The Future Is Female
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 3 years ago • 26 commentsBy: Mona Charen (The Bulwark)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Women are excelling in college and men are lagging—but the statistics have to be understood in a wider social context. by Mona Charen September 16, 2021 5:30 am
"Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels." So declares the opening sentence of a Wall Street Journal piece that is creating quite the buzz.
It's not really news that women are leaving men in the dust in terms of college attendance and completion. The trend has been evident for many years, although it has not received wide coverage in major news outlets.
Here are some of the eye-popping statistics: Women now account for 59.5 percent of college students in the United States. They also earn 58.5 percent of master's degrees and 52.9 percent of Ph.D.s. Women have been earning the majority of doctorates for 13 straight years. In the 2020-21 academic year, a million more women than men applied to college.
You can be forgiven if you find these numbers startling. The popular press focuses on the challenges women face, not on their achievements. We are constantly warned about silencing girls' voices, discrimination against women athletes, glass ceilings, pay gaps, "mansplaining," and the paucity of women in the top ranks of corporate America. There are innumerable programs, scholarships, and inducements to increase the share of girls and women who study STEM subjects (the only fields where men continue to earn more Ph.D.s than women). And the assumption persists that it's a man's world.
But that's debatable. While it's true that men still outnumber women among law firm partners, CEOs, and college presidents, that may well be an artifact of age. The rising cohort is lopsidedly female, and the ranks of women managers and partners have been expanding accordingly. Top leadership will likely follow eventually (although it should be noted that women more frequently than men forgo the corner office in order to balance family and career—a subject I discuss in my 2018 book Sex Matters .)
Seventy percent of high school valedictorians are girls. They make up such a disproportionate share of qualified college applicants that admissions committees have been practicing sub rosa affirmative action for males for many years. "Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely," Jennifer Delahunty, a college-enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, told the Wall Street Journal . "The question is, is that right or wrong?"
There is no simple answer to that question. Colleges are admitting men with lower grades and scores, but it's not because they're attempting to prop up a flagging patriarchy. No, the reality is that women are less likely to enroll in a college with a 60/40 ratio of women to men than one that's more evenly balanced.
Some might note this female preeminence and shout hurrah for feminism. But I'd keep the champagne corked, because, let's face it, women like to marry men who are their equals or superiors in education and income, and if this trend of women vastly outperforming men in education continues, a fair proportion of women are not going to be able to find compatible men.
I can hear the scoffing already. How Victorian! As if women need to worry about going to college to get their "Mrs" degree!
That, obviously, is not the point. Marriage remains a life goal of most people. In a 2013 Gallup survey of American adults, only 5 percent of the respondents said they had never been married and didn't want to marry someday. (For young adults aged 18 to 34, that figure was slightly higher: 9 percent.)
Americans are right to want marriage, which is associated with greater happiness, health, and wealth for adults and with pretty much every advantage you can think of for children. Just one example: 75 percent of students who graduate from highly selective colleges were raised by two married parents.
This brings us to a bit of social science research that deserves a lot more attention. It's not news that marriage has been in decline for decades. In 1960, about 5 percent of births were to unmarried women. Today, it's 40 percent. It is well established that children raised in single-parent families are far more likely to live in poverty, perform poorly in school, and become vulnerable to life-derailing mistakes like getting into trouble with the law or dropping out of high school.
But here's the part that deserves more study: It seems that growing up in a single-parent home is not as damaging to girls as it is to boys. Comparing Florida brothers and sisters who grew up in single-parent families, MIT economists found that boys were more stunted by growing up without fathers than girls. As the study authors wrote: "Growing up in a single-parent home appears to significantly decrease the probability of college attendance for boys, yet has no similar effect for girls." Boys raised without fathers or father figures tend to be less ambitious and less hopeful than girls raised without fathers or father figures, and tend to get into more trouble at school.
There is much other research finding similar effects. Richard Reeves, co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families, has said that when it comes to thriving in less than ideal family settings, "girls may be more like dandelions, while boys may be more like orchids."
The gender gap that has emerged in educational attainment may be an effect of splintered families. Boys who grow up without the steadying influence of two parents struggle more than girls. So hats off to the gals who are killing it in schools, but for both sexes to be their best and happiest, we need to revive the norm of marriage.
Mona Charen
Mona Charen is Policy Editor of The Bulwark, a nationally syndicated columnist, and host of The Bulwark's Beg to Differ podcast. She can be reached at [email protected] .
