the educational background and environment in which people develop profoundly shape the direction in which their career path will follow. Historically, there has been a significant gender imbalance in fields of study. Women have always dominated the humanities, while men have held a sizeable difference when it comes to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Some of the primary factors leading to gender imbalances in collegiate fields of study include differences in pre-college preparation, personal preference for a field of study, and career prospects. Getting a job: skills, networks, and discrimination Role of socioeconomic status and human capital in building workforce skills sets The American Workforce has become increasingly specialized in the last century developing from a mix of agricultural and industrial jobs to greater specialization among American workers. The growth of outsourcing of American jobs to countries such as China and other nations of Southeast Asia has been linked to the decline of employment opportunities for Americans from low-income, urban communities who once were the employee base for the American industrial sector. Over the last 15 years, however, the number of outsourced has increased by 23%. This development has had a significant effect on the employment prospects of certain sectors of the American population, most notably on those of low socio-economic status. Skill-Based technical Change, as this shift in production and employment trends is called, favors the skilled worker over the unskilled worker and has been occasioned by the development of increasingly complex technologies, which both require more training of employees and, in some instances, can replace unskilled workers. The combination of increased specialization and digitalization and the outsourcing of jobs for unskilled workers have led to an increased need among American employees to invest in greater technical and intellectual skills building. This, however, proves difficult for those of low socioeconomic status, which has been shown to limit education, and, by extension, income and occupation. Low socioeconomic status also correlates with an individual's human capital, defined by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as the "knowledge, skills, competencies and other attributes that are relevant to economic activity". The term capital-skill complementarity describes the close relationship that exists between access to human capital and skills development. The existence of this complementarity indicates that the socioeconomic status, by means of its direct effect on access to human capital, determines employee skill sets and employability. Those from low-socioeconomic backgrounds