Gender Differences in the Road to the Doctoral Degree

According to the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates from the National Science Foundation, in 2013, 24,396 women were awarded doctoral degrees from American universities. Women made up 46.2 percent of all doctoral recipients.

Women tended to take longer than men to earn a doctoral degree. On average, women who earned a doctorate did so 9.3 years after earning their bachelor’s degree. For men, the average was 8.6 years. Women took 7.7 years to earn a doctorate after enrolling in graduate school for the first time, compared to 7.2 years for men.

Nearly 37 percent of male doctoral recipients in 2013 received research assistantships that helped them pay for graduate school. Only 26.2 percent of women who earned doctorates in 2013 were research assistants. More than 20 percent of women doctoral recipients used their own funds as the primary source of funding for their doctoral studies. Only 11.4 percent of men used their own resources as the primary source of funding for their doctoral studies.

Some 9.5 percent of women who earned doctorates in 2013 had accumulated debt of more than $90,000. Only 6.4 percent of male doctoral recipients that year had debt of more than $90,000. The average debt for women doctoral recipients was $18,041 compared to an average debt of $13,101 for male doctoral recipients.