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In states in the Rust Belt and the Southeast, many high schools emphasize courses related to local blue-collar work in order to better prepare students for careers in local industries. In new research, April Sutton, Amanda Bosky and Chandra Muller find that such emphases are often at the expense of college-preparation courses, which in turn has a knock-on effect for female employment rates. Women who are raised in blue-collar communities, and thus who missed out on college preparation courses, face a much bigger wage gap than those who attended high-school elsewhere.