Teaching Equality

In many universities in the Western world, the student body is nearly 60 percent female.

Education Female Male Sex Ratios Are
Skewed Towards Women ..... A Good Thing?

This is increasingly an issue in the Western world ...

.... because there's a fear that the male of the species is falling behind. In fact its not just a Western issue. Panama, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Cuba, Jamaica, Brunei and Malaysia for example have some of the highest female to male ratios in higher education in the world. In Malaysia, to take one example, more than 64 percent of university enrolments are female – a number which has increased consistently for years.

There have been some efforts to balance the numbers with that old favourite "Affirmative Action" (which has proved to be so controversial in getting black people into jobs they may not be qualified for), but as you might suspect, anything that might favour white males, has been met with complaints that less-qualified men are being admitted over more-qualified women.

Gender Victory In Education And Jobs?

In fact in December 2009, the United States Commission on Civil Rights moved to subpoena admissions data from 19 public and private colleges, to look at whether they were discriminating against qualified female applicants .... that's the spirit!

In the meantime some researchers have cited several reasons for this phenomena (at least in the US context):

1. Women are tending to have higher grades in pre university / college exams.
2. Some male groups tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers.
3. Female enrolment rates seem to be higher among older students, low-income students, and ethnic minority students.

Obviously this bodes well for women's emancipation and equality, and of course women are primarily in university/college because they want to earn a degree, not for dating purposes. But nonetheless it has some strange consequences.

• Firstly: In the long term, it means that that there are going to be larger numbers of professionally educated women, than there are male equivalents. This can make finding a partner with the same education level, a little more difficult for professional women. Which in turn can lead to marital problems for those who may have married men whose educational achievements and professional aspirations aren't the same as theirs.
• And Secondly: In the short term it can lead to colleges/universities where women may not be able to find or keep male dates/partners, due to the competition from other female students.

I don't have the breakdown UK figures, but the issue is recognised, with 66,000 more women than men now on degree courses, and with women outnumbering men in 112 of 180 degree subjects - around 9 per cent more women than men. 

 

However across the USA women have represented about 57 per cent of enrolments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a report by the American Council on Education in 2010. I managed to get the 2017 figures where the female-male gap in college enrolment rates was:

1. 7 percentage points for young adults overall:
2. 7 percentage points for White young adults,
3. 10 percentage points for Hispanic young adults; and was
4. 6 percentage points for Black young adults.

So this leads to the situation where colleges exhibit a marked difference in the sex balance:

• North Carolina is around 60 percent female. 
• The College of Charleston in South Carolina, is 66 percent female. 
• The University of Vermont has an undergraduate body that is 55 percent female.
• The University of Georgia, is 57 percent female.
• Florida State University, is 56 percent female
• Fordham University in New York is 55 percent female.

...... it should be noted that the elite 'Ivy League Colleges' are largely equal in student gender, and some even still tilt male - Fierce competition for places means that they can balance their intake better.

Also, there is another hidden factor in this new phenomena .... many of the university courses that are generating the higher numbers of women students are clustered in certain areas .... so if for instance we take medical, social and education subjects from the data (In nursing, women outnumber men by nine to one. Women also out number men in psychology, social work, education, design, history, philosophy, English, law and biology courses) - then men still significantly outnumber women at  university.

There is also some evidence that men are still outnumbering and outperforming women in academic sectors at the elite universities and toughest courses e.g. The hard sciences, such as engineering and technology, physical sciences, computer science, architecture, economics and mathematical sciences.

Obviously that proviso aside, this phenomena can't go on for too long, or it will create societal issues. However how to tackle it is proving to be a taxing question. One for better minds than mine I suspect ....