Women Now Dominate Higher Education at Every Degree Level; The Female-Male Degree Gap Grows

<http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/06/women-dominate-higher-education-at.html>

"Of the more than 3 million college degrees for the Class of 2009, women will earn close to 60% of those degrees (1,849,200), or almost 149 degrees for every 100 degrees earned by men."

read the whole thing


Why do you think this is so?

and therefore there are more famales to choose from for colleges. I think females also tend to do somewhat better in college as well so that there is a greater gap between those granted degrees and those who enter college.

Schools really aren't designed for disadvantaged boys, and never have been.

Twenty years ago, our top ten seniors were all boys. So was the math team. Exactly the opposite now.

.

I'm in EE where the faculty is mostly male and the students are about 60% male; the biomedical department next door is 50% female faculty and two-thirds of the students are female.

Students and faculty have mentioned this before: electrical, mechanical, and aero are "male" departments, biomed, manufacturing, materials, and chemical are "female" departments.

Yes, chemistry is male, biology is female. Physics is still male-dominated.

Weird, huh?

U Toronto's engineering school publishes a nasty newspaper that, no doubt, discourages women from entering that field. I'm glad your school is different. At my undergraduate u, most of the women in engineering were Asian.

I occasionally TA for undergrad classes, and those have fewer women in them. But even in EE there seems to be some discipline differences: electromagnetics and control systems are heavily (nearly entirely) male; semiconductors, photonics, and signal processing are roughly even (this is all just anecdotal from the classes I've had contact with).

To further thicken the pot, the grade skews are interesting and consistent with what I've seen since high school: the women have a higher mean and lower variance in their grades than the men. I think Ashley Montague wrote about that.

I have a BS in biochemistry so I took a variety of biology and chemistry courses, and I would say they were about 50/50 male/female. I was a nursing major first and that was 15/85. But scientific fields seem to be about even nowadays.

Physics and math are still probably male, I think. But I only took the elementary classes (newtonian and electrophysics; calculus 1-3) and they were 50/50. But most of us were required to take those courses

This is still largely the case in my experience. In my experience, barring biology and chemistry, the natural science departments of most U.s I have been at are still very heavily male-dominated (especially Math and Physics). However, the depts of social sciences and the arts seem to generally actually be pretty much female-dominated (is that proper usage...it sounds odd somehow).

Women feel a greater necessity to go to college.

my own story about my brother and me is purely anecdotal, but as I work with young people, I assure you that many young women have the perception that they must have a four year college degree to get anywhere. Fewer young men see it as a necessity or even relevant to what they plan on doing. They tell me they are going to be state troopers, fire fighters, plumbers, etc, and besides being expensive, college would delay their entry into the workforce.

You'll get several links.

Wow.

:toast:

My twin brother and I graduated from high school on the same day. He skipped college and went on to do construction work and eventually formed his own successful company. I have an advanced degree. He has a much nicer house.

This has a flip side; many teachers reward girls for being correct and boys for being daring, at least in math and the sciences. All that said, if we want to decrease the number of high school drop outs we need to figure out a way to build and run schools that don't chase adolescent boys off.

working at elementary schools.

There are many schools where the only men in the school are the janitors. Not good, especially if it's in an inner city neighborhood where there aren't any men in the homes either.

Just an anecdotal example from my own life.

When I was in fourth grade (?) I was sharpening a pencil in my seat with my cub scout knife. The teacher came by and in memory she screamed, her head hit the ceiling and in a flash I was being pulled to the office. The principal calmed me down, talked to me about the cub scouts. I showed him my tote badge and he didn't even take a notch out of it.

Today I would have been suspended from the school for two reasons.

1. My school would probably have a no tolerance policy which impacts boys much more than girls.
2. The principal would probably be a woman who would be less likely to understand tote badges.

The principal told me I probably shouldn't use my knife in that teacher's class.

By the way, I'm not saying that principals should be male. I just think there need to be more males in the schools in general.

You need to look at waht has CHANGED.

Try paying a mortgage with "potential." This is weasel-wording ... about as meaningless as talking about the "average net worth" of a roomful of people that includes Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. You can't spend "potential" OR "average net worth."

In general, men make more money than women at all education levels.
Is that more clear?

And those used to be pretty high-paying trades that women were essentially shut out of.

