Women now account for 43.7% and also occupy 66.7% of the positions in the management teams of non-university public schools.

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The number of women teachers at university has increased by more than five points

The number of women teachers at university has increased by more than five points in the last decade to represent 43.7% of the total, according to data from the ‘Equality in Figures’ report published this Friday by the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sport on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

A total of 58,299 women will form part of the university teaching staff in the 2021-2022 academic year, almost 13,000 more than ten years ago, when this number was 45,407, 38.6% of the total. The data also show that a generational change is taking place, as there are more female teachers than male teachers among teachers under the age of 40, with 50.4% among those under 30, 53.1% among those aged between 30 and 34, and 52.6% among those aged between 35 and 39.

At the management level, there has also been a notable increase in non-university public schools over the last decade. Thus, the number of female principals has grown from 56.2% in the 2011-2012 academic year to 66.7% in the 2021-2022 academic year, an increase of ten points.

Even so, the education sector in non-university stages continues to be a highly feminised professional field, with almost total feminisation in Early Childhood Education (97.4%) and in Primary Education (82.2%).

With regard to female students, two data stand out from the Spanish report of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2021 (PIRLS). According to this document, in Spain more than 95% of girls in the 4th grade of Primary School have reached the minimum level of reading proficiency required by the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. Moreover, 60% of girls say they like reading very much, almost ten points more than boys and well above the OECD average of 35% and the EU average of 40%.

Furthermore, the rate of girls graduating from ESO (84.7%) and Bachiller (63.4%) continues to be, for yet another year, higher than that of boys (77.3% and 48.4%, respectively). This is also the case in adult education, where women also outnumber men. Despite this, there is still a difference of almost ten points in average gross annual salaries in favour of men over women.

The representation of women in the Bachelor of Science is also unequal (47.9%), although girls represent 53.9% of the total student body. They are in the majority in the Social Sciences and Humanities Baccalaureate (57.1%).

With regard to Vocational Training, the female presence continues to be a minority, although it is slightly higher than in the previous academic year. Thus, in Basic Vocational Training it is 29.5%; in Intermediate Vocational Training it is 45.1%; and in Higher Vocational Training it is 48.9%. As in previous years, there continues to be a low presence in technological and scientific disciplines, with 7.9% of students in the Intermediate Level and 14.2% in the Higher Level in the Computer and Communications family.

As for university degrees, women are in the minority in specialities such as Computer Science (14.9%) and Engineering, Industry and Construction (30.3%), but they are in the majority in Health and Social Services (72.7%) and, above all, in Education (77.7%).

In order to close the gender gap in scientific disciplines (known as STEAM), the ‘STEAM Alliance for Female Talent’ has been created, an initiative to promote scientific and technological vocations in girls and young women, to which more than 150 entities and companies have already adhered.