SDG 5 | gender equality
Once the studies have begun, they are the ones with the lowest dropout rates
In Spain, only 16% of professionals in the area of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) are women, and very few adolescents, 0.7%, are interested in studying a degree in these disciplines, compared to 7% of men. Despite these low percentages, women who decide to pursue a STEM degree have better academic performance than men and similar grades. This is one of the main conclusions of the study “The field of STEM does not attract female talent”, by the Social Observatory of the »la Caixa» Foundation, led by researchers Mireia Usort, Sònia Sánchez-Canut and Beatriz Lores, from the Rovira i Virgili University.
In STEM, the gap is even greater for studies related to technology (13% of women enrolled, compared to 87% of men) and engineering (29 and 71%, respectively). In the case of mathematics, fewer and fewer women are enrolled. For sciences, it is observed that the proportion of women enrolled is also lower (42% of women and 58% of men) and life sciences are the only exception (59% of women and 41% of men) .
Although women do not usually choose STEM degrees, once they start this type of studies, they are the ones who drop out the least. In face-to-face universities, which represent 85% of the total, the overall dropout rate for women is between 2 and 6 points lower than for men. On the other hand, this trend disappears in non-face-to-face universities, since women abandon their higher education in greater numbers.
In the Spanish university system as a whole, women have a higher academic performance than men, measured by the percentage of approved credits compared to those enrolled. Specifically, in the 2019-2020 academic year, women passed nearly 88% of the subjects in which they were enrolled, while men passed 80% of the subjects.
This pattern is also detected in the STEM area, although the difference between women and men is greater in engineering studies and less in science degrees.
The average grade obtained in STEM university studies is similar for both sexes. However, men obtain a better grade in careers related to mathematics (7.2 out of 10), while women present better academic results in engineering and architecture (6.8 out of 10), careers in which a higher rate of return.
Once the gap in access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics studies has been evidenced, the next step is to describe what happens in previous educational levels, that is, to define when and in relation to what aspects the gender gap begins, and how this gap evolves during pre-university education. This should contribute to achieving the full inclusion of women in the STEM area, an area in which, at the moment, female talent is not well represented.
The identification of the way in which different sociodemographic factors ―and, in particular, the self-perception of digital competence― determine the choice of higher studies can help in the design of measures that encourage greater enrollment of women in university studies in the field of the STEMs.
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