College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Above ↑ More than hairstyles have changed since the mid-twentieth century. Women undergraduates were scarce in the College until the last couple of decades but are now in the majority.
Preparing for a Lifetime of Change - The gender mix
The Gender Mix on campus isn’t what it used to be. In 1976, women made up 40 percent of UW-Madison’s undergrad population but only 12 percent of the College’s.
Today, women comprise 56 percent of the College’s undergrads and 53 percent of all UW-Madison undergrads. Some of the most striking turnarounds came in subject areas that traditionally had few, if any, women.
From 1970 to 2005, the share of women majors rose from 0 to 30 percent in agricultural engineering, 8 percent to 71 percent in animal science, 2 percent to 61 percent in dairy science, and 8 percent to 53 percent in wildlife ecology.
Undergrad majors have also shifted. Today, majors in the College with highest enrollments include biology (413); genetics (312); biochemistry (283); nutritional sciences (237); and animal science (140). Most popular in 1970 were landscape architecture (105); wildlife ecology (103); dairy science (93); forest science (80); and
biochemistry (73).