Women earn more degrees than men at Ohio State, struggle to forge same path in STEM and business 

Women are consistently earning more degrees than men at Ohio State. Only two colleges at the university report a minority of women degree-earners: The College of Engineering and Fisher College of Business. While the College of Engineering awarded more degrees than ever to women, Fisher College of Business tries to bounce back from a drop.

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 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.

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. 

Women earned more degrees than men last academic year, keeping in line with the trend of outperforming men and maintaining the majority. 

Aubrey Wright | Managing Editor of Content

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Girls go to college to get more knowledge — and a career

Claudia Buchmann, a distinguished professor of sociology at Ohio State and co-author of “The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What it Means for American Schools,” offered a couple of reasons why girls see more success in school and earn better grades. 

“Women who are now in their 50s and 60s, that cohort basically overtook men in college completion rates, and that trend has continued in the last four decades,” Buchmann said. 

Though some women took part in the labor force, for much of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, they were expected to become  housewives, Buchmann said. 

Even if single women went to college during that time, Buchmann said, many still prioritized marriage because of a lack of opportunity and incentive to work. Women weren’t guaranteed equal access to education and workplaces until the ‘70s. Women could be denied a bank account without a male cosigner until 1974.

“There were these structural, institutional things in place that put a cap on women’s aspirations, career aspirations,” Buchmann said.

“There were these structural, institutional things in place that put a cap on women’s aspirations, career aspirations,” Buchmann said.

“There was a whole range of social changes and social issues that were happening that led women to invest in education and think differently about their futures in that period,” Buchmann said.

Girls perform about equally on standardized math and reading tests, Buchmann said. Though there’s evidence that boys sometimes do better in math, girls still show more success in other areas and graduate high school at higher rates. 

Buchmann’s research suggests a couple of reasons why girls see more success in school and earn better grades. 

Buchmann said she believes grades offer a more “holistic” way of measuring success in school. Grades, unlike intelligence tests or standardized tests like the SAT, measure factors valuable to the labor market — like the ability to meet deadlines, stay organized and follow instructions.

Buchmann’s research proposes that girls may just use those skills more often, put in more effort and engage with academics more than boys, resulting in higher grades. 

Behavior and socialization also play into girls’ success, Buchmann said. Buchmann’s studies show girls are less likely to be disruptive and engage in “risky” behavior and more likely to do homework and show interest in work. 

According to an American University study, females spend about 15 minutes more per day on homework than males. The study also found that female high school students are more likely to be in academic tracks whereas boys are more likely to follow a vocational track. 

The reasons why boys and young men are falling behind are less clear, Buchmann said. Theories range from men and boys viewing education as “too feminine” or valuing better short-term job opportunities over the longer path to a degree and a career. 

Though significant gains have been made for women in education, they still lag in male-dominated fields in college, Buchmann said.

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The College of Engineering makes strides with more women grads than ever before

Libby Woods, a fourth-year in industrial system 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.

In a required first-year seminar for all College of Engineering students about women in engineering, Woods said she felt excited to finally 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 not smart enough, but because they can’t relate to a future in the industry when starting out. 

Gisell Jeter-Bennett, assistant director for the College of Engineering’s Office of Diversity, Outreach and Inclusion, oversees the college’s programming for women. Over the years, the college has shifted its focus for undergraduate women to creating opportunity and exposure to people in the industry like them. 

To accommodate students’ busy schedules, Jeter-Bennett said the college also embeds support for women in engineering into curriculum. 

The college offers two seminars — 1195 for first-years and 1195.02 for second-years — for students to talk about their experiences and work on professional development, Jeter-Bennett said. These seminars are for those in the Women in Engineering Learning Community, but any engineering student can join. 

The courses also include connections to faculty, research opportunities and professionals within the engineering industry, she said. 

The College of Engineering awarded more undergraduate degrees than ever to women last year — about a quarter of all undergraduate degrees.

Aubrey Wright | Managing Editor of Content

“Putting yourself in a room full of women that are thinking the same things as you and telling you like, ‘Hey, like, I’m in the same boat as you,’ is really so empowering,” Gupta said. “Having a community like SWE is so awesome to supplement the kind of impostor syndrome that I feel in my classes and that I feel in the workplace.”

