<p> Although the gender gap in university enrolment rates has narrowed significantly since the 2000s, the gap remains significant with regard to university rank and majors. In response to these issues, previous studies have analyzed university rank and majors independently to clarify their relationship with gender. However, these studies are problematic in two ways. First, their analyses did not include cases of ronin (students applying to university for multiple consecutive years). Given the institutional context in Japan, it is necessary in order to clarify gender differences in university enrolment to incorporate into the analysis the question of who chooses to be a ronin and what type of university they enter as a result. Second, university rank and majors must be analyzed not in isolation, but in connection. The two are intertwined, with more science and engineering departments in public universities, which are more difficult to enter, and more nursing and health departments in private universities, which are relatively easier to enter. The logic assumed by previous studies may diverge from the logic of the students' choice of university. This paper, therefore, explores the relationship between the logic of choosing a university and gender using multiple correspondence analysis, rather than methods such as regression analysis which have often been used in previous studies. Whereas the latter sets up a single dependent variable and attempts to measure independent effects on it, the former is an approach that geometrically describes "a web of relationships" between variables.</p><p> The results of the analysis are as follows. First, in addition to boys being more likely to become ronin than girls, it was found that the factors promoting ronin status differed by gender. For boys, attending a boys' school and living in one of the three largest metropolitan areas promoted ronin status, but the same variables did not apply for girls: in their case, living in one of the three largest metropolitan areas or attending girls' school did not increase the probability of choosing to be a ronin. In addition, it was also clear that girls who were ronin chose the same universities as boys, compared to girls who were not ronin. Second, the logic behind the choice of university was extracted as two axes: public versus private and vocational versus otherwise. This logic is also systematically related to the dynamics of difficulty of admission and region of origin. Gender plays a role in these forces, causing men and women to make different university choices.</p><p> The results of the above analyses show that gender operates within the institutional context in which these forces operate, causing men and women to make different university choices. The analysis in this paper shows the importance of the institutional context surrounding choices and the effectiveness of MCA as a way of making this visible.</p>