ABSTRACT
Women in the United States have made great strides in establishing parity with their male counterparts in terms of educational attainment. According to the US Census, in 2012 more women than men over the age of twenty-five held bachelor’s degrees (or higher) in the United States. As undergraduates, women are less likely to major in a STEM field and more likely to switch to a non-STEM field before degree completion. Within academia and industry, women make up an even smaller proportion of the positions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. In academia, women held about 29 percent of tenured or tenure-track positions in STEM departments in 2010, with women filling 19 percent of full professorships. In terms of gender parity, almost every Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development country graduates women in lower proportions to men in the STEM fields. The exception is Turkey, where nearly 60 percent of the graduates in STEM fields are women.
