About

Christine Min Wotipka is an Associate Professor (Teaching) of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she also holds courtesy appointments in Sociology and serves as Director of the Master’s Programs in Global and Comparative Education (GCE) and International Education Policy Analysis (IEPA). She is a Co-Resident Fellow of EAST House, a living-learning undergraduate residence on Stanford's campus, and in 2025-26, she is a Faculty Research Fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. With nearly thirty years of research experience, Dr. Wotipka has contributed significantly to the comparative scholarship on gender and education, supported by the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. She is the lead principal investigator of the Higher Education and Diversity Lab. Her academic background includes a BA in International Relations and French from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, an MA in Sociology, and a PhD in International Comparative Education from Stanford University. Her professional activities include consulting on girls' education policies for the Ministry of Education in Afghanistan, and she has held academic positions at UCLA and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Her early career includes service as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in rural northeast Thailand and work at the Hanwha Group’s economic research center in Seoul, South Korea.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Gender studies
• Economic growth
• Economics
• Social Science
• Medicine
• Demographic economics
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Public relations
• Political economy
• Criminology
• Development economics

Selected publications

• Contested Diversity? The Institutionalization of LGBTQ-Supportive Features in U.S. Higher Education, 1980 to 2018

  Sociology of Education · 2026-02-12

  articleSenior author

  This study seeks to understand the extent of and explanations for the institutionalization of sexuality and gender identity in U.S. higher education institutions (HEIs). Using original longitudinal data collected on a national probability sample of 234 four-year HEIs, covering 1980 to 2018, we examine whether and when HEIs establish two key lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) supportive features: LGBTQ resource centers and LGBTQ studies programs. We argue that sexuality and gender identity have not been institutionalized to the same extent as other diversity features because they remain contested or viewed with ambivalence in some HEIs. Findings suggest that institutions that already demonstrate support for gender diversity or are associated with other institutions that signal such support are more likely to institutionalize these supportive features. In the case of LGBTQ rights, HEIs may therefore be particularly responsive to their institutional environments.

  PublisherDOI

• Gender disparities in Chinese middle school science textbooks: A semiotic analysis

  Women s Studies International Forum · 2025-08-19 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Un análisis trasnacional del surgimiento e institucionalización de los planes académicos de los Estudios de las Mujeres

  Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas · 2024-02-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  El presente proyecto se sirve de un enfoque cuantitativo para facilitar un análisis comparativo y longitudinal de la expansión de los Estudios de las Mujeres. Definidos éstos a partir del primer curso que una universidad, entre 1970 y 2000, oferta un curso oficial de Estudios de las Mujeres. Nuestra muestra se compone de 22 países miembros de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE). Utilizando modelos de estimación de acontecimientos históricos, evaluamos varias explicaciones a nivel nacional y universitario: nivel económico nacional y de desarrollo de la educación, grado de derechos políticos, alcance del elitismo del sistema de educación superior y variables del estatus de las mujeres. Desde la perspectiva de sociedad global, también examinamos la influencia que los vínculos internacionales ejercen sobre los modelos de derechos humanos y derechos de las mujeres. Estas variables consisten en indicadores de la tendencia a ratificar tratados sobre derechos humanos y de las mujeres. Nuestros hallazgos sugieren que la oferta de un primer curso de Estudios de las Mujeres está influida de manera positiva por el nivel de desarrollo educativo de un país medido en términos de la proporción de niños y niñas que asisten a la escuela secundaria, por la medida en la que el sistema de enseñanza superior es menos elitista y, finalmente, por el número de tratados sobre derechos humanos ratificados por un país. Ofrecemos nuestras interpretaciones de estos hallazgos y sugerencias para abrir posibles vías de futuras investigaciones.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• To STEM or not to STEM: A cross-national analysis of gender and tertiary graduates in science, technology, engineering, and math, 1998–2018

  International Journal of Comparative Sociology · 2024-04-26 · 6 citations

  article

  The comparative literature on gender and higher education has increasingly focused on differences in access to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). We contribute to this literature through a cross-national analysis of STEM graduates by gender between 1998 and 2018 across 90 countries. Many earlier studies emphasize the positive influence of a global liberal culture on women. More recent scholarship contends that women may be steered away from attaining a STEM degree in more liberal and individualistic societies. Our study shows a lower percentage of women graduates in STEM in countries that are more liberal. However, we find that the opposite is the case for men. Our findings are consistent with the idea that individuals in more liberal cultural contexts are more likely to make degree decisions based on individual preferences that are influenced by gendered societal norms. Both women and men are more likely to “indulge in their gendered selves” in these cultural contexts. Our findings are inconsistent with the idea that liberal modernity influences men and women in STEM in a gender-neutral mode.

