Decreasing: Central Asia, Latin America, North America and Western Europe

Abstract

In Central Asia, as well as in Latin America and North America and Western Europe, the proportion of women who chose hard science among all scientific specializations is declining. In each of these three regions, the rationale which explains this decline is substantially different. As in Eastern and Central Europe, Central Europe still benefitted in 2003 from the historical legacy of the Soviet rule, whereby women and men had equal access to studies. Ten years ago, Central Asia even stood as one of the regions of the world where the proportion of women in STEM was among the highest. However, recent political and economical evolutions have strongly deteriorated the situation of women in this country; this is clearly reflected by the impressive decline of feminization in all scientific specializations which drops from 44 to 34 %. The proportion of women is cut down to 25 % in engineering and 29 % in manufacturing. However, in physics as well as in math and statistics, parity is maintained with respectively 53 % and 51 % of women among tertiary graduates. It is interesting to observe that according to results from PISA, girls’ results both in science and math are equivalent to those of boys and that they do not feel a confidence gap.