Women made up the majority of university graduates in the EU in 2024, with 2.6 million female graduates compared with 1.9 million male graduates.
A total of 4.5 million people completed tertiary education across the bloc in 2024, Eurostat informed on Wednesday.
Tertiary education refers to education after secondary school, including university degrees.
Women outnumbered men across most fields of study.
The widest gap was in education, where there were four times as many female as male graduates.
Graduate numbers were closer to parity in agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary studies, as well as in services.
Men far more common in ICT graduates
Men were much more likely than women to graduate in information and communication technologies (ICT), where there were 3.7 times as many male as female graduates, Eurostat reported.
ICT covers areas such as computing and telecommunications.
The figures were published as part of Eurostat’s “Key figures on Europe — 2026 edition”, which brings together recent EU statistics across topics including society and the economy.
