Who Leads in STEM/Tech & Development?
Women are under-represented among the nation’s engineers, computer scientists, and STEM workforce.
33% of STEM US Workforce
26% of Computer & Math Scientists
16% of Engineers
According to the National Science Foundation/National Science Board (National Center for Science & Engineering Statistics) dataset “The State of US Science & Engineering 2022”, women account for 33% of the US workforce in STEM professions.
From the March 2017 Conference Reducing the Impact of Bias in the STEM Workforce, Suzi Iacono, Head of the Office of Integrative Activities of the National Science Foundation, these charts are illuminating:
This chart shows that white men make up 51% of the US computing workforce, while men overall are 73.2% of the computing workforce.
The AAUW (American Association of University Women), in their report Solving the Equation, notes that women in biological sciences have been growing rapidly, while women chemists and materials scientists are edging up, as are female engineers, although the last group is still just 12% of the total engineering workforce. The percentage of women in computer and mathematical occupations shows a rapid decline, falling from 35% in 1990 to just 26% 23 years – nearly a generation – later.
The most recent data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Center for Science & Engineering Statistics sheds even more light on this gender gap:
“Women make up about one-third of the STEM workforce in 2019. The proportion of women in the Skilled Technical Workforce (those without a bachelor’s degree) remained unchanged at around 26% in both 2010 and 2019.”
The NSF reports that the proportion of women receiving bachelor’s degrees in STEM is edging up, but that:
“The distribution of women with a bachelor’s degree or higher was uneven among the different types of STEM occupations.
In 2019, women accounted for 48% of life scientists and 65% of social scientists but only 35% of physical scientists, 26% of computer and mathematical scientists, and 16% of engineers. The distribution of women who earned degrees in S&E fields was similar to their distribution among S&E occupations at the bachelor’s degree level or higher.”
Filling the pipeline
Much of the research in this area focuses on filling the pipeline, rather than on women in the top positions, or in leadership. According to Solving the Equation, “A gender gap in students’ intentions to pursue … degrees in engineering or computing is evident by the time they step foot on college campuses.”
Of all incoming freshmen in 2014, just 6% of women intend to major in Engineering (vs 19% for men), and just 1% of women intend on Computer science (vs 6% of men). Other STEM majors, such as chemistry, math, and statistics, show parity, while women are only a third of identified physics majors.
When freshmen arrive on America’s college and university campuses, they are likely to be taught their STEM classes by male professors. In Computing and Engineering respectively, men make up 74%(CS) and 77%(Eng) of Assistant Professors, 80%(CS) and 83%(Eng) of Associate Professors, and 87%(CS) and 91%(Eng) of Full Professors.
Retaining these interested STEM freshmen females through their undergraduate years and beyond is a critical challenge. While women have more than achieved parity at the undergraduate degree level, earning 57 of bachelor’s degrees in 2013, they make up a small percentage of STEM graduates, and the numbers are worst in the most lucrative fields with the largest number of jobs. The AAUW analysis indicates that “Women accounted for 32% of chemical engineering graduates, 21% of civil engineering graduates and only 12% of electrical and mechanical engineering graduates in 2013. Because mechanical and electrical engineering are such large engineering disciplines, women’s dramatic underrepresentation in these fields is a big factor in women’s underrepresentation in engineering overall.”
By college graduation, women are greatly outnumbered by men in every engineering and computing discipline. Likewise, in the workforce women are dramatically underrepresented in the fields of engineering and computing and are more likely to leave these fields than their male counterparts are.
Women have lost ground in computing sciences during the last 30 years.
The report makes an even graver point about women in computing:
Throughout the 1980s it appeared that women might reach parity in computing, with women earning 37 percent of computing bachelor’s degrees in 1984 and 1985. After 1985, however, women’s participation in computing reversed course, so that by 2013 the proportion of computing bachelor’s degrees awarded to women was half what it had been nearly three decades earlier.
At every level from college through master’s or doctoral programs through the workforce, retaining women in computing and engineering is a key challenge.
As these two areas represent two of the fastest-growing areas of the US economy, the areas with higher-paying occupations, and areas requiring innovation and problem-solving, training and retaining women is critical.
What will it take to get women in the Power Percentage of STEM/Technology & Development leadership in America?