Fact of the Week: The Number of Female STEM Graduates Has Grown 30 Percentage Points Faster in the Last Two Decades Than the Number of Male Grads

Source: National Science Foundation, National Survey of College Graduates: 2019, Table 6-2: “Employed college graduates, by sex, ethnicity, race, and major occupation: 2003–19” (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, February 2022), 118–122.

Commentary: Recent data from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) survey on college graduates provides insights as to how the gender gap in STEM has evolved over time. In time-series data from 2003 to the most recently released year of 2019, NSF reports that the annual number of female STEM graduates rose from 183 percent, from 1.2 million in 2003 to 2.2 million in 2019. Meanwhile, the annual number of male STEM grads rose by only about 156 percent in the same period. Even so, male students still compose a large majority of STEM majors. There were 5.3 million male graduates in 2019, so the higher growth rate among women only amounted to a 4 point increase from 26 percent of STEM grads in in 2003 to about 30 percent in 2019. Policymakers should aim to reduce the losses in efficiency created by talent-opportunity gaps in STEM by working with universities to help make these historically male-dominated fields more gender-inclusive.