The Female Advantage For Education

Women are obtaining more then half of the bachelor degrees earned in America but that has not limited the earning and abilities of the working class man. Phyllis Rosser’s, Too Many Women in College? (2005) is used to expose the still continuing gender issues in higher education. It exposes the issue that yes, there are more women then men in undergrad and master’s programs but men are still outnumbering women in doctoral programs as well as higher paying fields of study (engineering, computer science, business). Still regardless of education women will still face the income gap. Comparing Lee’s and Shaw’s conclusion to the study by Investing in Futures Public Higher Education in America, Women in Higher Education both sources have come to the conclusion that women make up over half of students enrolled in undergrad and their is an uneven representation of women in math and science based degree programs. Janet Lee’s and Susan M. Shaw’s, Women’s Voices Feminist Visions Classic and Contemporary Readings is an accredited and well developed source that highlights the development of women’s

Science, technology, engineering, and math are the four areas of study that make up STEM. These four areas all have one thing in common: they are all dominated by men. According to Lauren C. Williams, “men outnumber women 7 to 3 in tech jobs in New York City — and nationwide.”.7 Despite this, “women now earn more bachelor’s and master’s degrees than men”.6 However, “women are a minority”.2 Women are a minority in all STEM careers. The ratio of men to women in scientific fields has never been one to one. For some unknown reason very few women are choosing to become chemists, physicists, engineers, computer technicians, or mathematicians. There are many proposed theories for why women are extremely outnumbered in these scientific

As discussed in a recent essay by Saul Kaplan “The Plight of Young Males”, there is a serious academic gender achievement gap in the United States and as I will discuss, around the world. Young women are doing significantly better than young men, and the results are shocking. In the latest census, males make up 51 percent of the total U.S. population between the ages of 18-24. Yet only 40 percent of today’s college students are men. Since 1982, more American women than men have received bachelor’s degrees. In the last ten years, two million more women graduated from college than men. As Kaplan reveals, the average eleventh-grade boy writes at the level of the average eighth-grade girl. He also states that women dominate high school honor rolls and now make up more than 70 percent of class valedictorians. Kaplan says, “I am happy to see women succeeding. But can we really afford for our country’s young men to fall so far behind,” (733)?

Society’s understanding of gender roles debate about gender equity and have always been connected to the social roles that men and women we assigned to shape Americans views of education for girls and boys. What has also been affected is race and social class between females and males who attend schools. Ideas of what women and men are suppose to be and do have cut across different classifications. Ending unfairness in schools has rested on change to gender roles mainly women.

Women have always been viewed as the weaker sex, and society will continue to view them that way unless they do something about it. In the essay “When Bright Girls Decide that Math is a Waste of time”, the author Susan Jacoby discusses the problems women steering clear of math and science subjects because of the traditional view of a woman. She focused on what causes high school girls to focus on arts courses instead of STEM courses and what are the effects of it on themselves. The underlying discrimination amongst boys and girls, stereotypical thinking of parents and teachers that girls are not good at math eventually decreases the self-confidence among girls to solve science and math problems.

There is a lot of compelling evidence to support the view that changes in the education system has resulted in differences in educational achievement between males and females. There is no denying that the statistics show girls are outperforming boys at every level in education, but the question is whether this is largely related to changes in the assessment process and the way each of the genders is educated or whether there are other factors causing the differences.

S. Bruck Comp110 October 5, 2017 Gender in Education The laws of the United States of America require that children attend school regardless of their sex, race, or religious background. This can be achieved by attending public schools, private schools, or by doing homeschooling. The most popular school system is the public system where children from both genders attend. According to Christina Hoff Sommers in her article, “The Boys at the Back”, published on the internet February 2, 2013, we are seeing girls in these institutions outperforming boys at an increasing rate.

