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

AUBREY WRIGHT Managing Editor for Content wright.2257@osu.edu

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 that 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.

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.

Out of every college, the College of Engineering reported the largest increase in the percentage of undergraduate degrees awarded to women — about 10 percent — over the last 10 years.

Though Fisher was close to equal representation in 2016-17 with 46 percent of degrees awarded to women, the college is now back where it was a decade ago. Forty percent of all degrees were awarded to women in Fisher in 2021-22, the second lowest ratio ahead of the College of Engineering.

Sources interviewed by The Lantern cited unsupportive male peers, hypercompetitive cultures and a decades-long lack of representation as reasons for a lack of success among women in Fisher and the College of Engineering.

The College of Engineering makes strides with more women graduates than before

Libby Woods, a fourth-year in industrial and systems 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 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

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 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.

This support from the college and exposure to other women in engineering in their first and second years keeps female students engaged and connects them with opportunities for professional and academic development, Jeter-Bennett said.

“They want to see themselves in these roles. So, it isn’t always necessarily about navigating harassment in the workplace and that being the primary focus for them,” Jeter-Bennett said.

Gupta, president of Ohio State’s Society of Women Engineers, said her organization helps combat the issues she has seen in her time as a female engineering student by providing a network of support at the university and in the industry.

A member of SWE since her freshman year, Gupta said the support she’s seen from the college and SWE members over the years have given her confidence.

“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.

Barriers to joining SWE are intentionally low so anyone can join, Gupta said. There are over 100 events each year, she said, 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.

Fisher back where it started, not without trying

Cynthia Turner, chief diversity officer of Fisher College of Business, said in a statement the shifting percentages of degrees earned by women may be due to fluctuations in enrollment, caused by a variety of reasons such as the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the college aims to enroll new first-year classes of about 40-50 percent women.

This year, over 43 percent of students enrolled are women.

“Additionally, student retention plays a large factor in graduation percentage,” Turner said. “We’re proud that, of the women in the 2021 [new first-year] class, 95% stayed at Ohio State, and 89% remained enrolled at Fisher as business students.”

Current students can take part in the Women’s Leadership Series, a collection of events to cultivate leadership skills, Turner said. The college also launched the Women’s Leadership Symposium to connect students, faculty researchers, community members and alumni for a day of professional development and networking.

Fisher also supports student organizations like the Undergraduate Women in Business Association and Fisher Graduate Women in Business, Turner said.

Turner said barriers in business have always existed for women, but a “promising shift” in the industry has occurred recently, showing more willingness to acknowledge, confront and remove these barriers.

“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.

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 in those classes; comments under peers’ breath, strange or judgemental looks, the push to be the very best in class. When professors look for straightforward answers, there’s more opportunity to ask “dumb questions” and make 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.

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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.”

Tori Holzwarth, senior vice president of UBWA and fourth-year in marketing, said the organization hosts events all year but highlights the fall semester “business bootcamp” — a series which goes over the basics of the industry, shows how to build a resume and ends in a career fair. She also highlighted the March’s Women’s Month events as her favorites. The organization also has a mix of corporate, nonprofit and local sponsorships, Holzwarth said, so members can see different career paths.

“We really want to help young women make meaningful connections,” Holzwarth said.

Bader said UBWA has allowed her to help manage a large, nonprofit, female-focused student organization and work with all of the UBWA’s company partnerships. There’s a place for everyone in UBWA, she said.

Finding a group of women to support you, Bader said, can elevate and benefit students while in college.

“No matter what college you’re in or what clubs you join, just really find your community, especially if you’re a woman in a male-dominated field,” Bader said. “Having those people in your classes or having that one friend that you can talk to can really change things and help you push through whatever obstacles you may be hurdling.”