In education and business, women are making strides as they seek higher education degrees at higher rates than men and look to build careers in fields related to business, science, math and engineering.
As part of our coverage leading up to International Women's Day March 8, here are 5 quick facts about their pursuit of education and the careers they're looking to build.
And in many cases, not just by tiny margins.
Since 1980, women have been earning more associate degrees per year than men. And for every year since 1982, they've earned more bachelor's degrees than men.
Women have outpaced men for the number of master's degrees earned each year since 1987.
In 2006, women for the first time earned more doctorate degrees than men and have continued to do so annually.
Moreover, that trend doesn't appear to be slowing.
For the 2021-22 academic year, the National Center for Education Statistics notes that female students earned 63 percent of the associate degrees, 59 percent of the bachelor's degrees, 63 percent of the master's degrees and 57 percent of the doctorate degrees.
Data shows that women are drawn to business as a major and, therefore, are likely to be seeking related professions.
Of the 1.17 million bachelor's degrees earned by women during 2021-22 academic year, about 174,600 were business degrees, according to the NCES. That made business the second most popular area of study behind health care and health-related professions (223,900).
It is worth noting that, for this particular data set, STEM was not specified as a single subcategory.
However, when STEM-related subcategories—not including health/health care—are considered together (bio-science, engineering, engineering technologies, computer science and physical science/science technologies), they surpass psychology for the third most-popular area of study with more than 159,350 degrees earned.
For the 2021–22 academic year, about 39 percent of STEM bachelor's degrees/certificates conferred were awarded to female students, according to NCES.
And while there are many factors that are contributing to this, it's likely the culmination of a conscious push by education and STEM industries to encourage girls and women to pursue science- and math-related fields.
Nonetheless, women still haven't pursued STEM majors in the same numbers of men. This lagging STEM pursuit is happening even as women outpace their male counterparts in the number of total degrees obtained.
According to NCES, women's share of the STEM work force grew at a faster rate than that of men, though fewer women are employed in STEM fields overall.
For the 10-year period between 2011 and 2021, the number of women in the STEM work force increased by 31 percent to 12.3 million, up from 9.4 million.
Men, meanwhile, expanded their share of the STEM occupations by 15 percent, accounting for 22.6 million of the STEM jobs in 2021. This was up from the 19.6 million jobs they held a decade earlier.
It's also worth noting that the United Nations reports that women in science fields—who make up just 33 percent of all researchers—typically receive smaller research grants than their male colleagues.
Even as women seek and obtain higher education degrees at rates greater than that of men, the pay gap isn't exactly closing.
Not entirely.
Data shows that the pay gap for younger women has narrowed significantly, but it widens as they age.
There are a number of factors that could be contributing to this, but one major factor is that women still aren't being promoted as often or receiving raises at the same rates as men.
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