Women without college degrees, on the other hand, ended up in retail and service industries, which are notoriously poorly paid.

"Women without college degrees, on the other hand, ended up in retail and service industries, which are notoriously poorly paid."

Or prostitution.

my best friend is by no means a moron, but he is a 10th-grade dropout, NEVER even thought about getting a G.E.D. and he can buy and sell me now; making $17/hr plus overtime... granted, he had to work some real shit hourly jobs for a lot of years while i was in college racking up deferred loans, but he's been able to save up a lot of cash and buy things for himself while me and my master's degree have spent most of this decade in heavy debt, dancing between un- and underemployment...

I don't intend to demean your friend in any way, but twice that is barely decent (~ $70K).

We are so screwed.
:(

but you have to admit, $17/hr plus OT is pretty good for someone who never finished H.S., and the cost of living is relatively low, so he was able to save and buy a house...

especially i currently make a little more than half that amount:banghead:

I've never been to Virginia Beach. $17 is about what the minimum wage would be had they indexed it to inflation.

It is not that long ago that one person working one full-time job in just about any field could afford to live in a house, own a car, and raise a family. We forget so quickly and are so easily distracted.

I'm unemployed and I'm actively seeking jobs that pay less than $15 per hour.

Edit to add: No one has called me, so far.

Having a daughter, I am very much aware that she needed a college degree just to keep pace with men who only have a high school diploma. Women with just the high school diploma have very few options for supporting themselves, and they need extra credentials just to be perceived as equal by typical hiring teams.

it was proof that we needed programs to correct this imbalance.

Now that men are underrepresented it is proof to many around here that men are stupid and lazy and should STFU because they were in charge for so many years (not the ones currently being disadvantaged, but their ancestors).

How progressive.

Really, I'm interested in hearing about them because, last time I checked, there wasn't institutional discrimination keeping men out of college like there was against women years ago. In all seriousness, there are things going on with how boys are raised (which I address in a post downthread) and male culture that are probably discouraging them from succeeding academically. But I'm not seeing anything women (as a group) are doing to keep young men down and out of academic institutions, so your comparison to prior discrimination against women isn't apt. The lower male college enrollment may simply be the result of the typical male flight from anything that becomes "feminized" Just as when more women enter certain occupations, men start to shun them in droves (and the pay gets lowered), the same thing may be happening with college. It may be viewed as a "girl" thing now, hence something a lot of men will avoid being associated with.

end-result jobs are no longer of interest to young men because of that. Women haven't driven men off -- their own distaste for anything remotely connected to women (except sex, sex, sex, of course) has run them off. Women can't change men's attitudes; they have to grow up and stop being so sexist.

Men still want to be engineers. Men still want to be teachers. Men still want to be writers.

Setting aside how primary school consciously sets boys up for academic failure, what society won't permit of men is to be poor, so we go to trade school to take the riskiest and most unpleasant jobs.

But I suppose women don't take risky or unpleasant jobs?
The oldest profession, prostitution, is arguably the riskiest and sometimes the most unpleasant of all jobs.

Not all the customers are anyone you'd want to have sex with. And you could just get raped or killed.

Edit to ask: I'm sorry that I didn't get your story on how schools make it difficult for boys.

Why would anyone put themselves in a position where they would be accused of being a child molester?

No thank you.

like I said earlier. A nasty streak of hatred directed at men on here.

Imagine if I'd said women are underrepresented in boardrooms because they're too busy thinking about making babies and painting their toenails to really find running a company tasteful. Men can't change their attitudes, only they can. They need to grow up and stop being so frivolous and silly.

A blanket statement about literally billions of people that cannot be verified and is extremely demeaning right? So why is your equivalent statement acceptable?

Equality of the sexes does not mean hatred/denigration of men. Just like racial equality is not the same as hating whites. The goal should be that everyone suceeds according to their abilities, and if there is an obvious imbalance then something should be done to correct it. T

has to be the fault of the males themselves?

Doesn't that strike as just a tad hypocritical? If women were underrepresented, would you suggest they wise up and fit in, or would you say we need to look at ways of solving the problem with policy or programs?

Why do you assume males should to solve all their own problems, but females need and deserve help? A little inconsistent, isn't it?

