This data visualization project was inspired by an article which referenced a study that found countries with lower gender equality had higher rates of females graduating from tertiary education in a STEM field. Of course, upon first glance, this seems highly paradoxical. I decided to pull data to visualize and verify this claim.
Data was pulled from various sources. The Gender Gap Index values were attained from the World Bank. According to the World Bank, "The Global Gender Gap Index examines the gap between men and women in four fundamental categories : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment...The Index focuses on measuring gaps rather than levels. The highest possible score is 1 (equality) and the lowest possible score is 0 (inequality)." GDP data was also sourced from the World Bank. The GDP measurements are shown as GDP per capita in U.S. Dollars. The STEM graduation data was pulled from Unesco's Education Data Portal, and measures the percentage of STEM graduates from tertiary education that are female country by country.
All data was cleansed and analyzed using Python and Pandas. The data is plotted using Plotly. The following scatter plots are interactive. Click on a regional category in the legend on the right to remove from the plot, double click to isolate that regional category.
49.5%: The percent of STEM graduates in tertiary education that are women in Syria, the country with the lowest Gender Gap Index
27%: The percent of STEM graduates in tertiary education that are women in Finland, the country with the highest Gender Gap Index
There is no clear relationship between a country's Gender Gap Index and the percent of females graduating from tertiary education in a STEM field in that country. However, it is clear that a higher Gender Gap Index does not equate to more women studying STEM. So, what does this mean? What other factors can be analyzed in relation to percentage of STEM graduates that are female?
30.7%: The percent of STEM graduates in tertiary education that are women in Kenya, whose GDP per capita is less than $1,500.
27.5%: The percent of STEM graduates in tertiary education that are women in Luxembourg, whose GDP per capita is over $100k
A country's GDP also does not have a clear correlation with that country's female STEM graduation rate. In fact, the countries with the highest percentage of their STEM graduates being female are those with a GDP per capita that is relatively average. The United States' percent of STEM graduates from tertiary eduation that are female is approximately 34%. Every country in the Middle East & Northern Africa other than Iran, Malta, and Qatar has a higher percentage of STEM graduates that are female than the United States.
So, how does the Gender Gap Index relate to a country's GDP?
0.77: The Gender Gap Index of Burundi, the poorest country in the world.
0.73: The Gender Gap Index of Luxembourg, the richest country in the world.
GDP has little to no effect on a country's Gender Gap Index. It is true that the handful of countries with the highest Gender Gap Indices have higher GDPs, but most every other country has a gender gap index between 0.6 and 0.8, regardless of GDP.