Women in the STEM Workforce. DataPoints. Volume 6, Issue 9

Average salaries of full-time STEM workers with some college education was 26 percent higher than non-STEM workers with a similar education, according to a recent analysis by the Pew Research Center of Census data on the STEM workforce from 1990 to 2016. Health-related occupations had the largest concentration of women in STEM jobs. Of the nine million workers in healthcare fields, 75 percent (6.7 million) were women. Women also have made significant strides in life and physical sciences jobs, comprising 47 percent of workers in 2016, compared to 34 percent in 1990. However, women are still significantly underrepresented in the engineering and computer science sectors, where in 2016 they accounted for only 14 percent and 25 percent of the workforce, respectively.