The question of gender in higher education has always been controversial. From the time Oberlin College opened its doors to women in 1833, the following debate has raged: Which sex is more successful in higher education?
Statistically, the answer to that question would be women. According to the Population Reference Bureau, women's enrollment in colleges and universities has exceeded men's since 1991. While this movement primarily began as a small percentage gain in the early 1990s, it has gradually widened to a definite gender shift. In 2005, 43 percent of all college-age women in America attended higher education, compared to only 35 percent of college-age men.
The same gender imbalance can be found at Boston College. In 2007, of the 9,753 undergraduates attending BC, 52 percent were female and 48 percent male.
Ana Martinez Aleman, associate professor of higher education, said that women are not the only ones who are attending universities in higher numbers. "The rise in the number of women enrolled in and completing a BA has certainly increased in the past century, but what is important to note is that men are also going to college in greater numbers than ever before and are more likely to graduate than 20 years ago," Martinez Aleman said. "Historically, men and women have attended college in the US in relative balance."
Recently, however, questions have risen about this reversal in traditional patterns. Studies have shown that boys are likely to be less academically motivated than girls in high school, while positive changes in societal values have allowed girls to surpass boys scholastically.
Martinez Aleman said that this occurred partially because of the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on sex or race in schools, public places, and places of employment. "[This] led to many changes that affected girls K-12; education and preparation for college, the funding of student loans improved access for lower income students - many of them white women - and the improved access to college opportunities for other traditionally disenfranchised groups, Latinos, African Americans, Asians and Native students," Martinez Aleman said.
As a result of this, girls and young women began outperforming boys and young men in school and increasing their share of college acceptance and enrollment. Boys and young men also improved their performance during this time, but not at the rapid rate of girls and women, Martinez Aleman said.
These gender gaps in higher education predominantly occur because of educational gaps in prior schooling, said Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber, professor in the sociology department. When Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard, sparked controversy in 2005 with his inflammatory remarks about women and science, he inadvertently caused many schools to reexamine their gender teaching policies, Hesse-Biber explained. What they found, Hesse-Biber said, was that "women opt out of math and science at 15 and 14 while still in high school. It's just not a subject that's reinforced for girls."
This lack of education in math and science and specialization of another subject ultimately impacts women's college experiences. "Increasingly, women are moving into the sciences, but not as much as men are," Hesse-Biber said.
Particularly at BC, statistics show that women are less inclined toward math- and science-based fields. In 2007, of the 1,970 undergraduates in the Carroll School of Management (CSOM) 1,286 were men and 686 were women, a nearly two-to-one ratio.
At the same time, the Connell School of Nursing (CSON), which Hesse-Biber said was a traditionally "feminized" program, boasted 387 undergraduates in 2007, 374 of whom were women and only 13 of whom were men.
As these statistics show, unequal gender distributions among majors affect men as well as women. Hesse-Biber said that universities should deconstruct many firmly implanted gender roles to balance some the gender-dominated disciplines. "We need to think about options: men who want to teach and women who want to be doctors," Hesse-Biber said.
When becoming doctors, however, both women and men face more of the same gender-gap issue. Both men's and women's enrollment in graduate school decreases, so they match the same percentages as undergraduate enrollment statistics.
Statistics from BC show this to be a continuing trend. Though there has been a clear rise in the level of male graduate work in the College of Arts and Sciences, the ratio of female-to-male graduate students remains the same. While management and law remain male-dominated fields, "feminized" programs such as nursing, social work, and education are largely dominated by female students.
Hesse-Biber said that the number of women continuing their education after college declines as they reach the upper levels of graduate studies. Teaching in particular undergoes a gender reversal, as it is generally a female-dominated profession at the primary and secondary levels but becomes primarily male in higher education.
This has a striking implication for teachers, Hesse-Biber said. Calling it the "escalator effect," she explained that "given the paucity of men in the field in general, they are overrepresented in the highest levels of education."
Martinez Aleman explained that the relationship between men and women in higher education is also economic. She said that although women make up 35 to 40 percent of a faculty, they tend to teach in the humanities in liberal arts colleges. "This is important because institution type and discipline is correlated with wages," Martinez Aleman said. "Women faculty earn about 22 percent less than men across the board."
This disparity in earning rate transcends the educational field. In 2005, the Population Reference Bureau showed that the median weekly earning for women in full-time professions was $585, compared to men in full-time professions who earned $722.
Hesse-Biber explained that women's choice of major usually affects what career they enter more so than that of men. "Women are more significantly likely to major in traditionally feminine majors, such as education or nursing. That career, in turn, pays much less than a traditionally male job in engineering or business," Hesse-Biber said.
The general wage discrepancies between the sexes have prompted many experts to call on universities to reexamine their teaching policies. Yet this action would have to begin within the administration of a college, particularly where the largest gender gap in higher education resides, Martinez Aleman said.
"In the administrative ranks, there exists an obvious gender gap. The number of college or university presidents and higher academic administrators are still predominantly male," Martinez Aleman said
Mari Knuth-Bouracee, a member of the Women's Resource Center and LSOE '09, agreed that the male-dominated administration of BC affected women's roles on campus.
"I think by nature BC is an institution where the administration is majority male and majority white, and it's hard for them to understand the needs of women and the needs of women of color," she said.
Knuth-Bouracee said that this lack of understanding also extended to basic facilities for women on campus. Until recently, BC lacked baby-changing stations in its public bathrooms, an amenity found at most other major universities.
The coordination of the BC community is vital in breaking down the growing gender gap, Martinez Aleman said. "We need to continue to be very vigilant and assertive as faculty, administrators, parents, friends, and citizens to ensure that the intellectual, social, moral, and emotional capacities and potentialities of both women and men are not limited in any way by historic practices of gender bias," Martinez Aleman said. "Restricting the potential of women and men is mis-education."
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