Gender

Statistics

Approximately 20% of physics undergraduates in the UK are women. This is low compared to some other countries, for example in France this figure is 33%, while in Turkey it is 37%. In the UK, physics is far less popular amongst female university students than maths or chemistry. In addition to this, the number of postgraduate women physicists is greatly increased by international students.

A widespread problem that is not just constrained to the field of physics is the ‘leaky pipeline’ phenomenon: there are fewer women in prominent positions, with each successive level up the academic ladder. This is evident across many different disciplines: although 33.3% of the assistant professors in all subjects in the UK are women, this figure drops to 8.5% for full professors. However, the situation is particularly bad in physics, where only about 4% of professors are women.

This graph shows the percentage of female physics undergraduates in different European countries:

The Institute of Physics monitors a wide range of data, including gender disaggregated data along the academic pipeline.

The Statistical Digest provides an overview of the gender profile of university physics cost centres in 2005-2006.

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