STEM fields of study: a performance analysis by gender

This paper analyses the performance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields to assess gender similarities and differences, taking into account students’ academic performance, employment characteristics, the usefulness and effectiveness of education, and job satisfaction. The data are drawn from the 2023 Almalaurea Survey on Graduates’ Employment Status and refer to 42 fields of study. The analysis adopts a multi-criteria approach to provide a gender-specific ranking of fields of study. We propose a data-driven calibration of PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment of Evaluations) preference thresholds based on the empirical distribution of pairwise absolute differences. Specifically, indifference and preference thresholds are defined using the first and second tertiles of the pairwise distance distribution. We refer to this variant as Pairwise-Tertile PROMETHEE (PT-PROMETHEE). Regardless of gender, the top positions are occupied by the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Engineering and Engineering Trades (E&ET) fields of study. The results reveal many similarities between male and female graduates; however, some noteworthy differences emerge, particularly among lower-performing fields of study.