STEM subjects are still more popular among men than women
Children are now back at school across the country, with a new schoolyear bringing with it a new timetable, new teachers and maybe even new subjects. Another year of lessons are set to leave their impressions, as some are enjoyed, while others are merely endured. But which subjects do adult Britons recall enjoying the most?
Top of the class is English, with seven in ten Britons (70%) saying they enjoyed the subject while they were at school, even if three in ten (28%) say they weren’t a fan. History is also widely popular, with two-thirds of Britons (66%) having fond memories of learning about the past.
Six in ten Britons (61%) report enjoying geography lessons, with biology (58%) and food technology (54%) also enjoyed by a majority of the public. Studying art and DT (design and technology) are also retrospectively viewed positively by around half the public (50-51%).
Maths and physical education are the most divisive subjects, with half of Britons (49%) saying they enjoyed maths when they were at school and half (50%) saying they did not. And for the 47% who liked PE, there are 51% with less than fond memories of it, including a third of Britons (32%) who say they found no enjoyment at all in the subject.
Which subject is least popular is a little debateable. While drama is the subject the fewest Britons say they enjoyed (29%), a similar number (28%) did not take it, leaving only four in ten (41%) with a negative view. Religious education, however, was near-universally taught and widely disliked – while a third of Britons (32%) enjoyed learning about the world’s faiths, six in ten (60%) did not care for it, including 35% saying they didn’t enjoy it all, more than for any other subject polled.
Do men still prefer STEM subjects?
A key focus in education in the last few years has been getting more girls into ‘STEM’ subjects, i.e. science, technology, engineering and maths. Some progress has been made in recent years, with Women into Science and Engineering (WISE) reporting gradual improvements in the number of girls taking STEM subjects at A-level and degree level. Nonetheless, our data shows that among 18-24 year olds, the adults who have most recently completed their school education, STEM subjects still tend to be more popular among men, though the difference varies between subjects.
The largest gap of all is with IT (information technology). It was the most popular subject polled among 18-24 year old men, enjoyed by two-thirds (65%) while they were at school, but is the joint least popular among women the same age, with only a third (35%) saying they enjoyed it. Physics has a similar image problem, with again only 35% of 18-24 year old women recalling enjoying the subject, compared to six in ten (59%) of their male classmates – a 24 percentage point gap.
The gulf is less severe with chemistry and maths, with 44% of young women holding fond memories of the former and half (51%) saying they liked maths lessons, but this is still against six in ten young men (59-62%) saying they enjoyed the subjects. Across key components of STEM, it is clear that there is still progress to be made in getting women on board.
However, these gender gaps are not universal across the STEM curriculum. With biology, the gap is minimal, with just shy of six in ten 18-24 year old men (57%) and women (59%) saying they enjoyed it at school. Perhaps more notably, the same is true of the subject variously termed DT, woodwork or resistant materials, it being enjoyed by 56% of young men and 55% of women during their school years.
So, while maths, computing and some sciences might not have recently appealed as much to girls, biology and DT seemingly do.
Plus, it’s not simply STEM subjects to which gender gaps are restricted. Young women are much more likely to say they enjoyed English and art than men their age, with English the most popular subject polled among 18-24 year old women, but only tenth most popular among 18-24 year old men. And while 58% of young women were keen on art, it was only liked by a third of young men (35%).
The opposite pattern is true of PE, which was enjoyed by nearly two-thirds of 18-24 year old men (64%), but only four in ten women that age (39%).
Has the STEM gender divide closed over time?
Where these gender divides do exist, are they closing over time and or are they merely the way things have always been? Generally, we do see younger women having more positive views towards STEM subjects than older women, but it’s not universal.
With chemistry, for instance, 44% of 18-24 year old women say they enjoyed it while they were at school, an increase from 30% among women over 65 and against no real change among men over the same period (from 55% to 59%). Enjoyment of physics among women has similarly risen 14 points from 21% among older women to 35% with younger women.
However, satisfaction in biology among women has remained steady, with around six in ten women of all age groups (59-62%) professing enjoying the subject at school. When it comes to maths, we see something of a u-shape, with the very youngest and very oldest women most likely to say they enjoyed it (51% of 18-24 year old women and 49% of over 65 women), while those age groups in between having found less enjoyment in the subject (38-42%).
IT displays its own story of note, with the youngest generation of women clearly enjoying it less than their slightly older peers. While around half of 25-34 year old (50%) and 35-44 year old women (54%) say they liked it at school, this falls to just a third (35%) among those aged 18-24. With computing such an important and growing sector, such a decline is likely to cause alarm for women in STEM advocates.
Outside of STEM, the most significant change over time is undoubtedly English, which has seen a clear decline in enjoyment among both men and women over the last few decades. Eight in ten over 65s (82%) say they liked the subject at school, against only six in ten 18-24 year olds (59%).
However, part of the reason for some of the more dramatic age curves is that, at least historically, many children were not taught particular subjects. For instance, only one in five women over 65 (20%) say they were taught DT, while just a quarter of men that age (26%) say they studied food technology, historically known as domestic science or home economics, while they were at school.
If in these cases we restrict our analysis to only those who were taught the subject, different stories emerge. This is most notable with DT, where consistently across age groups, six in ten women who took the subject (59-63%) enjoyed it. Something similar is true with food technology, where the proportion of men who were taught the subject and liked it consistently sits between 56% and 65%.
Of course, there might be an element of self-selection here – those older women who actively chose to take DT or the older men who went out of their way to learn home economics are likely to be those who were more likely to have enjoyed the subject in the first place. Regardless, this does still retain relevance to the debate over women in STEM as it shows that, when girls have had the opportunity to study subjects like DT in the past, they have enjoyed it at the same rate as boys.
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