Female students continue to reject sciences
The latest application data has shown that female applicants to universities have continued to reject the option of studying science degrees.
The latest data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) has shown the gender gap between subject choices has continued to grow. This is a worrying statistic for graduate employers in sectors like Engineering and Energy and Utilities who are struggling to have a satisfactory gender diversity in their organisations.
The issue of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) fields has become a real problem for graduate employers, with the issue being traced back through the pipeline to the appropriate subjects being chosen for degree and even before that.
The results have found that women were much more likely to take humanities related degrees. UCAS disclosed that in subjects like English, female applicants outnumbered their male counterparts 7175 to 2380. This was found to be similar in Psychology, where women made up 82% of the applicants.
However for more STEM related subjects it was the opposite that was true. In Maths, 4890 men had applied to study the subject, compared to just 2880 women. The same could be seen in Physics were the ratio of male to female applicants was 3850 to 1045.
Director at the Higher Education Policy Institute, Nick Hillman, believes the problem is systemic and entrenched in outdated views. Hillman said 'Certain professions, particularly public service jobs like teaching and nursing, have long recruited more women than men and they now recruit more university graduates...but the gap also reflects the culture of some schools and wider society, where some disciplines and some jobs are seen as best suited to one gender or the other.'
Hillman added 'This is proving resistant to change and my worry is that today's figures will be part of a self-perpetuating cycle. If low numbers of men opt for nursing and low numbers of women opt for computer science, then there will be a shortage of future mould-breaking role models.'
By James Howell
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