Women dominated in 7 of 11 areas, yet all we hear about is gender imbalance in STEM.

There are seemingly endless programs and advocates to increase the participation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) as a means of addressing the gender imbalance, which is particularly dramatic at the graduate and doctoral levels.

The National Science Foundation has special grant programs. The White House emphasizes the issue. Efforts are made at the elementary and secondary school levels to increase participation by girls.

One of my daughters was a computer science major in college (the only female CS major that year), so I’m well aware of the extensive outreach to women.

Despite years of concerted efforts, the STEM gender imbalance has barely moved. Men still dominate, by a lot.

But the gender imbalance is equal or even more dramatic in fields dominated by women, as this chart shows (via AEI, h/t Ron Coleman):

AEI continues, Women earned majority of doctoral degrees in 2013 for 5th straight year, and outnumber men in grad school 137.5 to 100

The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) recently released its annual report recently on US graduate school enrollment and degrees for 2013, and here are some of the more interesting findings in this year’s report: 1. For the fifth year in a row, women in 2013 earned a majority of doctoral degrees. … Therefore, 2009 marked the year when men officially became the “second sex” in higher education by earning a minority of college degrees at all college levels from associate’s degrees up to doctoral degrees. 2. By field of study, women earning doctoral degrees in 2013 outnumbered men in 7 of the 11 graduate fields tracked by the CGS (see top chart above): Arts and Humanities (52.3% female), Biology (51.3%, and one of the STEM fields), Education (67.7%), Health Sciences (71,7)%, Public Administration (64.2%), Social/Behavioral Studies (61.8%) and Other fields (50.5%). Men still earned a majority of 2013 doctoral degrees in the fields of Business (55% male), Engineering (76.9%), Math and Computer Science (74.2%), and Physical Sciences (65.3%). 3. The middle chart above shows the gender breakdown for master’s degrees awarded in 2013 (from Table 2.24) and the gender disparity in favor of females is significant – women earned 58.4% of all master’s degrees in 2013,…. Like for doctoral degrees, women outnumbered men in the same 7 out of the 11 fields of graduate study and in some of those fields the gender disparity was huge….

Where is the outcry? Where are the programs to get more men into education fields?

[Featured Image: Women in Stem Exchange]



