A Check-Up on Women in the STEM Workforce: A Long Way to Equality

A new report from the Center for Research + Evaluation at the University of California, San Diego shows that women are making progress in the STEM workforce but that there is still a long way to go to reach equality.

Among the findings in the report are:

• There are more women than ever represented in the STEM workforce, but their share of jobs remains low with only 1 in 4 STEM jobs held by women.

• Women’s share of life and physical sciences jobs increased by 16 percent since 1990.

• Women’s share of jobs in the largest STEM category – computers and mathematics – decreased from 44 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2018.

• Women hold the fewest share of STEM jobs in the engineering sector at 16 percent.

• Women in STEM earn $20,000 less per year than men in STEM. The pay disparity increased by 3 percent between 2010 and 2015, and has remained stable at 23 percent in recent years.

• Boys and girls perform at the same level in K-12 math and women enter higher education at higher rates than men, but women only earn 36 percent of STEM bachelor’s degrees.

The authors of the report note that “although progress towards achieving gender equity in STEM is slow, we must not view the prospect of achieving equity as insurmountable. Other countries across the globe have demonstrated capacity to graduate equal numbers of men and women with STEM degrees, which should translate to better representation in the workforce. The United States should work towards doing the same.”

The full report, Women in STEM Workforce Index 2020, may be downloaded by clicking here.