Women gaining on men in
advanced fields
Even with such enormous gains over the past 25 years, women
are paid less than men in comparable jobs and lag in landing top positions on college
campuses.
US federal statistics show that in many ways, the gender gap
among college students is widening. The story is largely one of progress for
women, stagnation for men. .
Women earn the majority of bachelor’s degrees in business,
biological sciences, social sciences and history. The same is true for
traditional strongholds, such as education and psychology. In undergraduate
and graduate disciplines where women trail men, they are gaining ground,
earning larger numbers of degrees in maths, physical sciences and agriculture.
"Women are going in directions that maybe their mothers
or grandmothers never even thought about going," said Avis Jones-DeWeever,
who oversees education policy for the
"We're teaching girls that they need to be able to
explore every opportunity that they are interested in," she said.
The findings were part of a 379-page report, "The
Condition of Education," a yearly compilation of statistics that give a
picture of academic trends.
Women now account for about half the enrolment in
professional programmes such as law, medicine and optometry. That is up from 22
percent a generation ago. The number of women enrolled in undergraduate classes
has grown more than twice as fast as it has for men. Women outnumber men on
campus by at least two million, and the gap is growing.
In business, by far the most popular degree field among
undergraduates, women earn slightly more than half of all bachelor degrees; it
was one-third in 1980.
"You have a large number of women in the administrative
work force, and in the past, they were never able to be the managers and the
vice presidents," said Claire Van Ummersen of the American Council on
Education. "Now they have those opportunities, and they are taking
advantage of them. They can be something other than an administrative
assistant."
The
Women also have become savvy about boosting their income for
themselves and their families by recognising the value of advanced degrees,
Jones-DeWeever said.
Women who work full time earn about 76 percent as much as
men, according to the
Women are underrepresented in full-time faculty jobs,
particularly in fields such as physical sciences, engineering and maths.
"We clearly have a long way to go," said Van
Ummersen, vice president for the council's Centre for Effective Leadership.
She said some universities are replacing retiring professors, giving women a
chance to move into tenured positions.
The enrollment of men in professional degree programmes is
declining.
"There's every reason to celebrate the success of
women," said Russ Whitehurst, director of the
Researchers say that men, for different reasons, are not
enrolling in or completing college programmes with the same urgency as women.
One reason is a failure by schools to teach boys well at an
early age, leading to frustration by high school. A second is a recognition by
young men that they can land, if only temporarily, some decent paying jobs
without a college degree.
Boys need to have their aspirations raised just as girls
have, said Tom Mortenson, senior scholar for The Pell Institute for the Study
of Opportunity in Higher Education. By middle school, he said, many boys are
tuning out and the problem is only getting worse. "Women have been making
educational progress, and the men are stuck," he said. "They haven't
just fallen behind women. They have fallen behind changes in the job market.”
BEN FELLER