Cyprus recorded one of the EU’s widest gender gaps among higher education graduates in 2023. Business, administration and law attracted the largest share of graduates, but the figures also reveal sharp divisions between fields, with women still underrepresented in ICT and engineering.
Business, law and education lead in Cyprus
Business, administration and law accounted for 34.2% of graduates in Cyprus in 2023, according to Eurostat’s detailed data on tertiary education. This was well above the EU average of 25.3%.
Education ranked second, accounting for 24.6% of graduates, the highest proportion among EU member states. The corresponding EU average was just 9.1%.
Social sciences, journalism and information followed at 11.1%, with health and welfare at 8.2%, engineering, manufacturing and construction at 6.1%, and arts and humanities at 6%.
At the other end of the scale, only 2.8% of graduates came from information and communication technologies, while natural sciences, mathematics and statistics accounted for 2.4%.
Women hold a wide lead in Cyprus
Women outnumbered men at bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels in Cyprus in 2023.
The largest difference was recorded at master’s level, with just over 250 female graduates for every 100 male graduates. Short-cycle tertiary programmes were the exception, with men in the majority.
Cyprus also ranked highly for tertiary education attainment overall. In 2024, 60.1% of Cypriots aged 25 to 34 had completed tertiary education, the third-highest proportion in the EU after Ireland and Luxembourg.
Women account for 58% of EU graduates
A similar, though less pronounced, pattern was recorded across the European Union.
Around 4.5 million people graduated from tertiary education in 2024, including 2.6 million women and 1.9 million men. Women therefore accounted for approximately 58% of all graduates.
According to Eurostat, women outnumbered men in most fields of study. The largest difference was recorded in education, where there were four times as many female graduates as male graduates.
Graduate numbers were almost evenly divided in agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary studies, as well as in services.
Men retain a strong lead in ICT
Information and communication technologies recorded the largest gender gap in the opposite direction, with 3.7 male graduates for every female graduate.
Men also remained ahead in engineering, manufacturing and construction. Women, by contrast, held the majority in health and welfare, education, arts and humanities.
The figures show that women’s overall numerical lead in higher education does not translate into balanced representation across all fields. Study choices remain strongly divided by gender, particularly in technology and care-related disciplines.
