Eighteen women participating in the Northwestern Prison Education Program recently received their bachelor's degrees from Northwestern University. The program currently serves 68 male and female students at two prison facilities in Illinois.
In 2025, there were 49,166,000 women over the age of 25 in the United States who had earned at least a bachelor’s degree. There are still more men than women holding professional degrees and doctorates.
When we look at doctoral degree awards in specific disciplines, we find that wide gender gaps persist in many fields. There are numerous STEM disciplines where women earn less than one third of all doctorates awarded.
For all doctoral recipients in 2025 who had employment commitments by the time they received their doctorate, women were to receive a median salary of $87,800 compared to a median salary of $114,750 for men.
Of the 50 universities in the United States that awarded the most doctorates in 2025, only 11 universities awarded more doctorates to women than to men.
In 2025, 19,655 American women earned research doctorates, an all-time high. But there was a wide gender disparity in doctoral awards in specific disciplines. Less than one third of all doctorates in mathematics, engineering, and computer science were awarded to women.
Scharay Drenaena-Burnett, Amy Katherine Doerr, Paulette Kay Iliff, Lorrie Lin Hood, Kelly Kay Turner (Hoover), and Taylor Marie Nicks are the first women to graduate with bachelor's degrees through the University of Wyoming Pathways from Prison program.
In 2024, women earned 26.6 percent of all bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in engineering. Women were most represented among graduates in the environmental and biomedical disciplines. They were least represented among graduates in electrical and mechanical disciplines.
Among women who entered college in fall 2019, 64.3 percent completed their degree by 2025. For their male peers, only 58.1 percent completed their degree within six-years.
Thanks to an ongoing partnership between the California Department of Corrections and California State University, Los Angeles, a group of 22 women at the California Institution for Women have earned a bachelor's degree in liberal studies. They are the university's first graduating class of incarcerated women.
There are over 5.9 million more women than men in the United States that hold at least a bachelor's degree. While women hold a larger share in master's degree attainment, men still hold a larger share of Americans with professional degrees and doctorates.
