In the 2024–2025 academic year, women earned 27 percent of the 8,108 total bachelor's degrees in physics awarded by U.S. institutions. This is the highest proportion on record and more than double women's representation in the early 1980s.
In 2012, there were 9,050 faculty members teaching in physics departments at colleges and universities nationwide. Of these, 1,374, or 15.2 percent were women. The numbers are particularly startling when it comes to women of color.
