Weekly Viz 2022-10-24
US Bachelor’s Degree Field of Study Women vs. Men 2020-21
This week, I looked at the same dataset as last week – US Bachelor’s degree field of study data by National Center for Education Statistics, but from a different dimension – gender. Not surprisingly, we see very strong preferences in some fields by a gender.
My Visualization
This visualization mainly uses gantt plot to show the bachlor’s degree fields differences between men and women. It is sorted by women’s top 20 fields of study.
Please notice that all the visualizations are designed for desktop view, so it is recommended to view them on a desktop device.
Insights
- While health profession is the top field of study for women in bachelor’s degree, it’s only selected by 5% of the men with bachelor’s degree;
- While on the opposite, we see fields like business and management, engineering, computer and information are way more popular among men than women;
- The reason behind these differences is complicated and impacted by many many factors. But one of them could be social perception towards certain fields. For example, women are better at being a nurse, while men are good at coding. But, this is not true. As I am not an expert in social science, it’s hard to quantify how much of the differences here we are seeing in fields of study selection is contributed by these misconception. But hopefully with more and more people recognizing that and all the initiatives to encourage women to study STEM subjects, we will be able to reduce the gap here.
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