Pepperdine’s Seaver College is a female-dominated school, but the opposite is true in its Business Administration Division.
Between 2019 and 2024, men accounted for about 60% of Pepperdine’s Business majors, despite women accounting for roughly 60% of all Seaver College undergraduates, according to data from the Office of Institutional Effectiveness (OIE). In 2024, more than one-third of all undergraduate men were studying within the Business Administration Division, compared to just under 20% of women.
“Now that I’m in my upper-divs, I’m maybe like one of three girls in a class, one of two girls in a class,” senior Finance major Zara Raza said.
Numerous factors, including gender norms, likely deter Pepperdine women from choosing Business majors, according to Sociology Professor Anna Penner, who studies gender. The gender divide can have self-perpetuating ripple effects throughout the careers of women who choose to persevere in the field.
Why Students Study Business
Regardless of gender, students tend to choose Business majors because of the broad career opportunities available, said Jake Moonen, a OneStop academic advisor who specializes in the Business Administration Division.
“I wanted a lot of different opportunities and different pathways that I could choose to go down for my job,” Steele Luoma, a senior Business Administration major, said. “So I guess that’s how I ended up choosing Business.”
Christine Espinoza, a senior Business Administration major, said she chose the major for reasons similar to Luoma’s.
“I didn’t have any set career path laid out for me,” Espinoza said. “So I just figured I’d do something where I learned valuable knowledge that could be applied anywhere, versus something that was industry-specific.”
The “infinite potential” for making money attracts students to the Business majors, Moonen said.
The average wage for Americans working in business and financial operations occupations was $90,580, according to May 2023 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Business Gender Gap Persists at Pepperdine
A multitude of factors could explain this disparity between men and women in the Business Administration Division, such as family influences, gender socialization and patriarchal family structures, Penner said.
“Within the family context, we think of expressive roles and instrumental roles,” Penner said. “Expressive roles have traditionally been held by women, where they’re providing care and nurture, whereas instrumental roles in the family context are traditionally masculine roles where you’re bringing home the bacon, you’re mowing the lawn. There’s not any, like, expressive emotional component to it.”
Several students interviewed for this article pointed to their same-gender parent’s career path as a major influence on their choice to study a Business major.
“If [my dad] could switch [to business] and find something that he wanted to do in it, I feel like, even though I don’t know what I wanna do, there’s gonna be something that’s gonna be available to me,” Jojo Inouye, a senior Business Administration major, said.
This influence can be strong even when it runs against historical gender role narratives.
“My mom is a businesswoman,” Espinoza said. “I think that’s the biggest reason I did it.”
Espinoza said she still primarily associated the business career path with men due to its historical male-domination.
Junior Accounting major Chinatsu Kaneko, who also saw business as male-dominated, remained optimistic about the future.
“I think it’s getting better,” Kaneko said. “But still, I feel like I see more male students in Business majors.”
The gender gap in Pepperdine’s Business Administration Division has slowly dropped since 2021, with women comprising nearly 44% of the division’s students, according to the OIE.
In 2024, the Religion and Philosophy Division was the only other male-dominated division in Seaver College, according to the OIE. Just over 55% of the student population are men. Historically, Pepperdine’s Churches of Christ tradition did not allow women to serve as ministers, according to previous Graphic reporting. There are only four women faculty, out of 23 total, in the Religion and Philosophy Division.
Just over 55% of Business Administration Division faculty are men, according to Pepperdine’s business faculty webpage. Divisional Dean Regan Schaffer, the first woman to hold the position, declined to comment for this article.
Why Finance and Accounting Majors Are Male-Dominated
At Pepperdine, the Finance and Accounting majors are notably male-dominated. In 2024, women comprised less than 32% of Finance majors and less than 46% of Accounting majors according to the OIE.
This trend might be caused by the widespread myth that women are inferior at math, Penner said. Women tend to be less confident in their quantitative skills compared to men, according to a 2015 Southwestern Oklahoma State University study.
“When you see that socialized into children over time, it makes sense that boys are going to enter fields where they’re using more math, they’re using more analytical frameworks,” Penner said.
Men also tend to over-persist compared to women in math-heavy college courses, despite initial failures, according to a 2019 Sage Journals study.
“When we think of, like, men in accounting classes, maybe they’re not doing great, but they’re just so locked in that, ‘This is what I have to do,’ whereas women are like, ‘Never mind, why would I bother?’” Penner said.
How The Gender Gap Affects Students
There are increasingly more women-owned businesses in the U.S., according to the inaugural 2024 Wells Fargo Impact of Women-Owned Businesses report. The gap in business has some adverse effects at the college-level, but these are difficult to measure at Pepperdine. Some female Business majors said they felt intimidated by the surplus of men, particularly in upper-division courses.
“It just forces you to put yourself out there, regardless if you’re the only person in the room who’s different,” Raza said.
Penner said men may overestimate their competence as a result of gender disparity in the classroom. This translates to the workplace, where women who are just as capable — even better performing — compared to men, yet tend to be more slowly promoted, according to a 2022 MIT Sloan study.
The gender wage gap, in which women are paid a smaller proportion than men their age, is another consequence of gender disparity in the workplace, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center study.
Some female Business majors said they worried about their work environments post-graduation.
“There are many horror stories out there of women who’ve been overlooked or have experienced under par working conditions in the industry,” Raza said. “It also does feel like I’m a bit of a step back because of how the patriarchy has been set up.”
Kaneko, a Japanese international student who hopes to work at a Big Four accounting firm one day, said her mother had been mistreated while working as an investment banker.
“My mom had to quit because the culture was just not open for married women,” Kaneko said. “I think that sucks.”
But several women remained steadfast, despite their concerns.
“I think it more so has to do with knowing yourself, and knowing your values and sticking to them,” Raza said, “And not letting anyone walk all over you and being a self advocate.”
Penner said everyone benefits from having women in the business world.
“Because men and women are socialized differently, they have different ways of viewing the world,” Penner said. “And I think making sure there’s a lot of viewpoints is actually beneficial for workplaces and solving problems.”
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Contact Henry Adams via email: henry.adams@pepperdine.edu
