a network of
courses taken by around 9000 undergraduate physics students (from 2009 to 2014)
to quantify Bourdieu's concept of field. We explore the properties of this
network to investigate gender differences in transverse movements (between
different academic fields) and vertical movements (changes in students'
achievement rankings within a field). Our findings indicate that female
students are more likely to make transverse movements into life science fields.
We also find that university physics does a poor job in attracting high
achieving students, and especially high achieving female students. Of the
students who do choose to study physics, low achieving female students are less
likely to continue than their male counterparts. The results and implications
are discussed in the context of Bourdieu's theory, and previous research. We
argue that in order to remove constraints on female student's study choices,
the field of physics needs to provide a culture in which all students feel like
they belong.