  PublisherDOI

• Opportunities for Faculty Tenure at Globally Ranked Universities: Cross-National Differences by Gender, Fields, and Tenure Status

  Sociological Science · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Drawing on a unique data set of almost 12,000 faculty members from 52 globally ranked universities in four fields (sociology, biology, history, and engineering), this study describes and explains gender differences in tenure among faculty across 13 countries. In our sample, women comprise roughly one-third of all faculty and only 23 percent of tenured faculty, with significant variation across fields and countries. Findings from a series of multilevel regression analyses suggest support for a gender filter argument: women are less likely to be tenured overall and in every field. Opportunities for tenure also matter. In countries with very low- and high-tenure rates, women are much less likely to be tenured relative to men than in countries with pathways both into and upward in academia.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A milestone in the pursuit of gender equality: Predicting first women presidents in U.S. higher education institutions, 1980–2018

  Sociology Compass · 2024-04-01 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract While women’s higher education enrollments and graduation rates have outpaced those of men in the United States and most countries around the world, women are less frequently included in academic leadership roles, including the higher education presidency. This paper asks what predicts whether and when a higher education institution has its first woman president, conceptualizing this event as a milestone of gender equality. We use a national probability sample of 234 four‐year U.S. universities and colleges, constructing a novel longitudinal dataset from 1980 to 2018. Employing event history analysis, we examine the potential mechanisms associated with when an institution has its first woman president over time. Our findings suggest that the demographic diversity of faculty and students, gender‐ and diversity‐supportive structures, and the broader environment in which institutions are embedded predict the likelihood that a woman will advance to the level of the presidency. In particular, the presence of gender studies programs and a higher proportion of women in state legislatures increase the likelihood that an institution will have its first woman president. At a time of growing challenges facing U.S. higher education, coupled with greater opportunities from having more diverse students and faculty, universities and colleges increasingly recognize the benefit of women leaders.

  PublisherDOI

• Armed conflict, student achievement, and access to higher education by gender in Afghanistan, 2014–2019

  Globalisation Societies and Education · 2022-08-22 · 3 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Using data from its national university entrance exam, we examined the relationship between armed conflict and student achievement in Afghanistan. Exploiting the province-year variation in exposure to conflict intensity, we estimated the relationship between conflict and exam results generally and by gender for all test takers from 2014–2019. Findings show that a one standard deviation increase in conflict intensity at the province-year level was associated with a 2.9 percentage point reduction in the probability of passing the exam, a 0.096 score point reduction in total exam scores, and a greater detrimental impact on women’s exam results.

  PublisherDOI

• Cross-National Variation in School Reopening Measures During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  AERA Open · 2021 · 13 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Economic growth

  To contain the initial spread of the SARS-CoV2 virus and the COVID-19 disease, many countries opted to close schools. However, the importance of schooling to mitigate inequalities motivated many economies to reopen schools after having formulated various COVID-19 mitigation and containment strategies. Using an exploratory sequential mixed method design, we explore the measures undertaken by countries when reopening schools and how these measures varied cross-nationally. We find that countries formulated a wide number (total: 242) and range of school reopening measures to mitigate the spread of the virus in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. From a policy diffusion theoretical perspective, findings from our statistical analyses suggest that cross-national diversity in policies is related to both internal and external country factors such as peer emulation mechanisms, income, and past pandemic experiences. We urge international agencies for more explicit guidelines for effective school reopening measures.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>CER</i>Moderated Discussion on “‘Participation Does Not Equal Voice’: Gendered Experiences in an Academic and Professional Society”

  Comparative Education Review · 2021-06-11 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Women’s participation and challenges to the liberal script: A global perspective

  International Sociology · 2021 · 59 citations

  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  Existing scholarship documents large worldwide increases in women’s participation in the public sphere over recent decades, for example, in education, politics, and the labor force. Some scholars have argued that these changes follow broader trends in world society, especially its growing liberalism, which increasingly has reconfigured social life around the choices of empowered and rights-bearing individuals, regardless of gender. Very recently, however, a variety of populisms and nationalisms have emerged to present alternatives to liberalism, including in the international arena. We explore here their implications for women’s participation in public life. We use cross-national data to analyze changes in women’s participation in higher education, the polity, and the economy 1970–2017. We find that women’s participation on average continues to expand over this period, but there is evidence of a growing cross-national divergence. In most domains, women’s participation tends to be lower in countries linked to illiberal international organizations, especially in the recent-most period.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Francisco O. Ramírez

  11 shared

• Beth A. Simmons

  4 shared

• Mana Nakagawa

  3 shared

• Julia C. Lerch

  3 shared

• Seung-Ah Lee

  2 shared

• Emily Anderson

  2 shared

• Evan Schofer

  University of California, Irvine

  2 shared

• Joseph Svec

  Saint Joseph's University

  2 shared

Labs

• Vice Provost for Student AffairsPI

Education

• PhD, School of Education

  Stanford University

  2001

• MA, Sociology

  Stanford University

  1999

• BA, International Relations & French (summa cum laude), College of Liberal Arts

  University of Minnesota Twin Cities

  1993