The New York Times is running a series this week on the
"New Gender Divide in Higher Education." The first article detailed how women were "leaving men in the dust"--working harder, earning higher GPAs and graduating with more honors. Women applicants also outshine male applicants, and in many colleges, the balance between genders is shifting, with more women than men enrolled.
I'm not surprised by these statistics. I taught at a small Catholic liberal arts college that became coed in the mid 70s, and continued to have more male than female students well into the 90s. But beginning in the mid 90s things began to change, and when I left in 2002, all of the trends mentioned in the NYT article were noticeable: the gender ratio favored women by a few points; women applicants were stronger; women students tended to excel and to garner more honors than did the male students. And this caused no small amount of consternation among the administration, who lamented the lack of "gender balance" and worried about how the environment made it difficult for male students to excel. This at a school where "women's studies" had to be called "gender studies" to be "fair", where women comprised (at the time) less than 40% of the faculty.
Puh-leeze! I am not unsympathetic to male students--I have two sons after all, and both of them have struggled more with school than their sisters did, not from a lack of intelligence, but because of motivational reasons. But I am also old enough to remember being told that I might as well not apply to _________ because unless I was valedictorian, as a woman I probably wouldn't be admitted. I am old enough to have witnessed the way all the guys were encouraged to think about a variety of careers and the girls were encouraged to be teachers. I am old enough to remember when the classifieds listed jobs for men and women separately, and when the assumption was made that men should of course earn more because they were the bread winners.
I have a difficult time believing that the educational system has shifted so radically in the last 10-20 years that it now places men at a disadvantage. I do believe that male students are struggling more, and I wonder about their apparent lack of motivation. Or is it an unconscious sense of entitlement instead? A feeling that as men they don't have to work as hard because they know that men still have the advantage in getting good positions, that men still earn more than women even if it is the women who are graduating with the honors?
Or is it about power? I have a theory, admittedly sexist, that men have worked hard to keep women out of the educational system, out of the work force for so long because at some level they knew they couldn't compete. Men have longed used every pseudo-scientific biological, sociological and psychological reason, as well as every religious reason that they could come up with to justify keeping women in their place. But these reasons have by and large been laid aside over the years, and women are out, women are competing, and women are excelling. And the men can't stand it.
I know that I am over generalizing, that there are men out there who welcome the full participation of women, men who work hard and excel, men who are not threatened by females who excel as well. But it still strikes me that [many] men, those who comprise the patriarchy that is still in place, are afraid --afraid that they can't compete with women, afraid of losing their power.
This fear of losing power is, I think, also at the root of the problems that are tearing apart the Episcopal Church, and affecting our wider culture as well. Those who have traditionally held all the power in the Church have been males, straight (for the most part) white males, and they are terrified of losing hold of that power to women, and to gay men. I've heard it said that misogyny is at the root of much homophobia, and both are at play among the neo-cons in the Christian world.
Back on the higher ed front, I find it both sad and amusing that small colleges are turning to football to recruit more men...I wonder how long it will be before the college where I taught, which abolished its football program in 1954, will go that route. Because football will bring in them men, the strong macho men, and football remains one of the few sports where women haven't yet demanded equal time.
I came of age as the women's movement gained power, and I've seen things change. My daughters had opportunities that weren't available for my generation, and I've rejoiced in that. I've been hopeful, too, as I've watched things change, that we might really achieve a world that was "gender blind" with regards to admitting and hiring and promoting and paying. But I'm not so sure any more.
