IELTS Academic Writing Task 1/ Graph Writing – Bar Chart/ Column Graph:
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The graph shows the percentage of male and female academic staff members across the faculties of a major university in 2016.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main feature, and make comparisons where relevant.
You should write at least 150 words.
Academic staff percentages in faculties, by gender, 2016
Model Answer 1:
The column graph compares the proportions of male and female academic staff members across seven faculties at a prominent university in 2016.
Overall, there are noticeable gender disparities among the faculties. Men dominate most academic fields, particularly in technical and commercial subjects, whereas women are more prevalent in disciplines related to the arts and education. Only the medicine faculty had gender proportions closer to parity.
In detail, the faculty of Engineering has the highest percentage of male staff at approximately 85%, with the corresponding female proportion at just 15%, making it the most male-dominated area. Similarly, the Science and Business faculties each have a clear male majority, with 62% of staff being male and about 38% female. The Law faculty also shows a male predominance, though the gap is slightly narrower, with roughly 60% male and 40% female academics.
By contrast, female staff members outnumber their male counterparts in the faculties of Arts and Education. In the Education faculty, seven out of ten staff members were women. The Arts faculty also has a higher proportion of female staff, at about 58%, compared with 42% male. In Medicine, gender representation is almost balanced, with approximately 50% male and 50% female academic personnel, indicating the most equitable distribution among all faculties.
Sample Answer 2:
The bar chart compares the ratio of male and female academic personnel in different departments of a university in 2016.
A glance at the graph reveals that the proportion of male staff members in engineering, science, law and business was higher, while there were more female staff in faculties, like arts and education.
According to the illustration, the engineering faculty of that university had predominantly male staff members in 2016, 85% males compared to 15% females. Law, business, and science faculties also had a higher ratio of male academics, as approximately six out of ten academic staff in those departments were male. Interestingly, a similar percentage of staff from both genders were employed in the faculty of medicine in this university.
Looking further, the arts and education faculties of this university had far more female staff than their male counterparts. In the education faculty, more than seven in ten active academics were female. Female staff’s dominance was obvious in the faculty of arts as well, and their ratio was roughly 60% compared to 40% male staff.
The given bar chart illustrates the proportion of male and female academic personnel at a University in the year 2016. The data collected is among the staff members majoring in seven different academic subjects.
Overall, it can be seen that in the year 2016, the highest percentage of men working in that University belonged to the Engineering department while females were highest among the Education department staff members.
As the data suggests, Education, Arts and Medicine departments of this University had more percentages of female staffs than their male counterparts. In Education faculty, 72% were female staffs whereas in Arts and Medicine their percentages were 58% and 50% respectively. On the contrary, the highest percentages of male academic staffs were in Engineering (85%), Business (62%), Science (62%) and Law (60%). It is worth noticing that, the university had only one-fourth male staffs in Education faculty while only 18% of female faculty in the Engineering department.