The bachelor's to Ph.D. STEM pipeline no longer leaks more women than men: a 30-year analysis

Frontiers in Psychology
David I Miller, Jonathan Wai

Abstract

For decades, research and public discourse about gender and science have often assumed that women are more likely than men to "leak" from the science pipeline at multiple points after entering college. We used retrospective longitudinal methods to investigate how accurately this "leaky pipeline" metaphor has described the bachelor's to Ph.D. transition in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in the U.S. since the 1970s. Among STEM bachelor's degree earners in the 1970s and 1980s, women were less likely than men to later earn a STEM Ph.D. However, this gender difference closed in the 1990s. Qualitatively similar trends were found across STEM disciplines. The leaky pipeline metaphor therefore partially explains historical gender differences in the U.S., but no longer describes current gender differences in the bachelor's to Ph.D. transition in STEM. The results help constrain theories about women's underrepresentation in STEM. Overall, these results point to the need to understand gender differences at the bachelor's level and below to understand women's representation in STEM at the Ph.D. level and above. Consistent with trends at the bachelor's level, women's representation at the Ph.D. level has been...Continue Reading

References

Jul 15, 2015·Psychological Science in the Public Interest : a Journal of the American Psychological Society·Stephen J CeciWendy M Williams

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Citations

Jan 23, 2016·Scientometrics·Peter van den Besselaar, Ulf Sandström
Jan 31, 2018·American Journal of Physical Anthropology·Trudy R TurnerErin Vogel
Apr 9, 2020·Journal of Orthopaedic Research : Official Publication of the Orthopaedic Research Society·Tamara AllistonJennifer J Westendorf
Oct 1, 2017·The European Journal of Neuroscience·Dana L HelmreichJohn J Foxe
Jun 4, 2020·Ecology and Evolution·Denon Start, Shannon McCauley
Sep 26, 2020·Bioscience·Leslie J RissleRNicholas M Caruso
Dec 18, 2015·Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior·Amy L Odum
Mar 5, 2020·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Alice H Eagly
Jan 19, 2016·Annual Review of Sociology·Yu XieKimberlee Shauman

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Software Mentioned

R
Integrated Science and Engineering Resource Data System
WebCASPAR
pSTEM

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