The Gender Gap in Educational Attainment Is Not Restricted to the United States

It will come as no surprise to readers of WIAReport, that women have surpassed men in higher education enrollments in the United States. Women also earn more degrees than men. In fact, women earn more than 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in this country.

But the large gender gap in higher educational attainments is not restricted to the United States. A new report from the National Science Foundation shows that in most countries of the so-called developed world, women earn a majority of first-level college and university degrees. (First-level degrees are equivalent to bachelor’s degrees in the United States and several other countries.) In many cases, women in these foreign nations earn a higher percentage of all first-level college and university degrees than is the case in the United States.

For example, in Iceland women earn 69 percent of all first-level college degrees. In Sweden, women are awarded 66.5 percent of all first-level degrees. In the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, and the Slovak Republic, women earn at least 62 percent of first-level college degrees. Other nations where women earn at least 60 percent of the first-level degrees are Canada, Denmark, and Hungary. Women also earn a larger share of the first-level degrees than is the case in the United States in Australia, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, and Spain.