{"id":57665,"date":"2014-09-14T09:47:37","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T17:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=57665"},"modified":"2014-09-14T09:47:37","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T17:47:37","slug":"which-are-the-female-dominated-majors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=57665","title":{"rendered":"Which Are The Female-Dominated Majors?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.randalolson.com\/2014\/06\/14\/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012\/\">Report<\/a>: <\/p>\n<h3>Today&#8217;s trends<\/h3>\n<p>The woman-dominated majors of today are unsurprising to anyone who has attended a large university in the U.S.:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Health Professions (85% women): nursing assistant, veterinary assistant, dental assistant, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Public Administration (82%): social work, public policy, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Education (79%): pre-K, K-12, higher education, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Psychology (77%): cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Surprisingly to me, most of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/STEM_fields\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/STEM_fields', 'STEM']);\" >STEM<\/a> majors aren&#8217;t doing as bad gender disparity-wise as I expected. 40-45% of the degrees in Math, Statistics, and the Physical Sciences were conferred to women in 2012. Even better, a majority of Biology degrees in 2012 (58%) were earned by women. This data tells me that <strong>we don&#8217;t really have a STEM gender gap in the U.S.: we have an ET gender gap<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<p>This ET gender gap has severe consequences. Computer Science and Engineering majors have stagnated at <a href=\"http:\/\/npr.org\/blogs\/money\/2014\/05\/09\/310114739\/whats-your-major-four-decades-of-college-degrees-in-1-graph\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/npr.org\/blogs\/money\/2014\/05\/09\/310114739\/whats-your-major-four-decades-of-college-degrees-in-1-graph', 'less than 10%']);\" >less than 10%<\/a> of all degrees conferred in the U.S. for the past decade, while the demand for employees with programming and engineering skills <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/s\/article\/9225673\/IT_jobs_will_grow_22_through_2020_says_U.S.\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/s\/article\/9225673\/IT_jobs_will_grow_22_through_2020_says_U.S.', 'continue to outpace the supply']);\" >continue to outpace the supply<\/a> every year. Compare this to more woman-dominated majors such as Business and Health Professions, which comprise 1\/3 of all college degrees in 2012 when combined.<\/p>\n<p>Provided that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2014\/03\/06\/womens-college-enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind\/\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2014\/03\/06\/womens-college-enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind\/', 'far more women attend college than men']);\" >far more women attend college than men<\/a>, it seems the best way to meet the U.S.&#8217;s growing need for skilled programmers and engineers is to focus on recruiting more women &#8212; of any race or ethnicity &#8212; into Computer Science and Engineering majors. The big question, of course, is &#8220;How?&#8221; With the constant issues of subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/early\/2012\/09\/14\/1211286109\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/early\/2012\/09\/14\/1211286109', 'discrimination against women']);\" >discrimination against women<\/a> in these male-dominated majors, we have quite a tough task on our hands.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at the historical trends, maybe we have something to learn from Architecture and the Physical Sciences, given that they were in our position only 40 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Report: Today&#8217;s trends The woman-dominated majors of today are unsurprising to anyone who has attended a large university in the U.S.: Health Professions (85% women): nursing assistant, veterinary assistant, dental assistant, etc. Public Administration (82%): social work, public policy, etc. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=57665\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57666,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57665\/revisions\/57666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}