Brussels – In 2024, the European Union recorded 4.5 million new graduates, with women clearly outnumbering men at university: 2.6 million were women. This gap has widened over the years: in 2022, there were around 2.5 million female graduates, compared with 1.8 million men. However, the greater presence of women in higher education has not eliminated imbalances across different fields of study. In fact, there are four times as many women as men in the education sector, while men outnumber women by almost four to one in information and communication technologies (ICT). This is revealed by data from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office.
The gender gap is evident across almost all fields of study, but is most pronounced in certain areas. The widest gap is found in education, where the number of female graduates is four times higher than that of male graduates. By contrast, a situation of substantial parity is observed in sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary studies, as well as in the services sector, where the number of men and women obtaining a degree is similar.
While women are clearly in the majority in education-related disciplines, the trend is reversed when it comes to digital innovation. In the field of ICT, there are in fact 3.7 times as many male graduates as female graduates. This gap confirms that the gender gap in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) remains one of the main challenges for European gender equality policies. However, there are also positive signs on the employment front. Eurostat has also reported a steady increase in the number of women working in science and engineering: from 3.4 million in 2008 to 5.2 million in 2014, rising to 7.9 million in 2024, accounting for 40.5 per cent of the total workforce in the scientific and engineering sectors.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
