Women Dominate Israeli Academic Degrees Again, With Slight Overall Dip

Women made up 63.8% of academic degree recipients in Israel in the 2024/25 school year, or 57,700 graduates, while 32,800 were men, according to new Central Bureau of Statistics data released today. The share was almost unchanged from 63.7% in 2023/24, but the total number of degree holders slipped slightly to 90,500 from 90,900 a year earlier.

The CBS said the flat trend reflects unusual cohort timing. Many students who were expected to enroll in 2021/22 after the large wave of travel abroad instead advanced their enrollment to 2020/21 because they could not leave the country during the coronavirus crisis. That made the 2023/24 graduating class larger than expected and the 2024/25 class smaller. The report also says the war likely pushed some 2024/25 completions into 2025/26.

Women were the clear majority in every major sector: 82% of graduates in teacher-training colleges, 58% at universities, and 63% at publicly funded colleges. Women also accounted for 67.6% of master’s degree recipients and 55.5% of doctoral degree recipients. But only 14.2% of female graduates finished STEM programs, compared with 38.4% of male graduates. Women made up just 35% of engineering and architecture graduates and 44.5% of graduates in natural sciences, mathematics and agriculture.

Teacher colleges produced 14,700 graduates, up 9%, a figure that complicates claims of a general teacher shortage. University graduates declined slightly from 44,900 to 43,900. Medical training continued to grow, with first medical doctor degrees up 7.6% to 1,437, although women’s share in that field fell from 62.5% to 57.5%. First law degrees also rose 10.7%, despite the field being considered saturated.