Engineering Doctoral Degree Trend of Asian-American Women in the United States, 1994-2013

Abstract

In the U.S., while Asian-Americans are overrepresented in engineering, women are underrepresented based on their share of the U.S. population. Asian-American women are unique because they belong to both groups. Using data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates, this paper compares the engineering doctorate trends of Asian-American women with those of other demographic groups and describes Asian-American women's doctoral degree trends in selected engineering subfields in two decades (1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013). The findings show a consistent but somewhat narrowing gender gap in earning engineering doctorates among Asian-Americans during this period. Asian-American women's share of doctorates relative to Asian-American men was lower in many years than those of African American and, to some degree, Hispanic women but higher than that of white women relative to men of their respective races/ethnicities. Furthermore, among Asian-Americans, the gender gap was smaller in chemical and materials engineering than in electrical and mechanical engineering. For Asian-American women, the influence of Asian tradition or preference for engineering for social mobility has been somewhat counteracted by the social and institutional barriers that women experience in engineering.

Asian American women in STEM in the lab with “White Men Named John”

“…In general, men continue to represent a majority of doctorates in STEM fields. Tao (2015) notes that for female students, decisions to pursue doctorate degrees may be influenced by social and institutional factors “because only a very selected proportion of women who are pernicious [sic] enough to have overcome social and institutional barriers at an earlier age and are prepared to overcome barriers during doctoral studies would be able to complete their doctoral education in engineering” (p. 5).…”

Insiders and Outsiders in Research on Machine Learning and Society

“…We would like to highlight Asian women, who are in a unique position in machine learning (or science as a whole) because Asians are overrepresented but women are underrepresented in science. Asian men tend to behave similarly to their white counterparts in their career outcomes, but Asian women tend to behave more like other women's groups, making the gender gap among Asians greater than that among some other racial/ethnic groups (Tao 2015(Tao , 2018Tao and McNeely 2019). Being insiders in machine learning on the one hand (Asians) and being outsiders on the other hand (women) could possibly constrain some of their choices because they may receive inconsistent expectations and experience multilevel barriers.…”