The Gender Gap in Advanced Placement Program Participation

The College Board recently released data on participation in the Advanced Placement program at U.S. high schools during the 2014-15 academic year. Advanced Placement courses are designed to mirror college-level work.

That year there were 1,387,816 women who took AP examinations. They made up 55.9 percent of the students who took one or more AP exams. All told women took 2,438,685 AP examination. This was 54.4 percent of all AP exams.

The data shows a wide disparity in the percentage of women who take particular AP examinations. Women make up a very large percentage of all AP test takers on subjects such as studio art, French, Spanish, and art history. But women are only a small minority of all test takers in disciplines such as physics and computer science. In computer science there has been some progress. Three years ago, women took 19 percent of the AP exams in computer science. This year the figure rose to 22 percent.

Here is a list of the different subjects that are part of the Advanced Placement program and the percentage of all AP test takers who were women.