Women held a majority of the degrees in several S&E fields in 2018. They held a majority of the degrees in psychology, biological sciences, and agricultural sciences at all degree levels—bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. In psychology, women received at least 70% of degrees at each level. In biological sciences, women received over 60% of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and over half of doctoral degrees. In agricultural sciences, women earned over half of bachelor’s and master’s degrees and 47.5% of doctorates. These were the highest rates among the S&E fields. Despite these high rates, there are S&E fields with low female representation, and they are the focus of this theme.

Computer sciences has one of the lowest shares of female degree recipients among the broad fields of S&E, despite an increase in the number of women receiving computer sciences degrees over the past 2 decades—the number of women with bachelor’s and doctoral degrees more than doubled, and the number with master’s degrees more than quadrupled. Although the share of women receiving master’s and doctoral degrees increased, the share receiving bachelor’s degrees declined, from 27.0% in 1998 to 19.9% in 2018. The academic pipeline for women earning advanced degrees in computer sciences may be affected, to the extent that graduate enrollment will be affected by a smaller proportion of women receiving a bachelor’s in computer sciences (figure 10).

Engineering is another S&E field with one of the lowest shares of female degree recipients. However, both the number and share of women receiving engineering degrees increased at all levels over the past 2 decades. The number of women receiving engineering doctoral degrees is small, about 2,700 in 2018, yet the share of degrees earned by women in this field doubled, from 12.3% to 24.5% since 1998 (figure 11).

Women earned less than half of mathematics and statistics degrees: their share was over 40% at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels but under 30% at the doctoral level. Over the past 2 decades, the share of women receiving bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and statistics declined and the share of women receiving master’s degrees was stagnant. At the doctoral level, women’s share increased between 1998 and 2008, from 25.7% to 31.1%. The share then declined to 28.0% in 2018, even though there was an increase in the number of women receiving doctoral degrees (figure 12).