Global Trends in Education
The proportion of tertiary graduated women in STEM globally has jumped from 1.7 million in 2003 to 3.3 million in 2013. Looking at doctorate level, the total number of graduated women has grown from about 70,000 in 2000, to 125,000 in 2014. In hard scienc
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Global Trends in Education
“Promote gender equality and empower women” is the third priority identified by the United Nations in the Millennium Development Goal which emphasizes the “positive multiplier effect on progress across all development areas”.1 In its 2015 edition, the United Nations highlights achievements in primary education, but identifies that only 4 % of developing countries with available data had achieved the target for tertiary education in 2012. Only one region is on target: Western Asia; in others progresses are uneven. Do these evolutions have any impact on the participation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)?
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The Gender Divide Is Slowly Decreasing Among STEM Students
In fact, the latest data available demonstrates that increasing governments’ awareness has had an impact on the participation of women in STEM. Supported by a growing number of countries, the total number of graduated women in these fields has significantly increased during the past 10 years, moving up from 0.84 to 1.5 million female graduates in engineering, manufacturing and construction (EMC) and sciences (life sciences, physical sciences, math and computing). Even more impressive, when agriculture and health and care graduated women are included in this definition, the total headcount jumps from 1.7 million in 2003 to 3.3 million in 2013.
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Source: United Nations (2015).
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 C. Schmuck, Women in STEM Disciplines, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41658-8_2
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2 Global Trends in Education
18,669 1584
Total Central Asia
2013
2003
31,849 6735
Total Sub Saharan Africa Total Arab States
14,707
Total South and West Asia
94,953
42,689
Total Lan America and Caraib
103,851
64,585
Total Central and Eastern Europe
169,335 248,659
83,049
Total East Asia and Pacific
232,408
Total North America and Western Europe
374,323
399,174 0
100,000
200,000
300,000
400,000
503,515
500,000
600,000
Fig. 2.1 Total headcount of tertiary graduated women in STEM. Definition: 2013 or nearest year available headcount of tertiary graduated women in EMC (engineering, manufacturing, construction) and science (life sciences, physical sciences, math and statistics, computing) and agriculture. Source: ISCED 97, extraction from UNESCO Institute for Statistics, July 2015
Overall in 10 years, the number of graduated women in STEM has increased by about 80 %. The fact that the perimeter of analysis used is not constant2 doesn’t allow to consider in itself this growth as significant since it also reflects the fact that data is available for a larger number of countries, but it is interesting to observe that during the same period of time the total headcount of STEM graduates (men and women) has increased more slowly than that of female graduates (average 60 % growth to compare with 80 %). Thus, women share of all STEM graduates has increased from 43 to 48 % (when health is included in the definition), but only from 30 to 34 % when only EMC and science ar
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