Women account for over one third of technical students in Poland

The report, entitled “Women at Technical Universities 2015”, reveals that since the 2007/8 academic year, the number of women opting for technical sutides has risen from 30.7 percent to 37 percent.

In the same period, the number of women rising by over 20,000 while the number of men choosing technical studies has dropped by over 16,000.

“The drop [in the number of men] was caused by the scrapping of compulsory military service and a demographic drop for this age group,” comment the authors of the report.

The highest percentage of women – 51.7 percent – can be found at the Kazimierz Pulaski University of Technology and Humanities in Radom, with an even 50 percent of students being women at the University of Bielsko-Biała.

However, a number of subject areas – mostly purely technical, such as electrical engineering – are still lacking in women students. The report finds that at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Silesian University of Technology, for example, only 4.32 percent of the student body are women.

Mechanics, electronics, electrical engineering and automatics are not popular with female students, although the report shows that women accounted for 13.44 percent of IT studies in Poland in the previous academic year.

However, in the 2014/15 academic year the report shows that 39 percent of all doctorate students at technical universities are women, a total of 2,892 students.

The “Women at Technical Universities 2015” report was drafted on the basis of data from the GUS Central Statistical Office as well as research undertaken by the ‘Perspektywy’ Education Foundation. (jb)

Source: PAP