Women in STEM - Part 1

Author: Arlene Vinion Dubiel

Recent initiatives like the Million Girls Moonshot are working to engage women and minorities in STEM. These types of programs have been in existence for many years and some progress has been made to increase interest in STEM. However, there still exists a gender gap between men and women, particularly in math-intensive fields like engineering and computer science. 

STEM-based occupations are projected to grow more than any other in the next ten years. So there is a need for more students to study STEM to fill those jobs - a need that could be filled by reducing the gender gap. This brings up many questions. How big is the gap? When does it start? Why is there a gap? And the most important, what can we, as teachers in STEM, do to help close that gap? 

In this first in a series of blogs exploring gender differences in STEM fields, we will identify the magnitude of the gender gap in the STEM workforce and start to decipher when the gap begins.   

STEM Occupations

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, the demand for STEM-based occupations are projected to grow in the next 10 years.  Math Occupations lead the way with a projected growth of 27%, mainly due to the need for big data analysts by businesses and government. This is followed by Computer and Information Technology occupations with a projected growth of 11% due to increased demand for individuals in cloud computing, information security, and the collection and storage of big data. Other STEM occupations will grow only slightly, but this does not negate the need for more individuals to enter the STEM workforce than in the past. 

STEM careers fall under the category of “Professional and Related Occupations” in the Current Population Survey. This survey is conducted monthly by the Bureau of Census and provides information on current labor status. The collected data is broken down into occupations and measure percentage of employees by gender and race. Most careers that fall under this particular category require, at a minimum, an associate’s degree, and most often a bachelor's or higher degree. In addition to STEM-related fields, this category includes the education field, with which most of us are familiar.

Table 1 shows STEM-related careers, their projected growth, median salary, and the percentage of women currently in those occupations.

You can see that only Architecture and Engineering careers are projected to not grow more than the average for all occupations. Notice too that all of these occupations, including Education, Training, and Library, which is included for comparison, have a much higher median wage than the average for all occupations. In short, if our students earn degrees in STEM, they are poised to get a well-paying job. 

Women in STEM Careers

We have heard that there is a gender gap in the STEM workforce, but how big is this gap, and where is it? Overall, there are more men than women in the workforce - a gap of 6%. But this gap is much larger when we look at specific occupational types. Among the STEM occupations, the largest gap occurs in Architecture and Engineering with only 15.7% of employees being female. With Computer, Informational Technology, and Math, only about one quarter of employees are women. There is no gap with Life, Physical, and Social Science which includes medical researchers and psychologists, both of which have more women than men. So, when we talk about the gender gap in STEM fields, we need to focus on the TEM part of STEM. Indeed, some recent studies have tried to separate the biological sciences from the more math-intensive sciences to gain a better picture of the gender gap. 

We need to make note, that while there is a lack of women in STEM, the gap goes the other way with some occupations. For example, in Education, there are many more women overall. Data from the Current Population Survey show that preschool and kindergarten teachers are 98.7% women! The higher the education level teacher, the more men with secondary teachers being only 56.5% women and postsecondary instructors being 47.4% women. The breakdown of how many of these men and women teach science and math can be a topic for another time. 

Women in STEM Majors

Many STEM careers require a bachelor’s degree and more women than men are currently graduating college. Of the students who started college in 2012, 65% of women had graduated by 2018 while only 59% of men had graduated in the same timespan. Looking at all college graduates from 2015-2016, 58% were women, but only 36% of college graduates with STEM degrees were women. So, while women are more educated overall, many fewer are earning college degrees in STEM. 

Looking in depth at STEM college studies, a recent study by Weeden, Gelbgiser, and Morgan in Sociology of Education revealed that among high school graduates in 2004, 26% of men and 13% of women planned to have occupations in the STEM field. Two years later, as sophomores in college, 24.3% of men and 11% of women did declare STEM majors. Of those, only 58.2% of men and 42.5% of women completed those majors. This study shows that the gap starts in high school and it gets wider as men and women progress through college. (Weedon, K. A., Galbgiser, D., Morgan, S. L. (2020) Pipeline dreams: Occupational plans and gender differences in STEM major persistence and completion. Sociology of Education, 93(4) 297-314.)

“ If our students earn degrees in STEM, they are poised to get a well-paying job.

”

This gender gap among STEM college graduates is present in most countries around the world to varying degrees. For example, in Algeria the gap is much smaller than in the U.S. with 41% of STEM degrees being earned by women. But countries like Finland and Belgium, the gap is much larger with women earning only about 20% of STEM degrees. So, the gender gap is not a local or cultural phenomenon, rather it occurs world wide. This prompts many questions about why there is a separation of genders in relation to occupations. That will be the topic for next week’s blog. In the meantime, know that with the demand for more STEM workers, there is a need for more STEM teachers! 

Did you know that math occupations are expected to grow by 27% over the next ten years? Encourage all your students to explore math-based careers. 

Ready To Jumpstart Your Math Redesign Momentum?

Create effective, equitable & quantifiable change in your math program built on the good work you've already done