Far more psychology degrees are going to women

The number of psychology degrees awarded to women has far outpaced the number going to men, according to the latest data on doctoral recipients gathered by APA's Research Office.

The survey, conducted in the spring of 1998, also reveals that:

* Women more often enter clinical practice than research, relative to men.

* Women are just as satisfied with the job market as men.

* Women carry lower levels of tuition debt.

Women earned almost three-fourths of the baccalaureate degrees awarded in psychology in 1993, and they represented only slightly less than three-fourths of the students enrolled at the graduate level in 1997. Not surprisingly, the survey also found that women earned just over two-thirds of the doctorates awarded in psychology in 1997.

Women were more highly represented among blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans than among white or Native American new doctorates. They were fairly similar in age to men in 1997--women were 33 on average, whereas men were 34--and there was no difference between men and women in terms of their perceptions of the job market. Overall, about 28 percent of respondents felt that the job market was bleak or poor, about 38 percent responded that it was fair and around 34 percent thought it was good or excellent.

Analyses of levels of debt related to graduate education indicated that women with doctorates in the health-service provider subfields reported substantially lower median levels of debt than did men in those subfields, and there were essentially no differences in the levels of debt between women and men in the research and other subfields.

New doctorates in the research and other subfields reported significantly lower levels of graduate debt, regardless of gender.

There were moderate gender differences noted in subfield analyses. Specifically, women earned almost 72 percent of the degrees in the health-service provider subfields--particularly in health and school psychology and clinical

neuropsychology--but only 63 percent of the degrees awarded in the research and other subfields.

Representation was lowest for women in engineering, experimental, neurosciences and cognitive psychology. Still, representation was 50 percent or more in all but four subfields, indicating that subfield segregation has eased in the past several decades.

Women worked most often in university settings, followed by business, government and other settings, hospitals and other human-service settings. The patterns were similar for men except that men were more apt to be in human-service settings other than in hospitals.

A report currently in press by the Task Force on Women in Academe (Women's Program Office, APA) discusses these issues for women in academic settings and suggests guidelines for improvement.

--Jessica Kohout and Steve Williams, APA's Research Office

For more information on the survey, go to the Research Office web site at research.apa.org.



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