Since 2016, the enrollment of female students pursuing a master’s degree in engineering has been increasing over the years. However, in 2020 the amount decreased by almost 9% from the previous year to 26.7%. The proportion of master’s degrees awarded in engineering to females in 2020 was 25.5%, similar to prior years. Among master’s degree holders in engineering, the highest representation of women is in the fields of biosystems engineering, software engineering, and environmental engineering, where they comprise 49.5%, 37.6%, and 36.7% of the total number of graduates, respectively.
Similarly, the number of female students interested in pursuing doctoral degrees in Canada has been steadily increasing. A total of 1830 women were enrolled in doctoral engineering programs in 2020, representing 26.7% of the overall number of students pursuing doctoral degrees. In that year, the number of doctoral degrees awarded to women comprised 22.4%, slightly decreasing from the previous year. The top three disciplines with the higher proportion of awarded doctoral degrees to female students were environmental engineering (35%), geological engineering (33.3%), and industrial or manufacturing engineering (31.8%).
Additional Resources
- Engineers Canada. (2021). Canadian engineers for tomorrow: Trends in engineering enrollment and degrees awarded 2016-2020.
