Exploring the STEM Gender Ratio

Abstract: Abstract: The gender-equality paradox is the phenomenon of finding more developed, egalitarian countries generally experience higher gender equality while, for example, having a relatively low share of female graduates from STEM fields in tertiary education. The presence of the paradox in several developed egalitarian countries indicates that the female share of STEM graduates must be influenced by other than gender inequality. This study explores women’s empowerment and economic opportunities relationship to the ratio of female STEM graduates in Europe and MENA. It also explores other contextual factors and their relationship to women choosing a STEM degree since the previous literature is more focused on the micro level and mainly having a mathematical achievement focus. This study builds a panel dataset of 39 countries in Europe and 11 countries in MENA. Through a stepwise developing pooled OLS regression, this study concludes that there is a weak positive relationship between women’s empowerment and economic opportunities, measured by the WBL index, and the female share of STEM graduates. Furthermore, a small regional difference between Europe and MENA is shown. This thesis concludes that further investigation of the field is of importance since there is no clear explanation to why some countries have higher female shares of STEM graduates.