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

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 (1994-2013). 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.