Fewer than one in six female students chooses a STEM degree

Fewer than one in six female students globally chooses to study degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), compared with one in three men, new data show.

Data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco)’s Global Education Monitoring report show that women made up 35 per cent of STEM graduates in 2020-21, a proportion that had remained unchanged for a decade.

However, Unesco has warned that this picture is “slightly misleading”, since the overall representation of women in higher education has grown in recent years, and they are now more likely to graduate from university than men in the majority of countries.

In fact, only 15 per cent of female students choose STEM over other courses, compared with 35 per cent of men.

Campus resource collection: Gender equality in higher education: how to overcome key challenges

“The data show that, despite a significant growth in the participation of women in...tertiary education over the last decade, this surge has not led to a corresponding rise in their representation among graduates in STEM, which has remained stagnant,” said Silvia Montoya, director of Unesco’s Institute of Statistics.

“This evidence suggests that efforts to promote STEM among women may have been insufficient or require a different approach to be effective.”

Some countries reported particularly large gaps – of more than 30 percentage points – between the proportion of male and female graduates choosing STEM degrees. These included Finland, Germany and Sweden.

India reported one of the smallest gaps: 26 per cent of its female graduates chose STEM degrees, compared with 33 per cent of men. The UK’s reported entry rates were similar to the global average.

Victoria Turgeon, professor of biology and neuroscience at South Carolina’s Furman University, said the figures suggested that improved representation across the sector had masked the underlying problems of getting more women into STEM.

“It shows that we still have work to do to attract women into STEM fields,” she added.

“It is great that more women are seeking higher education, which accounts for more women going into STEM, but the low percentage signals to me that we haven’t addressed all the issues that make STEM unattractive to women.”

The Unesco data also reveal significant variations in female representation across various STEM fields. In 2016-18, women represented 57 per cent of natural sciences, maths and statistics graduates, but only 28 per cent of engineering and manufacturing graduates.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com