Female vs. Male PhD Degree Enrollment

It took longer for women to dominate

In my previous two postings on undergraduate and master's degree enrollment, Female vs. Male Undergraduate Enrollment and Female vs. Male Master's Degree Enrollment, I highlighted that women reached the majority in both cases in the early 1980s, reaching 58.5% and 61.8% of enrolled students, respectively. Given this, we may expect PhD enrollment to be close behind, but Figure 1 shows otherwise.

Figure 1: Data from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

Women became the majority in 2006 and now account for 56% of those enrolled in PhD programs. This is over 20 years later than in undergraduate and master's degree programs, and while they are currently the majority, it is lower than in the other two groups. However, this is more impressive in other aspects, given that women began at 20% in 1976 for PhD programs but about 45% for the other two categories. I don't have a strong data-driven explanation as to why it took longer, other than a lower starting point. Assuming enrollment numbers reflect completion, women did not become a majority until 2006, and faculty tend to stay in their posts for a long time. It would take around 30 years for women to achieve parity in faculty positions. According to a fast Google search, women make up approximately 44% of tenure-track academics. Given the timelines presented, this seems about right. This will have to be modeled for a future post.

How did women come to dominate? Figure 2 displays the total number of PhD students rather than percentages.

Figure 2: Data from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

Despite a growing population, males today have just around 10,000 more PhD program places than they did in 1976. Women, on the other hand, have continued to increase their representation in PhD programs. Men were only able to equal this growth rate from 2006 to 2012, after which they leveled out while women continued to enroll in greater numbers. Let's look at which programs are mostly female or male, like I did in my previous two enrollment reports.

The big 4

Figure 3 depicts four PhD program areas with 10,000 or more students enrolled. Women are a majority in three of the four, with over 50% representation, and have super representation in two of the four, with a percentage higher than their total representation of 56% (the black line in the graph). Only men have a majority in engineering, and it is worth mentioning that the total number of engineering students is 10,890, compared to 85,581 in health, 35,976 in legal, and 13,655 in education.

Figure 3: Note that the black line is 56%, the overall percentage of women in PhD programs. Data from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

The next eight

Women have a super majority in two PhD programs with 2,000 to 7,500 students (Figure 4), and a majority in one. The interesting thing here is that these are two of the three largest programs at this level, with 7,486 biology students and 6,363 psychology students.

Figure 4: Note that the black line is 56%, the overall percentage of women in PhD programs. Data from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

The next nine

Figure 5 shows programs with 500 to 2,000 students. I did not create a graph for the eight programs with fewer than 500 students. Women are a supermajority in three areas, nearly so in two others, and still a majority in another. Only three programs have a male majority.

Figure 5: Note that the black line is 56%, the overall percentage of women in PhD programs. Data from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

If you want to keep track, women have a majority in 12 of the 21 programs here, while men have a majority in 9 and only by a slim margin in two of them. If sexism is to blame for men dominating in a few professions like computer science, engineering, and math, then wouldn't sexism be a likely reason for women dominating in subjects like education, health, and psychology? Or, perhaps, when given the option, women and men have different preferences?

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