The Wiley Handbook of Gender Equity in Higher Education

23Study Abroad Programs and Their Intersection with Gender

Noreen Siddiqui and Jody Jessup‐Anger

In the push to increase internationalization efforts on college campuses, study abroad is often looked to as a mechanism for increasing students' awareness of and appreciation for intercultural diversity (Clarke et al. 2009). Though internationalization outcomes can be achieved without sending students to other countries, the immersive experience of living, studying, and traveling in a host country is impossible to replicate at the home institution. Despite the overwhelming number of women who participate in study abroad experiences and emergent research on the effect of gender on this endeavor, the research has not been compiled into a holistic portrayal of the role of gender in study abroad. We have sought to perform such a synthesis in this chapter.

We define study abroad as when college students earn credit at their home university while taking coursework in a different country, or “a subtype of Education Abroad that results in progress toward an academic degree at a student's home institution” (Forum on Education Abroad 2015). This experience includes both coursework led by faculty from the student's home country and coursework taken at a university in the host country. Though international educational experiences that do not include coursework, such as international internships and volunteer trips, are valuable as standalone experiences, they fall outside the scope of this ...