Physics education research: A research subfield of physics with gender parity

Women currently outnumber men in obtaining undergraduate degrees but are underrepresented within STEM fields. However, women’s representation varies by STEM field, and even further by STEM subfield. One field that has held a persistent low representation of women is physics. This paper seeks to uncover the truth behind an anecdotal claim that the subfield of physics education research (PER) has a higher representation of women than physics as a whole. Graduate students in PER completed an online survey to assess their demographics, trajectory in PER, climate experiences, and goals for their research. The response rate for the survey was 68%, yielding 125 total respondents. This paper will focus on the 91 respondents enrolled in U.S. graduate programs. It was found that women make up 51% of the U.S. PER graduate students in this sample, as compared to only 19% of physics graduate students overall. Survey findings also revealed that both women and men in PER graduate programs experience similarly positive working relationships with faculty and fellow students. Last, both men and women reported building a stronger scientific workforce and becoming better teachers as goals for their PER research.

Figure 1

Gender representations of graduate students in physics departments as a whole [3] and the physics department subdiscipline of PER.

Figure 2

Setting of physics classes graduate students have taught.

Figure 3

When graduate students chose to pursue physics education research.

Figure 4

Doctoral student funding types by gender.

Figure 5

Where students want to be working in ten years.

Figure 6

Students who agreed to having a positive relationship with given groups.

Figure 7

Students who agreed to being comfortable with given groups. (Note: the neutral and disagree responses are not shown for the sake of simplicity).

Figure 8

Students who self-identified as a physicist by department ($p<0.01$).