The Council of Graduate Schools just released data on graduate schools for 2008 , and total graduate student enrollment by gender is displayed in the chart above (based on Table 2.13). Women represented 58.9% of all graduate students in 2008, meaning that there were 143 women enrolled in graduate school for every 100 men. Further, women were overrepresented in 7 out the 10 fields of graduate study and underrepresented in three fields (business, engineering and physical sciences).

Q: Why does the underrepresentation of women in engineering, math and science get so much more attention than the underrepresentation of men in arts and humanities, biology, education, health sciences, public administration, and social sciences? After all, male graduate students are about as underrepresented in fields like health sciences (20.1% male, and 398 women per 100 men), education (24.8% male) and public administration (25.5% male) as women are underrepresented in engineering (22% female).