The opportunity to innovate, experiment, and take chances in the classroom should be accessible to all students regardless of the social identities they hold; however, white women and women of color (WOC) in male-dominated physics, engineering, math and computer science (PEMC) learning environments, and STEM broadly, have been expected to take intellectual risks while also navigating potentially hostile, sexist, and racist environments. Despite several studies identifying the learning benefits of intellectual risk-taking, particularly in STEM, few have taken steps to understand whether the cited benefits are salient for women. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to better understand the role of risk-taking in PEMC higher education and to determine whether or not risk-taking produced a key benefit for women in PEMC: persistence. To do so, I ran linear regressions to identify relevant predictors of general "self-rated risk-taking" and "intellectual risk-taking" as well as conducted a binary logistic regression to identify predictors of PEMC persistence. Through the lens of the theory of gendered organizations, social identity threat theory, model of threatening academic environments, and intellectual risk-taking, I employed descriptive and regression analyses using longitudinal data from the University of California, Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute's (HERI) The Freshman Survey (TFS) and College Senior Survey (CSS). Results from this study suggest that differences across self-rated risk-taking within gender and across racial/ethnic groups of women are informed by the social identities that students carry both at the beginning and end of college. Additionally, key differences emerged regarding the predictors of self-rated general risk-taking versus intellectual risk-taking that demonstrate the need for greater precision regarding what "risk-taking" means. Moreover, in understanding the persistence levels of women across racial/ethnic groups, Black and Latina women were found to have significantly lower PEMC persistence than their white and Asian counterparts which speaks to the long-standing literature underscoring the hostility and lack of support for Black and Brown women in STEM. Finally, this study did not find self-rated general risk-taking or intellectual risk-taking to predict PEMC persistence for white women and WOC, indicating the need to further investigate the purpose of "risk-taking" and if or how it should have a place in PEMC classrooms and STEM broadly. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]