Women are majority in health studies, men in ICT and engineering

A total of 320,000 students attended education leading to a vocational qualification in 2019. Of them, 51% were women and 49% men.

Of those students, 241,100 studied in initial vocational education, 53,900 in further vocational education and 25,100 in specialist vocational education, according to the data released by Statistics Finland, which are mainly collected from the Finnish National Agency for Education's Koski database.

The variation in the shares of men and women viewed by fields of education was large. For example, the share of women was 84% in the field of health and welfare and 13% in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT), where the presence of men is overwhelming (87%).

Women are also the majority, albeit by a lesser difference, in the fields of business administration, the arts and humanities, and agriculture and forestry. The field of education divided most evenly by gender was the field of services, where 53% were women. 

Men win also by a landslide in engineering, manufacturing and construction.

Source: Statistics Finland.

Most demanded fields

According to the figures, 26% of new students studied in the field of engineering, manufacturing and construction, 23% in the field of services and 19% in the field of business and administration.

Altogether, 71,600 students completed a vocational qualification in 2019. 54% of them were women. Nearly one half, 48%, completed a qualification in the fields of engineering, manufacturing and construction, and business and administration.

The number of people who obtained qualifications was 10% lower than in the previous year.