Gendered Outcomes in Student Loan Bankruptcy

Women are winning more student loan bankruptcy cases than men, a notable reversal that challenges what we know about gender and legal outcomes. Drawing on hand-coded data from over 1,300 adversary proceedings spanning 2007 to 2023, this Article documents a sharp post-2022 shift. Women now succeed in 89% of cases compared to 82% for men. The puzzle is that financial metrics cannot explain this gap. Men and women who file these cases look indistinguishable on paper: similar debt loads, comparable