It's easy to lose track of that; it's not that men have lost ground particularly, it's that women have gained significant ground and men haven't.

But, yes, I'd like to see some policies address this and try to keep so many boys from dropping out of school.

Greater emphasis (read money) to programs helping middle and highschool age girls prepare for college. After school programs just for young girls. Scholarships for women. And ultimately encouraging colleges to accept an equal number of women as men, to be more in line with the general population.

And your argument about "male flight" from anything feminized, does that apply the other way round? For instance, engineering, running businesses, etc are seen as traditionally male roles. So is it fair to say the reason women are in the minority in these fields is that they tend to avoid anything that makes them appear too masculine? Or does that only apply when men are at the disadvantage.

IE, when men are underrepresented its because they choose to be, when women are its because evil men have prevented them from justly being the dominate group.

IE, when men are underrepresented its because they choose to be, when women are its because evil men have prevented them from justly being the dominate group.

That's funny since there have been a spate of articles in the past few years claiming that WOMEN'S choices limit them in the workplace. We supposedly "mommy track" ourselves out of promotions and high salaries.

And you might not like my argument about "male flight" but that doesn't make it false. Go volunteer in a high school with some at-risk boys sometime and see what their attitude toward school is. It's for "pussies". So yeah, something needs to be done but the change has to come from within male culture. Sorry, but this isn't women's fault.

1. A program to get more men working in elementary schools besides as janitors.
2. Programs to study classroom learning styles that boys have the most success with.
3. Teacher inservice programs to teach classroom management styles and teaching techniques to woman teachers about which styles work best for boys.
4. More outside recess time, physical activity at the schools.
5. Relaxation of zero tolerance rules, especially rules that punish boys for being boys (chasing each other and saying bang for instance).
6. Study of office referral numbers. If 90 % of students sent to the office for discipline are boys, then the school should institute a special program teaching the school educators ways to look for things in school curriculum, calendar, classroom mangement that could be changes to help the boys.

There are lots of things that can be done.

How about special scholarships and programs to encourage boys to go into certain studies like we've had for girls for so many years.

Odd, isn't it?

would be that women know that they need more education to make the same amount of money as men. I remember seeing stats not too many years ago that the average women with a bachelor's degree made the same as the average man with a high school diploma. Same for women with a mster's and men with a bachelor's. The job picture for a woman with a high school diploma is pretty bleak. So we go to college.

"the average women with a bachelor's degree made the same as the average man with a high school diploma."

I don't think so! :hi:

on this table with numbers for 2006:
http://cpe.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/38E23093-122B-430A-947F-F2E932D01E84/0/KY__US_Median_Earnings_by_Attainment_Gender_20071101.pdf

Here's the pertinent part:

Median income for men with HS diploma: $31,715
Median income for women with bachelor's degree: $36,875

Median income for men with bachelor's degree: $55,446
Median income for women with graduate or professional degree: $49,164

what the median was for women with only a high school diploma...$20,650. Compared to $31,715 for men who only finish high school. Ouch.

I asserted that women have to get a college degree to make the same as a man. Yeah, there's a huge difference between $31k and $36k. I also note that you completely ignored the part about women needing a Master's to make as much as a men with a Bachelor's...where there's the same difference, only women with a Master's make about $6k less.

Pedantic much?

"Yeah, there's a huge difference between $31k and $36k."

Well, $5000 represents 15% of the median income for all workers, I'd say that $5000 is a significant difference.

"I also note that you completely ignored the part about women needing a Master's to make as much as a men with a Bachelor's"

Those numbers represent medians--they are not controlled for things such as hours worked, years of experience, or (most importantly) type of degree. But what's the point in being a "pedant" as to such "minor" factors when the unsorted data doesn't support your point in the first place? :shrug:

in reading for comprehension. The topic sentence of my original post was that women need to earn higher levels of education to make as much money as men. The numbers I linked to support that claim.

Considering that that link was the 3rd hit on a cursory google search, I have no doubt more numbers could be forthcoming if I felt like it. I'm just not sure you're worth it.

diploma."

Your data did not support this assertion. If you choose to modify your assertion now that you've looked at some facts, that's commendable. But it's really poor form to start in with the ad homs when the numbers don't match your assertions!

" I have no doubt more numbers could be forthcoming if I felt like it."

