Canadian Graduate School Enrolments Continue to Rise, but Women Still Lag Behind at Doctoral Level

A recent article in The Gateway, the official student newspaper at the University of Manitoba, discusses gender equality at the highest levels of education, noting the fact that women still lag behind men in doctoral enrolments. At U of M, women outnumber men in doctoral programs in a number of disciplines, including medicine and architecture. It is a very different picture if we look at engineering and the hard sciences, however, where women are least represented. The article makes reference to a recent report released by Statistics Canada, which examines trends in doctoral program enrolment, earned doctorates, and university faculty, with a focus on gender.

According to that report, women accounted for 58% of undergraduate and 56% of master’s program enrolments in 2008/2009, while accounting for 47% of doctoral enrolments. Women also accounted for 44% of doctoral degrees granted in 2008. Female doctoral graduates represented the majority of earned doctorates in four fields: education; social and behavioural sciences, and law; health, parks, recreation and fitness; business, management and public administration. Women are least represented in architecture, engineering and related technologies; and mathematics, computer and information sciences, accounting for less than 30% of earned doctorates in each of these two fields.

According to data made available from Statistics Canada that is complied yearly and included in the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Almanac of Post-Secondary Education in Canada, women accounted for 50.2% of full-time doctoral enrolments in the 2005-2006 academic year; this is the only time that women have outnumbered men in enrolments at this level. Full-time doctoral enrolments have risen by roughly three-quarters in the last ten years, but the enrolment of women in doctoral programs has only risen by a little less than 3% over this period; in fact enrolment has decreased in the last three years by 3% from the 50.2% accounted for in 2005 to 47% reported in 2008. Meanwhile, women’s full-time master’s program enrolments have exceeded the enrolment of men for quite some time; have steadily risen by a little over 3% since 1998.