Research Finds Gender Inequality Among Yale University Undergraduate STEM Majors

The Yale University Office of Institutional Research has examined data from school’s 2022-2023 academic year and discovered lingering gender disparities across its undergraduate programs, where men account for a large majority of undergraduate physics, engineering, and computer science majors.

Since the 2000-2001 academic year, women’s representation in physical sciences and engineering undergraduate majors at Yale University has increased from 26.3 percent to 34.5 percent. They currently outpace the national average for women’s representation in undergraduate engineering programs, which was 24.1 percent in 2022. However, despite this growth, Yales’s gender parity falls behind other institutions of its caliber. In 2023, 40.6 percent of engineering bachelor’s degrees at Princeton University were received by women. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 48 percent of undergraduate engineering students were women.

Among Yale University’s STEM programs, women are the majority of biomedical and chemical engineering undergraduate students, but most STEM departments remain largely represented by men. This gender disparity is not only seen among students, but faculty as well. Less than 20 percent of tenure track faculty for physics majors are women.

To combat this gender inequality, the college has launched a new course, “Being Human in STEM,” which covers diversity topics and how they relate to the STEM fields. The new class will provide students the opportunity to create and implement their own projects aimed at advancing inclusion among science disciplines at Yale University