Women's and Gender Studies Stats and Facts

Gender and Politics

The United States is 90th in the world in terms of women in national legislatures.
Women hold 17%of the seats in the House of Representatives (the equivalent body in Rwanda is 56.3% female).
Only 34 women have ever served as governors compared to 2319 men.

Women earn only 77.4 cents for each dollar a man makes doing the same job.
Women hold only 3% of clout positions in the mainstream media.
Women are merely 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs.
Women comprise 7% of directors and 13% of film writers in the top 250 grossing films.

56% of undergraduates are women, compared to 44% of men.
Women have been earning more bachelor’s degrees than men since 1982 and they have been earning more master’s degrees than men since 1981.

The number of cosmetic surgical procedures performed on youth 18 or younger more than tripled from 1997 to 2007.
Liposuctions nearly quadrupled, and breast augmentations increased nearly six-fold in the same 10-year period.
53% of 13 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies. That number increases to 78% by age 17.
65% of American women and girls report disordered eating behaviors.
Studies estimate that 13% to 25% of youth have some history of self-injury, such as cutting, and most studies show that cutting is more common with girls.
17% of teens engage in cutting and self-injurious behavior.

The U.S. has the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world—twice as high as the UK, 4 times as high as Germany, and 8 times as high as Japan.
Rates of depression among women and young girls have doubled in the past ten years.
Rates of depression are the same among boys and girls until puberty, but twice as many women are diagnosed as depressed post-puberty.
While girls are twice as likely to think about suicide, boys are four times more likely to actually die from suicide.