Barriers to joining SWE are intentionally low so anyone can join, Gupta said. There are over 100 events each year, and over 3,000 people receive the SWE newsletter, she said. 

The organization has programs to make sure members connect with each other and their community, like “big and little” mentorship programs, outreach to local high schools and middle schools, engineering career fairs each spring and national conferences. SWE also connects members with corporate partners and internships, Gupta said. 

Outside of supporting students who identify as women, SWE created a group for those in the LGBTQ community, Gupta said. The group also started a program for men called HeforSWE to show men in engineering how they can support women and minorities. 

“We put on programming for guys to talk about microaggressions to talk about how to speak up for females that are being put down, how to identify situations where someone may have said something that definitely was not okay and how to call them out in a respectful way,” Gupta said.

When Gupta finishes her time at Ohio State, she said she’ll be part of a “huge” alumni network across the world, because “SWE doesn’t end when you graduate.” 

SWE isn’t the only sisterhood in the College of Engineering. Ohio State’s chapter of Phi Sigma Rho, a social sorority for engineering and related fields, had 62 active members last semester, Anastasia Doty, president of PSR — as they’re known — said in a statement. 

Doty, a fourth-year in industrial systems and engineering, said PSR helped her meet more women in engineering, which can be difficult in a male-dominated field. 

“Being able to make these connections through Phi Rho has helped many of our members socially, academically and even professionally after college,” Doty said. 

Woods, PSR’s vice president of sisterhood, and Iheanyi-Igwe, PSR’s director of philanthropy, both joined the sorority after looking for community. 

Woods said her job is all about “making memories” and creating a “network of people who you can trust.”

Iheanyi-Igwe said through her role, she organizes up to six events each year with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, including remembrance walks and fundraising events on The Oval. The sorority has raised the most money since 2016 under her leadership.

“I think it’s really rewarding, and it’s something that people don’t really see is part of engineering,” Iheanyi-Igwe said.

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Fisher is back where it started, but not without trying

The percentage of women earning degrees in Fisher College of Business peaked in the 2014-15 academic year.

Aubrey Wright | Managing Editor of Content

“In speaking with students, as well as women currently in the workforce, some of the major barriers they cite are the challenges of being heard, coping with the fear of failure or ‘being good enough,’ imposter syndrome, and a culture that values and rewards competition over collaboration,” Turner said. 

Interviews with The Lantern revealed female Fisher students often experienced intimidation, imposter syndrome and competition in classes, where they are sometimes clearly outnumbered by men. 

Skylar Bader, a fourth-year in accounting, said though she feels the college’s administration is supportive of women, “they don’t really acknowledge that more classes are male-dominated than others.”

Bader said examples of this include accounting and finance, which is why women tend to stick to majors like marketing and human resources.

People might have different experiences, Bader said, but in accounting classes, she could count the number of women on one hand. 

She said she felt judgment in the hypercompetitive environment — comments under peers’ breath, strange or judgemental looks, the push to be the very best in class. When professors are looking for straightforward answers, there’s more opportunity for asking “dumb questions” and making mistakes, Bader said. 

“I feel like that’s just such a big difference between marketing and accounting and finance classes,” Bader said. “Because when you do enter into a male-dominated classroom — although yes it’s 2022 — they are going to outnumber you.”

Turner said Fisher is working to increase representation of all student diverse student populations.

“We’re working to attract, retain and educate a more diverse student population while also engaging with alumni, friends and partners, many of whom are in management and leadership positions, to provide them with access to lifelong learning opportunities at Fisher that emphasize the value of diversity across their organizations,” Turner said. 

Ami Brannan, a third-year in marketing, said being a woman influenced her experience at Fisher, though it hasn’t been as negative as others’. 

The first time she noticed being outnumbered by men was her sophomore year, when she was one of the only women in a group project. She expects it now, she said, so it doesn’t affect her as much as it used to. 

“Sometimes, it can be really intimidating to be the only girl, especially if the other men have stronger personalities, or if they’re really smart. You can definitely feel a little silent, a little shy sometimes,” Brannan said.

Brannan said her student organization, the Undergraduate Business Women’s Association, helps. Now president of the group, she said she leads up to 200 members with the slogan “empowered women empower women.” 

Words by Aubrey Wright

Artwork by Reid Murray

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