Chapter: 2 Science & Engineering Indicators 93
Bachelors Degrees by Sex
Women make up 55 percent of the undergraduate population and receive 56 percent of the bachelors degrees in the social sciences.
(Click here for footnote 22.) Women are approaching similar parity in a few fields of the natural sciences. For example, women received 49 percent of the bachelors degrees in the biological sciences
in 1991. (See text table 2-6.) However, women received only 32 percent of the bachelors degrees in the physical sciences in 1991. Physics departments have
only 5 percent female faculty and few minorities, perhaps adding to the difficulty of attracting these student populations (SRS 1992e). Males obtain the vast majority of engineering and engineering technology degrees,
and the majority of mathematics/computer sciences degrees.
Overall, the increasing equality in the natural sciences has not resulted from large increases in the number of female degrees between 1975 and 1991; degrees to females during this period increased only 1 percent annually, from 23,000 to 29,000.
Rather, there is a higher female participation rate because degrees awarded to females did not decline, as they did for men. Degrees awarded to men in the natural sciences began to decline in 1977, dropping 3 percent annually from 65,000 in 1977 to
36,000 in 1991. (See appendix table 2-19.)
Footnote 22:
Perhaps not coincidentally, the full-time faculty of U.S. sociology departments includes a high proportion (41 percent) of women (SRS 1992f).
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