Last February, Anthony Martinez and Asiah Gayfield of the social, economic, and housing statistics division at the Census Bureau released a paper on Hispanics in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. According to the researchers, women, Black and Hispanic workers, have historically been underrepresented in STEM occupations. While White men and Asians have been overrepresented within STEM.
The study focused on how race and Hispanic origin combined with gender creates different outcomes in employment and earnings for workers who are employed in STEM occupations and who obtained science and engineering bachelor’s degrees.
The analysis presented in “The Intersectionality of Sex, Race and Hispanic Origin in the STEM Workforce” supports the idea that looking at sex in combination with race and Hispanic origin when examining employment in STEM occupations shows a different perspective than just looking at race and Hispanic origin or sex.
This investigation of the relationship between educational attainment and employment in STEM occupations indicates that the relationship is not only different for men and women, and people of different races, but also different for men and women of the same race or Hispanic origin. For instance, women in STEM occupations were more likely to have advanced degrees than men, but the gap in advanced degree attainment was smaller between Asian women and men and higher for White women, Black women, and Hispanic women.
The study uses data from the American Community Survey (2012-2016) to describe the demographic and labor characteristics of the STEM workforce, and workers with science and engineering bachelor’s degrees. It examines the different pathways for workers with science and engineering bachelor’s degrees and the difference in median earnings for each potential path.
According to the American Association of University Women (AAUW), women make up only 28% of the workforce in STEM, and men vastly outnumber women majoring in most STEM fields in college. Only 21% of engineering majors and 19% of computer science majors are women.
The gender gaps are particularly high in some of the fastest-growing and highest-paid jobs of the future, like computer science and engineering. In its Solving the Equation paper, the AAUW made several recommendations:
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