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Asian American women are a growing and influential constituency in the United States. Asian American
women’s share of the female population will grow from 5.14 percent in 2012 to 7.8 percent in 2050. Asian
American women are making significant strides in education, participation, health, and other areas, but
there is a long way to go to fully close racial and ethnic disparities.
Many Asian American women lack health coverage and more than one in five Asian American women of
child-bearing age—ages 15 to 44—is uninsured. And while Asian American women face significant health
challenges, there have been a number of notable improvements.
● Fifty-nine percent of nail technicians were women of color in 2007, a large share of whom were
Asian American women. These women are disproportionately at risk for exposure to harmful
toxins and chemicals that have been linked to reproductive harm, such as infertility, miscarriages,
and cancer.
● Asian American women are twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes such as
embolism and pregnancy-related hypertension.
● In 2013, 37.6 percent of Asian American women over age 40 did not get routine mammograms,
and 32 percent of adult Asian American women did not get routine Pap smears.
● U.S.-born Asian American women had a higher lifetime rate of suicidal thoughts, at 15.9 percent,
than that of the general U.S. population, at 13.5 percent.
● Birth rates for Asian American women ages 15 to 19 decreased by 5 percent from 2011 to 2012.
Asian American women have achieved a higher level of educational attainment than other women and
are often doing as well as their male counterparts.
● Asian American women surpassed white women in actual graduation rates in 2004, the last year
for which data on Asian American women are available. College graduation rates for white
women and Asian American women were 45.8 percent and 49.4 percent, respectively.
● Asian American women held 8.36 percent of bachelor’s degrees held by women while only
constituting 5.14 percent of the female population in 2013.
● Asian American and white women earned an equal amount of science and engineering degrees
as their male counterparts in 2010.
