Physics stands out when it comes to driving women out of the discipline and out of STEM entirely

The national six-year graduation rate in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is far lower than most college majors, and STEM degree completion rates for historically marginalized students (women, students of color, and first-generation students) are typically much lower than their privileged counterparts. This trend has motivated a substantial amount of quantitative and qualitative research on STEM persistence over the past few decades. Despite this, relatively little research has studied the problem of retention within individual STEM disciplines like physics. Indeed, the problem of retention in physics is perhaps more salient than in other disciplines as only 2% of STEM degrees awarded in the United States are in physics, and physics typically has the lowest rates of representation of marginalized students among STEM disciplines. For this talk, I will focus on the retention of women in physics in comparison to other STEM disciplines. I found that the one-year retention rate of women in physics was not only lower than all other STEM majors at a public research university but was the lowest of any major across all colleges. Similarly, the fraction of women leaving physics for non-STEM majors (as opposed to other STEM majors) was among the highest of all STEM disciplines. Data collected from women who left physics suggest that increased support (academic and otherwise), more positive interactions between women and their male peers and professors, and improved instruction in introductory weed-out courses would help to keep women in physics. To this end, I will discuss data showing how both evidence-based teaching practices and external support programs at this same university have improved the persistence of women in engineering and discuss related programs in physics that should be studied and replicated. I will also discuss the limits of working with institutional data and provide suggestions on how equity issues in retention should be studied within departments and universities to avoid over-simplification of the retention problem.