The Institute of International Education's  recently released Open Doors report shows that the number of female international students coming to the United States has increased substantially in the past 30 years. In 1980, the first year the study was published, female international students represented only a little more than 25 percent of all international students. Today, 45 percent are female.This increase in international female enrollment can be seen as part of a broader trend toward higher levels of female participation in U.S. higher education. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, women now earn significantly more than half of all postsecondary degrees in the United States.

However, overall, women are still under-represented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related fields in the United States, where the  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering  Women in Engineering group estimates that they compose only 24 percent of the current student body. By contrast, the same article reports that Chinese women constitute 40 percent of STEM students in China. 

Sources:

• Institute of International Education Open Doors Report
• “IEEE Striving to Increase the Global Ranks of Women Engineers,” PR Newswire
• “Degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by level of degree and sex of student: Selected years, 1869-70 through 2016-17,” Digest of Educational Statistics