Ever More Degrees for Women, but Not in Hard Sciences - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Women already make up a majority of university students in most leading economies around the world. And their share among the most educated just keeps growing.

• In the United States, women recorded growth in post-high school education enrollment in every single racial group from 1985 to 2005, according to the Association of American Colleges and Universities report called A Measure of Equity: Women’s Progress in Higher Education,.

• In 2005-06, women earned 45 %% of all U.S. doctoral degrees. Among U.S. citizens, though, they received the majority of doctorates, and have since 2002.

• But women’s shares in some disciplines involving technology and hard sciences are slipping.

• In computer sciences, they earned 22% of baccalaureate degrees in 2005; in mathematics and statistics, they earned 45% of BS degrees that year. Both were declines from preceding years, according to the National Science Foundation.

• Women also pursue relatively far fewer graduate degrees in hard sciences. In the physical sciences, women earned 43% of bachelor’s degrees but only 27% of doctorates in 2005. The AAC&U said that pattern of reduced participation from undergraduate to doctoral level was true for almost every major subcategory of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.

• 38% of chief administrative officers are women (35% are white women, 3% are women of colour). 45% of all senior administrators are women, and 7% of all such managers are women of colour. 23% of presidents are women, with 19% of all female presidents being women of colour.

A summary of the AAC&U report

To download the AAC&U report=