- share of women among all graduates
- share of women inside each field
- how each sex total is composed across fields
EUROSTAT · 2024 GRADUATES
More Women Graduate. From What?
In 2024, women made up 57.9% of tertiary graduates in the EU. Inside the fields, the gap is much wider. Women were 80.1% of education graduates, while men were 77.9% of ICT graduates.
Choose the denominator. The same data answer different questions.2024 / TERTIARY GRADUATESeduc_uoe_grad02
57.9%women
42.1%men
Education80.1%
within field · 401,089 graduates
Health75.6%
within field · 658,853 graduates
ICT22.1%
within field · 223,623 graduates
Engineering28.3%
within field · 621,446 graduates
same table · new denominatorEU27 · 4,480,499 graduates · ISCED 5 to 8
same table · new denominator
ONE DATASET, THREE QUESTIONS
One percentage cannot stand in for three different questions.
One table can answer several questions. What share of all graduates are women? Who is in the majority inside each field? How are women and men distributed across fields? Choose a lens. The data stay the same.
Change the denominator
All graduates
Choose a country
The numbers stay put. Only the question changes.
All graduates
Women are the majority overall.
The denominator is every selected graduate. This is the number most likely to lead a headline.
57.9%womenof 4,480,499 graduates
57.9% women42.1% men
Fields of educationof all
Education401,089 graduates
9.0%of all
Arts and humanities433,923 graduates
9.7%of all
Social sciences, journalism and information430,975 graduates
9.6%of all
Business, administration and law1,124,470 graduates
25.1%of all
Natural sciences, mathematics and statistics287,919 graduates
6.4%of all
Information and communication technologies223,623 graduates
5.0%of all
Engineering, manufacturing and construction621,446 graduates
13.9%of all
Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary75,283 graduates
1.7%of all
Health and welfare658,853 graduates
14.7%of all
Services208,901 graduates
4.7%of all
Generic / unknown14,017 graduates
0.3%of all
Within each field
Inside the fields, the proportions turn sharply.
Each row gets its own denominator. Every field has its own one hundred per cent.
womenmen
Education401,089 graduates
80.1% women19.9% men
Arts and humanities433,923 graduates
68.0% women32.0% men
Social sciences, journalism and information430,975 graduates
69.3% women30.7% men
Business, administration and law1,124,470 graduates
57.8% women42.2% men
Natural sciences, mathematics and statistics287,919 graduates
54.0% women46.0% men
Information and communication technologies223,623 graduates
22.1% women77.9% men
Engineering, manufacturing and construction621,446 graduates
28.3% women71.7% men
Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary75,283 graduates
51.3% women48.7% men
Health and welfare658,853 graduates
75.6% women24.4% men
Services208,901 graduates
48.8% women51.2% men
În educație, femeile sunt de aproximativ 4 ori mai numeroase decât bărbații.
Each sex across fields
Women and men are not spread across the fields in the same way.
Now the denominator is all women graduates, then all men graduates. You can see the mix behind each total.
womenmen
Fields of educationof this sex total
Education
women12.4%
men4.2%
Arts and humanities
women11.4%
men7.4%
Social sciences, journalism and information
women11.6%
men7.0%
Business, administration and law
women25.1%
men25.2%
Natural sciences, mathematics and statistics
women6.0%
men7.0%
Information and communication technologies
women1.9%
men9.3%
Engineering, manufacturing and construction
women6.8%
men23.7%
Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary
women1.5%
men1.9%
Health and welfare
women19.3%
men8.5%
Services
women3.9%
men5.7%
Generic / unknown
women0.3%
men0.3%
Distribuția folosește cele zece domenii nominale comune, ca să păstreze comparația curată.
ROMANIA AND THE EU
Romania has more women graduates than the EU. The difference comes from two places.
Romania is at 59.0%, and the EU at 57.9%. The gap is 1.2 points. The total hides two movements that partly cancel each other.
Read the methodThe gap is 1.2 points. Its two components are not.
The gap is 1.2 points. Its two components are not.
The symmetric decomposition separates the observed difference into two pieces. One comes from field size. The other comes from the share of women inside each field.
+1.2 ppnet difference between Romania and the EU
field composition−3.0 pp
In Romania, engineering, agriculture and ICT take up more of the total than they do in the EU. Education and health take up less. If each field kept the EU proportions, this combination would lower the overall share of women.
within-field shares+4.1 pp
The share of women in Romania is higher inside engineering, ICT, natural sciences, business and education. That gain is larger than the declines in health and services.
net difference between Romania and the EU+1.2 pppercentage points
Hold one thing still. Move the other.
Hold one thing still. Move the other.
57.9%women overall
Start with the EU and bring Romania closer in two ways. Change the size of the fields while keeping their internal proportions. Or change those proportions while keeping field size.
EURomania
0% keeps the EU field structure. 100% uses the structure observed in Romania.
EURomania
0% keeps the EU shares inside each field. 100% uses the shares observed in Romania.
EU · 57.9%Romania · 59.0%
This is a composition exercise, not a causal explanation. It keeps the observed data and changes one thing at a time.
THE PUBLIC QUESTION
The overall majority is real. The fields did not become balanced with it.
Women are the majority of tertiary graduates. That tells us who finishes higher education. It does not tell us that every field is balanced. Both facts can be true at once.
- who enters university and who drops out
- who works afterwards, what they earn or which occupation they enter
- why people choose one field rather than another
The educational gender gap does not disappear when women pass half of the total. You can still see it in fields that remain uneven and in the pathways into them.
THE LINE TO CARRY
The educational gender gap does not disappear when women pass half of the total. You can still see it in fields that remain uneven and in the pathways into them.
A VERIFICATION REGISTER
What we measured, and where measurement stops
The Eurostat graduate table counts tertiary qualifications completed in 2024 and splits them by sex and field. It is not a survey. The data can be revised after publication.
For the headline totals, we use Eurostat official total. For the comparison between Romania and the EU, we use the ten shared broad fields, F01 to F10. The EU rows "generic programmes and qualifications" and "unknown" sum to 14,017 graduates, or 0.3% of the total. We exclude them only from the composition decomposition. The effects describe observed distributions. They are not causes.
01
EUROSTAT TABLE
open source ↗Eurostat · educ_uoe_grad02
The table groups graduates by education level, programme orientation, sex and field. This extract uses 2024 tertiary education, ISCED levels 5 to 8.
02
REPRODUCIBLE EXTRACT
open source ↗Eurostat · Dissemination API
The raw query covers the EU27 and Romania for 2024, unit NR and level ED5-8. The values on this page come from this response.
03
OFFICIAL METHOD
open source ↗Eurostat · information on data
Context for the annual UOE collection and the limits Eurostat attaches to education and training statistics.