2 | The Lantern | Thursday, April 20, 2023
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Women earn more degrees than men at Ohio State, struggle to forge same path in STEM and business AUBREY WRIGHT Managing Editor for Content wright.2257@osu.edu Higher education isn’t a boys club anymore — and it hasn’t been for a long time. In the early 20th century, a college campus might have been dotted sparsely with women — most likely white — taking courses alongside men. Some colleges, including the nation’s most elite Ivy League schools, still refused to admit women. A postwar boom in college education put men ahead as leaders in degree attainment, flooding campuses with veterans and eager young men hoping to take part in the nation’s growing economy. A smaller, growing percentage of women might have been alongside them, and student newspapers took notice. A Lantern article written by then-editor Jackie Brush, “1957 Points to Women on Campus,” shows that some knew this trend wouldn’t fade away. “The lady doctor, the Mrs. lawyer and the female carrier of the slide rule are all part of the upward swing of more career-minded women,” Brush said in the article. “There is hardly a field into which the skirted sex hasn’t stuck a crimson-painted toe.” Brush’s prediction of an upward swing was right. A Lantern investigation finds women make up an ever-growing majority of degree-earners at Ohio State, claiming 54 percent of degrees in the last academic year. The analysis is based on data reported by the university for each academic year, showing how many men and women earned degrees. The data, tracked over the last 10 years, show that women are consistently out-earning men, never dipping below 51 percent representation in that timeframe. University data on degrees awarded by
gender only includes students who identify as either male or female. Women of every race and ethnic background have higher graduation and retention rates than men of the same background. However, in two of the university’s largest colleges, the Fisher College of Business and the College of Engineering, the data shows the number of degrees earned by women still lag behind men. These are the only colleges within the university to award more degrees of all levels of study to men in the 2021-22 academic year. Out of every college, the College of Engineering reported the largest increase in the percentage of undergraduate degrees awarded to women — about 10 percent — over the last 10 years. Though Fisher was close to equal representation in 2016-17 with 46 percent of degrees awarded to women, the college is now back where it was a decade ago. Forty percent of all degrees were awarded to women in Fisher in 2021-22, the second lowest ratio ahead of the College of Engineering. Sources interviewed by The Lantern cited unsupportive male peers, hypercompetitive cultures and a decades-long lack of representation as reasons for a lack of success among women in Fisher and the College of Engineering. The College of Engineering makes strides with more women graduates than before Libby Woods, a fourth-year in industrial and systems engineering, Nessie Iheanyi-Igwe, a second-year in computer science and engineering, and Aastha Gupta, a fifth-year in computer science and engineering, said some male counterparts in the College of Engineering lacked empathy with women in the field and often expressed microaggressions and misogyny.
ZACHARY RILLEY | PHOTO EDITOR
More women earned degrees than men at Ohio State last academic year.
In a required first-year seminar for all College of Engineering students about women in engineering, Woods said she felt excited to see all of her problems laid out for her male peers to see. The class watched a film explaining in technical terms why so many women leave engineering, and everyone was required to post their thoughts to an online discussion board. The male students didn’t get it, Woods said. “They’re like, ‘Why did women pursue engineering if they’re just gonna leave it?’” Woods said. “I’m like, ‘You just watched a whole movie about this, and you still don’t understand.’ So at times like that, I’m like, ‘Oh, my god, you are the problem.’” Iheanyi-Igwe said she has similar negative experiences with male students. Iheanyi-Igwe said she’s heard male classmates say they don’t understand the push to increase women’s presence in the field or “why everyone pretends like there’s no women in engineering.”
“How many women who are in engineering have had these negative experiences?” Iheanyi-Igwe said. “I will see people who drop out of engineering because they have a bad time in class, not even by their course load, maybe by their professor, maybe by their classmates, whatever it is. And they’re like, ‘I don’t want to deal with that treatment throughout the rest of my life.’” The College of Engineering is aware of these issues and are trying to combat it, Olga Stavridis, director of the college’s Diversity Inclusion and Outreach department, said. Though women are still clear minorities in the College of Engineering, their representation is improving. For the 2021-22 academic year the college gave out roughly 1 in 4 bachelor’s degrees to women — the highest number of engineering degrees awarded to women ever. Stavridis said women usually don’t leave engineering because it’s too hard or they’re CONTINUES ON PAGE 3