Academic Disciplines With Huge Gender Gaps in Doctoral Degree Awards

The National Science Foundation recently released its annual data on doctoral degree recipients in the United States. Data for the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates shows that women earned 46 percent of all doctorates awarded by American universities in 2016.

But there are many academic disciplines in which the gender gap in doctoral degrees is substantial. Here are some of the academic fields in 2016 where women earned less than one third of all doctorates awarded:

• Forest biology: 28.7%
• Biophysics: 30.3%
• Organic chemistry: 31.4%
• Theoretical chemistry: 30.9%
• Computational biology: 26.3%
• Geophysics and seismology: 26.1%
• Astronomy and astrophysics: 30.8%
• Physics: 18.2%
• Acoustics: 15.3%
• Elementary particle physics: 18.2%
• Plasma physics: 13.9%
• Mathematics and statistics: 28.8%
• Applied mathematics: 28.7%
• Logic: 23.6%
• Number theory 29.2%
• Engineering: 23.1%
• Speech and rhetorical studies: 30.8%
• Music theory and composition: 26.1%
• Theology: 25.5%
• Finance: 21.9%
• Management information systems: 23.4%

In contrast, there are a number of academic fields where women earned at least three quarters of all doctoral degree awards in 2016. Some examples include:

• Nutrition science: 77.5%
• Nursing science: 92.5%
• Clinical psychology: 76.6%
• Educational psychology: 75.9%
• Developmental and child psychology: 83.1%
• Special education: 81.7%
• Teacher education: 76.2%
• Literacy and reading education: 90.5%
• Social work: 79.6%
• Art history: 75.2%
• Speech-language pathology: 83.5%
• Family and consumer science: 79.5%