More female university students than ever before, UCAS says

UCAS numbers showed that 34 per cent of 18-year-old women got into university, passing over half a million female university students in 2014.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service published their end-of-cycle results and said that women are over a third more likely to get into higher education than men.

At Kingston University, 57 per cent of students are female and at all faculties apart from Science, Engineering and Computing, women are the majority.

KU’s feminist society president Nadie Jayatissa said: “It’s obviously great that there are now more women in higher education than there ever were because women are just as capable of doing what men can do.

Though there are now more women in higher education and women achieve higher grades on average, a new Oxford University Career Service study shows that female graduates are less likely to find a job within half a year of graduating, and receive a lower salary.

Female graduates earn an average of £21,000 a year in their graduate jobs, while men earn around £25,000.

“We need to work on equal pay,” Jayatissa said. “I think we can focus a lot more on women and specifically in some male-dominated subject areas.”

66 per cent of students at KU’s Science, Engineering and Computing faculty are male, whereas its Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences is very female-dominated with over 88 per cent female students.

With 7470 students (36 per cent of the total amount of KU students), the Science, Engineering and Computing faculty is by far the biggest faculty at Kingston.

Second year mechanical engineering student Ida Ferkingstad (21) said she is one of the very few female students in her class.

“Depending on the lecture, there are often around 5-6 girls in the class and at least more than 30 guys,” Feringstad said.

“More and more women are doing mechanical engineering so I don’t think I would have a problem getting a job just because I’m a woman.”

Jayatissa said that though the female majority in higher education is a great step towards equality, cultural phenomenon like lad culture still register as concerns for women at university.

“I think we should now work on improving the social aspect of university life for women,” she said.