The given bar chart compares the number of male and female research students in six computer science-related disciplines at a US university in 2011. The subjects include Linguistics, Psychology, Natural Science, Engineering, Programming, and Mathematics.
Overall, male students dominated in most subjects, whereas females were more prevalent in Linguistic and Natural Science. Notably, Natural Science had the highest total number of research students among all six areas. These trends highlight a clear gender divide, with females favoring social science- oriented disciplines, and males being more prominent in quantitative and technical fields.
In detail, the largest gap was observed in Mathematics, where the number of male students exceeded 200, while female participation remained well below 50, which is a quadruple compared to the males’ figure. A similarly wide disparities existed in Programming, which had around 150 males students in contrast to a half of that number of females. Engineering also exhibited a male majority, with the number of male students in this field being the same as in Programming and females making up more than half that figure.
Conversely, Linguistics was the only subject where females clearly outnumbered males, with approximately 110 women enrolled compared to about 70 men. Psychology, on the other hand, had a nearly equal number of male and female research students, with males’ figure standing at 200 and females’figure close to it. A similar pattern of gender balance was evident in Natural Science, where the enrolment number for both sexes were identical.