Last month, we looked at the proportion of women earning bachelor’s degrees in physics in two types of PhD-granting physics departments: those with a sustained PER PhD specialization and those with no PER specialization.1 We averaged data across all 34 departments that had a PER specialization listed in GradSchoolShopper in 2005 and in 2015 and across the 133 departments that did not have a sustained PER specialization and compared the average proportion of women among bachelor’s degree recipients (WaBDR) in the two time periods in the two types of departments. That provided weak evidence to suggest that the proportion of WaBDR in the sustained PER departments was slightly higher than that in the non-PER departments in the later period; there was no statistically significant difference in the early period. This month we will examine the outcomes in each individual department.

In the graph below, we plot the proportion of...

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