The Gender Gap in Graduate School Enrollments in STEM Fields

A new report from the National Science Foundation offers a wealth of statistics on women in science and engineering disciplines. Here we take a look at the gender gap in graduate school enrollments by scientific discipline.

In 2012, there were 561,418 students enrolled in science and engineering graduate programs in the United States. Of these, 242,548, or 43 percent were women. However, the National Science Foundation includes graduate students in psychology and the social sciences in this data. Women were 75 percent of all the graduate students in psychology and 53 percent of all graduate students in the social sciences.

Women also made up a solid majority (56.5 percent) of graduate students in the biological sciences. But in many other science-related fields, women were a small percentage of the overall graduate student population. For example, women were 25.5 percent of all graduate students in computer science, 33 percent in the physical sciences, 32.4 percent in mathematics, and 23.3 percent in engineering fields.

The full 349-page report, Women, Minorities, and Persons With Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2015,” may be downloaded by clicking here.