Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Women Studying Math

I find this little tidbit of information to be most interesting, given that math and the sciences are supposed to be bastions of male-hood in universities:

Given that background, it was somewhat surprising to find that women earn almost half of the bachelor's and master's college degrees in mathematics, according to data through 2006 from the Department of Education (see chart above). Women have actually earned more than 40% of college undergraduate math degrees since 1972 and more than 40% of master's degrees since 1989.
No glass ceiling here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Check physics, engineering, and astronomy. You'll find the gender gap alive and well. Be sure to peek in on faculty ratios, not degrees granted. Still though, the degrees are plenty imbalanced.

PeggyU said...

Really? I'd have thought there were quite a few women in astronomy.

jeffsters said...

In both my graduate programs in two different universities, half of the masters candidates were women. Most of them were statistics majors, but a fair number of them were not.