Bachelor’s Degrees to Women
Fewer engineering and computer/information sciences bachelor’s degrees are awarded to women than men. Overall, interest in these fields has grown, with more than 245,000 bachelor’s degrees in engineering and computer/ information sciences awarded in the 2019-2020 academic year. Although in the past, the percentage of females earning degrees has remained relatively unchanged, in the 2019-2020 academic year, women now represent about 22.1% of the bachelor’s degree holders in these fields.
Top 10 Engineering Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded to Women 2021
Source: American Society for Engineering Education. (2022). Engineering and Engineering Technology By the Numbers. p.4-6
Advanced Degrees Earned by Women
STEM degrees at the master’s and doctoral levels have also increased among men and women, with female students earning more graduate degrees than at the bachelor’s level. However, the gender gap is still large, with only 30.3% of master’s degrees in engineering and computer/ information sciences awarded to women and 24% of doctoral degrees awarded to women.
Degree Attainment by Women of Color
Although the number of engineering degrees awarded to non-international women at all postsecondary educational levels in the U.S. has increased from 2018-19 to 2020-21 academic years, most of these are earned by White women. In the 2020-21 academic year, women of color, such as Latinas and Black women, represented about 22.8% of the female bachelor’s degree holders in engineering.
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2020 and 2021. Tables 354.35, 323.50, 322.50
Over the past ten years, Black and Latina women comprised less than 4% of the bachelor’s degree holders in engineering and less than 5% of the bachelor’s degree holders in computer science. While Black women have constantly represented about 1% of engineering bachelor’s degree holders in the last several years, their representation among computer science bachelor’s degree holders has declined since 2003 and stagnated at around 2.35%.
Source: National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. 2021. Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2021. Special Report NSF 21-321. Alexandria, VA: National Science Foundation. Available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/wmpd. (Figures 24 and 25).
Note: For this graph, women of color include Black/African American and Hispanic/Latina only.
SWE Efforts to Increase Female Attainment of Engineering Degrees
SWE has a strong network of collegiate members across the country.
Additional Resources
- American Society for Engineering Education. (2022). Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology. Washington, DC.
- U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics
- National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. 2021. Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2021. Special Report NSF 21-321. Alexandria, VA. Available at https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd.
- Fletcher, T., Ross, M., et al. (2016). Ignored Potential: A Collaborative Road Map for Increasing African-American Women in Engineering.
