| Sumario: | Part of a special issue on women and popular classes in struggle in Ecuador. The writers examine the enormous increase in the number of female students in Ecuadorian universities over the past two decades. Although women made up just over a third of enrollment growth in Ecuadorian higher education between 1968 and 1978, female students constituted more than 70 percent of total enrollment growth between 1978 and 1987. Consequently, female students, who were just over a quarter of all students in 1968, made up 47 percent of total enrollments by 1987. Equally remarkable have been changes in women's choices of fields: The Escuela Politécnica Nacional in Quito has experienced a big rise in the number of female students in science, engineering, and technical programs in the last decade. Quantitative and qualitative evidence from other universities and from the Consejo Nacional de Universidades y Escuelas Politécnica confirm that this is part of a national trend that also extends to other traditionally male fields, such as economics and medicine.
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