CEDAW/C/PHI/5-6 289. Tertiary-level enrolment is female-dominated (Annex Table B10.2). However, after the crisis broke out in mid-1997, male enrolment increased steadily from 43.8 percent in school year 1998-1999 to 48.1 percent in 2000-2001, while female enrolment seemed to respond to the economic instabilities that persisted to this day. 290. Business administration remained the most popular college or university course for both women and men. The other five high-enrolment fields were: education, medical/health courses, computer science and mathematics, and engineering (Annex Table B10.3). Career choices of women and men continued to differ, but the differences had not been as marked as in earlier years. For instance, agriculture, forestry, fishery and veterinary medicine, fields that were ones regarded as masculine, are now achieving a “gender balance” as women constitute about 47 to 50 percent of enrollees. Mathematics and computer science is another field that is attracting more women (over 55 percent) than men, although the latter are entering the field in greater numbers. Similarly, women dominate trade, craft and industrial arts, once a man’s field. Of its very small enrolment, a large number are women (81.3 percent in 1995-1996 and 84.0 percent in 1999-2000). 291. Women’s access to higher education may be better than that of men, but women have not been doing as well in government board or certification examinations. In 2000, for instance, 35.9 percent of women examinees (versus 37.6 percent among the men) passed (NSCB 2001 cited in WAGI 2002). Only in 3 (dentistry, electrical engineering, and nursing) of 18 fields did the women rate relatively better than the men, while in the two teachers’ certification tests, the passing rates for the two groups were a low 35 to 37 percent. In the remaining 13 fields, the men outdid the women. The largest passing rate gap was noted in midwifery (27.1 percentage points, with 78.4 percent of the 51 male examinees passing the test versus 51.3 percent of the 2,646 female examinees); pharmacy (12.5); and chemical engineering (11.8). 292. Another field that has opened its doors to women is military training. This was made possible by the passage of Republic Act (RA) 7192 in 1991 that gave women "equal opportunity for appointment, admission, training, graduation, and commissioning in all military or similar schools of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police" (Sec. 7). At the Philippine Military Academy, some 257 women, or 17.3 percent of the total, passed the admission exams for school year 1999-2000. But because of inadequate facilities, the intake per year has been limited to a maximum of 20 female cadets. 293. Based on the number of beneficiaries of CHED scholarship programs, women are being given more opportunities to avail of free education. Of the 32,521 scholarship recipients in 19971998, about 67 percent were women. The following year, distribution was more uneven, with the 19,426 female recipients accounting for 69 percent of the total. In 2001-2002, the beneficiaries of the CHED-administered Student Financial Assistance Programs (STUFAP) totaled 22,329, with 9,601 males (43 percent) and 12,728 females (57 percent). As in previous years, the women won a large share of the scholarships and financial grants offered for school year 2002-2003 (Annex Table B10.4), except for the scholarships given to Muslim students 60 percent of which went to men. 294. The continuing dominance of women in higher education, however, masks a number of gender issues. Some of these are as follows. 83