Increasing gender, racial and ethnic diversity in the STEM workforce remains elusive and marked by uneven progress, according to an article from Pew Research Center. Black and Hispanic workers continue to be underrepresented in STEM jobs while women’s representation reportedly varies widely: women make up a majority of all workers in health-related job fields but are underrepresented in areas including physical sciences, computing and engineering.
According to Pew, the higher education pipeline indicates a long road ahead for increasing diversity. Current trends in degree attainment reportedly show little likelihood of significantly closing these gaps. Black and Hispanics make up a smaller share of STEM graduates in relation to their share of the adult population. And while women now earn a majority of all undergraduate and advance degrees, they reportedly aren’t earning those degrees in meaningful numbers in engineering and computer science, the areas where they are underrepresented in the workforce.
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