Let me know if you find some numbers that support your argument! :hi:

out of context, don't you? Please go back and re-read my original comment in it's entirety and then look at the numbers again.

P.S If you're ever looking for numbers on the Bureau of Labor Statistics site, they don't make it easy at all.

Stop being so hostile. I am not trying to attack you. Your original assertion needs some refinement. That doesn't mean that I'm not supportive of equal pay for equal work, because I am!

On a thread devoted entirely to women's compensation issues, I wouldn't even bother to challenge you on this point. However, there is something insidious about making such misrepresentations to justify what would appear--on its face--to be a potential example of structural gender discrimination in higher education.

the most recent numbers I've found are from 2007 and they are only for full-time workers, so that concern you had about the numbers can be laid to rest. They're also weekly median numbers - I would prefer to have the average as well for comparison purposes, and am kind of surprised that the BLS doesn't provide both. *sigh* Sorry...I do stats for a living and I'm a bit of a math nut - I want complete data damnit. :)

Here's another link:
http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-table17-2008.pdf

Women with a bachelor's make more than men with just a high school education. Women with a bachelor's degree have a median weekly income about $170 dollars more than men with a high school diploma ($860 per week vs. $689 per week).

But that bachelor's degree is the tipping point. Women with an associate's degree make less than men with only a high school education ($689 per week for men vs. $620-661 for women, depending on the type of associate's degreee). Women with only a high school education make $512 - that's $177 less than men.

Women with a master's make $113 per week less than men with a bachelor's degree ($1034 vs $1147). And a new number, women with a doctorate make $78 more dollars a week than men with a master's ($1279 vs $1201).

So, that's the state of things as of 2007. Like I said, it had been a few years since I remembered seeing the stats I saw, so I will amend my original post at this point to say that women need a college education to make at least as much as a man with only a high school diploma. And I think the numbers still back up the point of what I originally posted...that more women get college degrees, and increasingly higher levels of education, because we know we have to have the extra education to compete economically.

One final thought, seeing the numbers, we need to be encouraging everyone get more education. It's makes a HUGE difference in their earning potential and the quality of life that comes with a better salary. If you look at the median earnings for people who don't finish high school...it's scary.

I think there are really two issues involved:

1) Do men and women, all else being equal (educational achievement, hours worked, experience, etc.) earn the same amount in any given field?

The answer to this question is largely yes. (Some studies show women earning more than their similarly qualified male colleagues in select professions, such as law, iirc.)

2) Are there structural barriers to one or the other gender's entry and progression in any particular fields?

I think the answer to this question is also yes.

But what I object to is folding the second question indiscriminately into the first. The fact is, the data do not tend to show a vast disparity in compensation between men and women when all relevant factors are controlled for. This, of course, is not an entirely fair comparison either, because of the structural barriers I mentioned above.

Funny, I've never heard anyone complain of the barrier that prevents women from breaking into the man's world of commercial fishing, trash collection, logging or coalmining.

One of the main reasons we don't know if the genders earn the same after equalizing jobs/experience/hours is because no one wants to hear the wrong answer, there are too many sacred cows at risk.

The American Association of University Women looked at the issue a couple of years ago and found that after normalizing factors, women and men were paid within 5% of one another. Given the mission of the organization, it's reasonable to question whether they would have published findings showing equality, and how they did their normalization.

This thread is about the fact that women earn 50% more degrees than men. That is also a structural barrier.

I've heard plenty of women who have tried to break into those types of jobs and the harassment they encounter on the job is intense.

of my post...the numbers are for full-time workers. I looked for that intentionally to address the full-time vs part-time issue that had been raised previously.

our favorite vicious circle - women are paid less, so when they get pregnant it's just "natural" for them to be the one to stay home, thereby losing time in the work force, leading to them being paid less when they re-enter the work force.

The number I quoted are what they are - they're yearly averages for men and women by education level for full-time workers. If you want to dig more, hit the BLS site and do your own research.

It's a fact on the ground that women more often than men stay home with kids, and I'm not saying it's a good idea. Older women more advanced in their careers are also being held back by the fact that back in the day they started at a lower salary.

I think there's so much pushback on this issue because for those of us child-free and under 40 or so it's just not true and doesn't match up with what we see in the workplace.

it was sarcastic air quotes refering to the way a lot of people seem to think about the issue.

