Australian Higher Education provider’s data looks at enrolment and completion numbers by gender and field of education.
This includes STEM courses in:
You can use this interactive data to compare university enrolment and completion numbers for women and men in STEM fields, non-STEM fields and health fields. Non-binary and gender diverse people are included in the calculation of proportions and the commentary.
The Power BI dashboards in the monitor present data in different formats, including charts, graphs and tables. You can customise these dashboards based on what you're interested in.
Between 2015 and 2023, the number of enrolments from women in university STEM courses increased from 70,200 to 87,900. This was an increase of 25% compared to 8% for men.
Between 2015 and 2021, there were increases in STEM enrolments from women each year of between 3% and 8%. Following the COVID-19 pandemic related peak in enrolments in 2021, there were decreases in the number of STEM enrolments from women in 2022 (3% decrease) and 2023 (2% decrease).
Since 2020, the proportion of STEM enrolments from women has remained stable at 37%. This is higher than in 2015, when the proportion of STEM enrolments from women was 34%.
The proportion of postgraduate STEM enrolments from women was 40% in 2023, which was higher than undergraduate STEM enrolments from women, at 36%.
The number of university STEM course completions by women increased from 14,500 in 2015 to 18,100 in 2023, which was an increase of 25%. This includes both undergraduate and postgraduate completions. From 2021 to 2023, the proportion of university STEM course completions from women remained the same, at 39%.
In 2023, women continued to make up over half of student enrolments and completions in:
Women remained underrepresented in enrolments and completions for engineering and IT. Women only made up:
The proportion of STEM university program enrolments from First Nations people was 1.2% in 2023, compared to 2.2% for non-STEM and 2.4% for health enrolments. First Nations people account for 3.2% of the Australian population, according to the 2021 Census.
The number of STEM enrolments from First Nations people decreased 4% from 2022 to 2023. The number of university STEM completions from First Nations people also decreased very slightly.
For some groups, there was lower representation in enrolments in STEM subjects in 2023 compared to the other fields of education.
Among culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD people), there was higher representation in enrolments in STEM subjects compared to the other fields of education. CALD people represented 5% of STEM enrolments in 2023, compared to 4% for health and 3% for non-STEM enrolments. People with disability had a higher representation in STEM enrolments (12%) than health (10%) but lower representation than non-STEM enrolments (13%).
Women in all diversity groups were better represented in university STEM enrolments in 2023.
The dataset shows that for university enrolments, STEM is equally popular among non-binary and gender diverse people and all other students. In 2023, 20% of enrolments from non-binary and gender diverse people were in STEM fields. 21% of enrolments from all other students were also in STEM fields.
| Field type | Non-binary and gender diverse people | All other students* | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| no. | % | no. | % | |
| STEM | 921 | 20% | 273,773 | 21% |
| Health | 506 | 11% | 235,655 | 21% |
| Non-STEM | 3,183 | 69% | 645,214 | 58% |
| Total | 4,610 | 100% | 1,118,642 | 100% |
* All other students includes women and men
University qualifications in this data include:
Numbers refer to enrolment in a qualification or completion of a qualification in a particular calendar year. Counts include domestic students only, which refers to Australian citizens, New Zealand citizens, and Australian permanent residents and Australian humanitarian visa holders.
Enrolment and completion numbers for an individual field, such as information technology, count double degrees in the same field as a single enrolment/completion, and can be expressed as a count of people. However, when fields are added together, such as at the overall STEM level, double degrees in the same grouping will be double counted, resulting in an inflated number for enrolments or completions. For example, if a person enrolled in a double degree in information technology and engineering and related technologies in 2022, they would be counted as 2 STEM enrolments in that year.
For the above reason, the commentary in this article refers to counts of enrolments rather than counts of people.
Non-binary and gender diverse people are included in the calculation of proportions in the visualisation and the commentary. This group includes students who report a gender other than male or female.
The CALD group is made up of people who identified as speaking a language other than English at home. The number of people in this group is likely to be underestimated due to gaps in the data.
The low socioeconomic status group is made up of people whose permanent address was in an area in the bottom 25% of the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas Education and Occupation Index.
The Department of Education data used in this report are subject to perturbation – small noise added to the data to protect personal information. Because of this, actual enrolments and completions may vary slightly from those reported in this report.
Enrolment and completion numbers across years do not represent longitudinal data. They should not be used to calculate attrition rates.
Read more about our methodology and this data.
