Female graduation rates Degrees of equality

[xchrom]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/female-graduation-rates

Which countries have the highest proportion of female graduates?

MORE girls than boys now complete their secondary education in 32 of the 34 countries that are members of the OECD, a think-tank, according to a new report published today. Only in Germany and Switzerland do girls lag behind. Moreover, female graduates greatly outnumber male graduates. Overall they account for 58% of graduates within OECD member states in 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, up from 54% in 2000. Men, however, continue to dominate the sciences: some 60% of science graduates are male. Women make up almost three-quarters of the graduate body in health and welfare, and almost two-thirds in humanities and the arts. Some of the differences in graduation rates between countries are striking. In Estonia, which has the highest proportion of female graduates, more than two-thirds are women. Many are bound for classroom careers: an astonishing 92% of those studying education are female. By contrast, in Japan, just over two-fifths of graduates belong to the fairer sex, and teaching remains relatively male by rich-world standards.

[mike_c]

1. three quarters of my grad students in the last 15 years have been women...

...and that's in entomology/ecology, which were heavily male dominated disciplines a generation ago. In our undergrad classes there APPEAR to be nearly equal numbers of men and women, although I would not be at all surprised if women slightly outnumbered men. Not sure about graduation rates at my institution, but again, women are WELL represented in most fields and dominate several.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. We have seen falling numbers of women in the computer science and related fields

It is not just our campus either.

While there are indeed more women at all levels, they are in the more in the social sciences and liberal arts fields which pay much less than the technical fields. Though clearly an artifact of choice, it also contributes to the pay differential demographics.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. I find it interesting how career choice is primarily determined by gender.

It's the same in every culture.

Is any attempt to recruit women into the sciences and men into teaching doomed to fail?

[AngryAmish]

4. A post of mine from a couple days ago that was ignored

[mike_c]

5. women appear to be recruiting into the sciences quite well...

...at least at the undergrad level, and as I pointed out above, most of my grad students have been women as well. On the other hand, I've served on numerous employment search committees and women ARE a minority among applicants for tenure track academic jobs in my field, although my gut feeling is that they aren't in the minority by nearly as much as they used to be. Still, there seems to be a disjunct of sorts between the masters degree level, where women are the majority in my department (biological sciences), and academic job applicants at the PhD and post-doctoral levels, at least in my experience. But at the undergrad and masters levels, women outnumber men at my institution, and biological sciences is the largest department in my college.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. A friend is a Doctor of nuclear science.

She has chosen to be a stay at home mom.

That's one reason for the disjunct between the career and academic spheres.