Patterns of Women's Enrolment in University Mathematics, Engineering and Computer Science in Canada, 1972-1995

Abstract

Efforts to ensure equity for women in scientific and technological disciplines must precede, or at least accompany, efforts to persuade them to pursue these studies. To achieve gender equity in these disciplines, factors discouraging women from full participation in them should be removed. Many psychological, sociological and institutional factors have been identified as contributors to the under-representation of women in these fields. For the aim of understanding and appraising these factors, this study offers a factual characterization of women's enrolment levels in mathematics, engineering, and computer science in Canadian universities and the change in these levels over the period 1972 to 1995. Findings indicate that patterns of women's enrolment in these three dis- ciplines are vastly different, a fact which suggests that factors specific to each discipline interact with and modify the effects of the more general sociological and psychological obstacles impeding women's participa- tion in them.