While this bill undoubtedly aligned with the mission and purpose of women’s colleges, there remains an unbalanced amount of representation of women in STEM programs and careers. “Globally, women remain particularly behind in participation at elite institutions and in traditional ‘male’ fields of study including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM” (Renn, 2014, p. 3). While the very existence of women’s colleges asserts their right to belong within realms of higher education, the work towards equity and inclusion must take place in all facets of life. “Even where women outnumber men in undergraduate enrollments and enjoy full access to higher education, women’s institutions act symbolically to remind society that in many other domains of public and private life, gender equality remains elusive” (Renn, 2014, p. 125).

Women worked tirelessly to challenge misogyny in education. The formation of ‘women's studies’ introduced women to disciplines like language, philosophy, psychology, and history and opened doors for female STEM majors (Encyclopedia). Women campaigned for educational reforms throughout education careers, and demanded changes in curricula and teaching forces to ensure that women were getting the same education as men. Some changes include home economics and survival courses not being gendered courses and the same curriculum for physical education classes. These changes in the education system made sexism in the new generations less common, a significant change from the previous generation.

This shows the reader the difficulty of the topic from the very start. This suggests that the educational system will always be more favorable to a certain group within our society because of societal expectations. It is also clear that because of the engrained stereotypes such as “girls are all hardworking” (Forde, p.5) and “boys are inevitably troublesome” (Forde, p.5) complicates the task of creating a gender-equal curriculum and environment. This is why it is important to realize that gender in education cannot only be evaluated as an individual variable, other factors (such as disability, poverty, religion…) come into play and can affect one’s education and identity. The first part of the book gives us background knowledge on this issue.

Over the past couple of decades’ girls have begun to surpass boys in academics. Girls have higher high school and college graduation rates, enrollment in Advance Placement (AP) classes, selected for valedictorians and salutatorians, and there are more female applicants being accepted to professional programs, such as physicians and surgeons and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Throughout history, men had access to better education than women. The educating of women was deemed unnecessary by parents, elders, educators, and other members of the community. The traditional role for women consisted of homemaking and child rearing, neither required any type of formal education. Clearly, skills to support these traditional roles were important and often acquired from the more senior women of the extended family and the

Education is a huge factor affecting women's job placement. From a young age, gender role expectations are taught to students through books, televisions, advertisements, and adult social interactions (Etaugh & Liss 129-130). These gender role expectations are extremely institutionalized but currently, women have made strides to have a greater representation at the college level. The percentage of women (68%) between the ages of 18 to 24 enrolled in college, exceeds that of men, which is 66% since 1990 (Parrillo 441). Even amongst minority groups, women have a larger presence on college campuses. Even though women are not the minority in college, they are still minorities in the science majors and overrepresented in majors required for more

Traditionally, men take on the manufacturing, engineering, science occupations in society. Since the 1970’s women’s representation in science, engineering, mathematics, and technology, a group of subjects known as STEM, occupations has increased; but younger girls, under 40, remain underrepresented in these occupations (Census). Furthermore, within the group of few but strong females a part of STEM lies a huge discrepancy between employment of whites and Asians, compared to Africans, Hispanics, and native Americans. Although it is hard to identify the reason for the limited amount of girls in these subject areas, some specialist speculate lack of girls is due to stereotyping threat, stigmas of females lacking the intelligence to comprehend

Gender equity in terms of education is about the socialization of men and women and the results of this process on the life outcomes of the two genders (Husen & Postlethwaite, 1994). In the United States, the education system is required to treat males and females equally. There has been much research done to compare the genders in all areas. In the past, research has found that women fall far behind men in many areas such as math, and science, but men lag behind women in certain areas as well. Over the years, many provisions have been made with the goal of equalizing the treatment of girls and boys in public education. These improvements are proven successful as women, as well as men, are advancing in areas where they tend to lag

Human capital is a fundamental labor force. Thus, encouraging greater female participation or reinforcing gender equality in labor markets worldwide will lead to gains in productivity. However, what can be done to create gender equality? A study emphasized the equality of education. When education access to women is equal to men, occupation opportunities and earnings of men and women with similar education and experience are equal. A research in Pakistan and other studies are introduced. Their findings suggest that education plays a vital part in gender equality in labor force. In another word, education can be a path to gender equality in labor markets.