# 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.

## 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.

### Women are the majority overall.

European Union: 57.9% women out of 4,480,499 graduates.

### Inside the fields, the proportions turn sharply.

- **Education** · 80.1% women · 401,089 graduates
- **Arts and humanities** · 68.0% women · 433,923 graduates
- **Social sciences, journalism and information** · 69.3% women · 430,975 graduates
- **Business, administration and law** · 57.8% women · 1,124,470 graduates
- **Natural sciences, mathematics and statistics** · 54.0% women · 287,919 graduates
- **Information and communication technologies** · 22.1% women · 223,623 graduates
- **Engineering, manufacturing and construction** · 28.3% women · 621,446 graduates
- **Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary** · 51.3% women · 75,283 graduates
- **Health and welfare** · 75.6% women · 658,853 graduates
- **Services** · 48.8% women · 208,901 graduates

## 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.

Romania: 59.0% women; European Union: 57.9% women.

## 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.

## What we measured, and where measurement stops

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.

- [Eurostat · educ_uoe_grad02](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/educ_uoe_grad02/default/table?lang=en) · The table groups graduates by education level, programme orientation, sex and field. This extract uses 2024 tertiary education, ISCED levels 5 to 8.
- [Eurostat · Dissemination API](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/api/dissemination/statistics/1.0/data/educ_uoe_grad02?format=JSON&lang=en&geo=EU27_2020&geo=RO&time=2024) · 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.
- [Eurostat · information on data](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Education_and_training) · Context for the annual UOE collection and the limits Eurostat attaches to education and training statistics.

Marius Comper · https://mariuscomper.uk/mai-multe-absolvente/en/