The Society for Women engineers has a set of links to the some nice tables compiled by the NSF about various racial distinctions, (African American, Non-white Hispanic, American Indian) and genders in various fields.
The numbers are starker than I'd imagined. The data I finally decided to look at is 5 years old, and if you poke around on the NSF pages, they talk about increases in minorities of various varieties increasing, but it is in single digit/annum rates.
Here are a few numbers. In 2006 number of PhD's in awarded. For the record, accoring to the 2010 census, there are between .9% and 1.1% American Indian/Alaskans in the US (depending on how you count Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders), 15.08% Hispanic/Latino, 12.3% African American.
Total Phd's granted by general field in 2006, and percent female
| All | Science* | Engineering | Health | |
| Total: | 45,596 | 29,854 | 7,191 | 1,906 |
| Female: | 45.05% | 44.20%** | 20.19% | 67.37% |
Underrepresented minorities (as percentage of total):
| All | Science* | Engineering | Health | |
| AI/Alask: | 0.26% | 0.19% | 0.06% | 0.31% |
| AA: | 3.92% | 2.82% | 1.43% | 6.56% |
| NW-Hisp: | 3.31% | 3.35% | 1.56% | 2.47% |
Female Minorities (as percentage of minority group):
| All | Science* | Engineering | Health | |
| AI/Alask: | 53.37% | 52.27% | 0.0% | 50.00% |
| AA: | 63.22% | 61.76% | 40.78% | 79.20% |
| NW-Hisp: | 54.5% | 53.82% | 29.46% | 74.47% |
It would seem that once a minority group makes it into academia, the male/female divide seems to disappear. This is a trend I've noticed in other contexts. Maybe I'll ramble about that later.
The big losers? MechE (13.85%), EE(14.86%), Physics(16.56%) for gender inequality.
For Underrepresented minorities, the wall of shame is Astronomy (1.52%), EE(1.88%), Physics (1.9%).
This doesn't cover the whole picture. I'll be keeping an eye out for other pieces of "interesting" data, like who gets hired, over the next few weeks.
*Agricultural, Biological, Aero/Astro/Oceanic, Computer, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Psychology, and Social sciences.
** Dropping Psychology, and Social science, where women are overrepresented, this becomes 35.84% Not great, but respectable.
Barefoot, female underrepresentation in many science fields is surely a problem. But, I have to ask: how come you have no thoughts on the gender inequality in the health sector which is also obvious in your data?
ReplyDeleteThe definition of gender inequality, it seems to me, should be gender neutral.
It would seem that once a minority group makes it into academia, the male/female divide seems to disappear. This is a trend I've noticed in other contexts.
ReplyDeleteWhen you have many other difficulties to reach academia, gender may become negligible.