We have recently published an update to our 2005 report, Women in Physics and Astronomy. This report examines the representation of women and goes beyond representation to examine career progress and salary differences. The report and all our information on women in physics and astronomy are available at www.aip.org/statistics/women.
Today we take a look at the number of women earning a bachelor’s degree in physics; it continues to rise. However, the number of men earning bachelor’s degrees in physics has been growing faster in recent years, leading to an overall decline in the proportion of women among physics bachelor’s degree recipients. (The figure shown here is Fig. 5 in the new report.)
Despite the decrease in the representation of women among bachelor’s degree recipients, the representation of women among first-year physics graduate students has risen in the most recent five years for which we have data. (To see...