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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.