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There are wacko women for sure, but I think the world will be a better place when women take over.
Women took over a very long time ago.
It's always been that way, they just let men think they're the ones in charge.
The popular press focuses on the challenges women face, not on their achievements.
Those are startling figures.
I wonder if women becoming more prominent in public life will lead to more domestic abuse.
Why would you wonder that?
Not as long as the men do what they are told and keep their mouths shut.
I hate this sentence so very, very much. It's a declarative statement with nothing in the article to back it up. Flip it around... Is the woman saying that men have been marrying inferior women for centuries? I'd like to think people are so much nuanced that what she has to say here and education and income are but two facets of many a person can look for in a mate.
I don't like it much, either. I doubt very few young women are going to school these days to get their Mrs degree. That stuff started going out of style about the time I started college.
There are examples of happy marriages where the woman earns more than the man. When my daughter and SIL got married he had one more year left in the Army and no job prospects. She, on the other hand, had obtained her BSN and was making pretty good money in the NICU at our local Children's Hospital. They scrimpted for a few years while SIL was finishing his bachelors and starting on his masters. Now that he has his masters he has a really nice job with the US Dept of Agriculture. Princess Rainbow used to tease him about being his sugar mama.
My gf worked while I went to school when we first met. 6 yrs ago her office closed and she had to go back to school and I supported the household. Now we make about even. At no point did I think either of us anything more than equals. After 21 years together we're finally getting married in Dec.
Congratulations on the wedding!
Congrats. I guess at 21 you are both legal now....Haha
My sister did the same. Was with my BIL since high school. They finally got married in their thirties.
Congratulations, EG and so to be Mrs EG.
congratulations
Men have been marrying women who are less educated and lower earners for centuries, yes. That's pretty much irrefutable fact.
I find the assumption that somehow makes them "inferior" to be both odd and telling.
As do I.
I hate it too. My hubby and I have been married 36 yrs, dated for 7 before that. I have a bachelor's degree, he has high school diploma. He brings home more money than I do... 30 odd years experienced diesel tech will get you top dollar. I supply the fun money and health insurance, although I am catching up in regards to pay. I was a stay at home mom when my kids were young, he never considered watching the kids as babysitting. We have never seen the other as anything but an equal partner in the marriage. We both give & we both take.
I would have loved to be a stay at home dad. I'd have been great at it!
I would have to add that not all men have to go to college.
When one can become a plumber by being an apprentice and end up making as much money as a small time lawyer, well....
People, we have been trying to be equal for a while. They even objectified men back in the early last century....
We still need to deal with "The Hermoine Granger Effect", i.e we've got to stop sending young women this very loud message that "you're required to be perfect but you're not allowed to be in charge".
We've seen some progress, but we still have lots of work to do.
True. The stats in the article support this. Women are earning more post-grad degrees, but are underrepresented as CEOs, partners in law firms, etc. They're at least as qualified, if not more so, but they're still not leaders in their fields, for the most part.
Everyone knows Harry would have died in his first year at Hogwarts if not for Hermione.
It's one of the single biggest issues I have to overcome with my employees. I've had to become a bit draconian about it.
We hire kids out of college. We pay well, so we tend to get really good applicants. Usually, the girls we hire have better GPAs and resumes than the boys, but the boys aren't afraid of making mistakes, so they jump in. The girls like to hem themselves in with these imaginary boundaries they invent that they convinced themselves they shouldn't cross.
As a result, we would end up weeks into a project before some girl would finally get brave enough to voice an idea...which was often helpful if not brilliant. I kept finding myself saying "I wish you had thought about that two weeks ago", and hearing the reply "I did actually think about it, but I was afraid to say anything because I wasn't sure if it was dumb or not."
Basically they were so afraid of what everybody might think that they were operating several levels below their ability.
We literally had to start forcing these girls to contribute in meetings. Once they started doing that and realizing their good ideas were very helpful and that their dumb ideas were actually learning experiences, we were able to get them off of dead center.
But we ended up having to create a culture where you were more likely to get in trouble for being afraid to step up than you were for stepping up and failing. It seems to be working so far.
Too many people needlessly go to college. Not every career path requires it, and many who do go, end up either dropping out, or earning degrees that are largely useless to them. And oh yeah, they build up tons of debt for the taxpayers to take care of.