The NSF has just come out with a new report on women and minorities in science and engineering fields. The Chronicle has a short summary in which they report:
Over all, women have earned more science and engineering bachelor's degrees than men since 2000, the report notes, and the number of such degrees awarded to women has increased every year since 1966, reaching nearly 228,000 in 2004.
This can, in fact, be seen from the report in this graph.
However, there is one key point that I am afraid will be overlooked: as of 2004, men still greatly outnumber the women receiving bachelor's degrees in the physical sciences (42.1% women), engineering (20.5%) and computer science (25.1%). By 2004 we find there is parity or near parity in some other SEM fields. So how is the total number of SEM degrees larger for women? Psychology. This is a field in which the problem is not undergraduate women, of which there are many, but female representation in the professoriate. I'm worried some will focus on just the one line "over all, women have earned more science and engineering bachelor's degrees than men since 2000" and ignore the very real issues that still exist.
The imbalance for Ph.D.'s is even worse. In 2004, many fewer women than men received Ph.D.'s in fields like the physical sciences (25.9%), engineering (17.6%), computer science (20.5%), mathematics (28.4%) and earth, atmospheric and ocean sciences (33.9%). Pipeline problem anyone? Even in math and the earth/atmospheric/ocean sciences which seem close to parity at the undergrad level, show a pipeline problem at the Ph.D. level. Biology, which ranges in the 50% to low 60% range for women receiving undergraduate degrees over the last decade drops below 50% (to 46.3%) when considering women receiving Ph.D.'s. The narrowing pipeline analogy holds across most fields even if you consider Ph.D. rates in 2004 and compare them (more appropriately) to bachelor's degrees 5-7 years earlier.
And, some may wonder, am I not concerned about a possible over-representation of women in the biological sciences at the undergrad level? What about the men?! Well, yes and no. More undergraduate students are women, which is a whole different issue I don't want to go into, but this accounts for some of the discrepancy. And the rest? I don't know. Wild speculation on my part leads me to suggest that maybe a small number of these women would choose some of the other underrepresented SEM fields in a different world. In this different world, those other fields would be equally welcoming. And maybe some women in social science or non-science fields would choose biology and those other SEM fields. And everyone would study happily ever after in a field they are passionate about. In this world, Barbie never said math was hard.
Sources of 2004 data:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/tabc-4.pdf
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/tabf-2.pdf
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1 Comment:
I found this link on rateyourstudents:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/2000043.pdf
The author who posted this link points out the alarming fact that even though women have higher GPA's than men in college, their income is lower.
So perhaps there is a correlation, as psychologists generally earn less than engineers.
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