In contrast to the UK, the USA and Germany, the majority of students in eco-

nomics in France are female. Using a national survey of three cohorts of French

university graduates in economics we examine the gender dierential in early career

earnings. There is a signicant raw dierential in favour of males in both starting

pay and earnings three years after graduation, and the latter is wider than the

former. Between 1998 and 2013 both gaps have narrowed but not disappeared.

Furthermore, an Oaxaca decomposition reveals that nearly all of the gap is due

to a persistent unexplained component. In order to put this into perspective, the

gender dierential among economics graduates is compared to that in two scientic

subject areas : the female-dominated life sciences and physics and chemistry (taken

together) where a majority of graduates are male. The gender pay gap is smaller

and the general level of earnings is lower in both science subject areas compared

to economics for each cohort. The decomposition attributes the limited gap in life

sciences mainly to a composition eect.