And I know anecdote and data are not the same thing, but some of us child-free under-40s do still see this happening. I have a master's and I make about the same as my boyfriend does with just a bachelor's. Because my field is not valued...hard to think that isn't because it is predominantly peopled by women.

they're having one of those "ant-tax tea party" things across the street from where I work in a little under 3 hours. Joe the Plumber is supposed to be there. I'm sure you can understand if I'm a little...on edge. :)

(As an aside, this discussion will undoubtedly need to be updated with numbers from the current recession/depression--while all workers are suffering, men's wages in particular have made a precipitous drop during this period. The disparity between men and women with only a HS diploma is like to shrink considerably.)

you're from Michigan. One of the state's with an even higher unemployment rate than we have here in NC. :hug:

Did I mention I'm a math nerd? I think updating the analysis to reflect the current reality would be fascinating. Hopefully someone at BLS does too. Would also be interesting to see how the number of hours worked and number of people counting as full-time employees are being affected. The numbers I posted earlier only reflect full-time workers. Women have always been over-represented in the part-time labor force, and there are a lot of very negative consequences that come with not qualifying as a "full-time" employee - lack of benefits being the biggest. The sad fact is that we're going to achieve "equality" by making everyone's life a misery of wage-slavery. That is so NOT what feminists want.

a) parents have resources to educate all their kids, or if not,
b) they have no sisters.

The same logic here in this thread is at work in the real world; "I think Suzy should go to college. All her teachers, Ms Smith, Ms Jones, Ms King, and Ms Pearl, all said she was a better student than her brother Tommy. The teachers all agree that he has these communications issues.

Besides, Tommy can make a decent living, for awhile, roofing houses or servicing sani-cans."

"I want to be a biologist. Better get a biology degree". See the pattern?

Boys are 50% less likely to graduate college than girls.

Funny how guys like you and your incest-supporting hero Warren Farrell insist it's women's choices that relegate them to lower wages while here you are acting like young men are forced into manual jobs by the mean, oppressive system. Right.

Oh, and if Tommy has "communications issues" it's probably because his folks have him stuffed full of Adderol and let him sit in his room in front of the computer all day, playing games or wanking off to porn. Meanwhile, Suzy is expected to help out around the house and learn social skills. Shockingly, she does.

It is obvious to anyone who is interested in anything other that justifying her bigoted gender stereotypes.

Oh right, no women do manual work.

B: not all "manual work" is the same.

Name me one woman-dominated industry which involves strenuous labor, a high degree of danger, exposure to the weather, and very little psychological reward.

I am not surprised that those careers pay more. They should.

Work in jobs that require strenuous labor AND a high degree of danger AND exposure to the weather AND very little psychological reward? I want to see the jobs with ALL those elements and the numbers, please. Numbers that justify the overall average male wage being that much higher. According to the Dept. of Labor the no. 1 job for men is truck driver.

I don't need to disprove whatever point you're trying to make, all I have to do is prove mine.

Dangerous jobs are dominated by men. In fact, a job-related fatality is 10x more likely to be a man, despite the genders working comparable total hours.
http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfoi_rates_2007h.pdf

Speaking of truck drivers, last year, twice as many (976) truck drivers were killed on the job as the total for all women in ALL occupations.

That's why parents send their daughters to college, and why traditionally male occupations pay more.

According to that chart men die at a rate of 6.4 per 100,000 on the job. In the U.S., women die in childbirth at a rate of 12 per 100,000: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/80743.php In many other countries the rate is much, much higher. This is what you'd call an "occupational hazard" of being female. Using your logic, pregnant women should not only be paid but they should be making at least as much as several of the male dominated occupations listed on that report that have similar or lower fatality rates. But no, custom dictates that the ladies risk their lives birthin' the babies out of the goodness of their hearts, whereas society is disposed to pay men for doing dangerous things.

The only reason pregnancy and childbirth is not viewed as the difficult and dangerous JOB that it is is because women, who have in most societies through most of civilized history been viewed as chattel, do it. Name me a male-dominated occupation that requires workers to allow a parasite to invade their bodies, causing them months of sickness and discomfort, disfigurement, the excruciating pain of pushing something the size of a watermelon out of an opening the size of a lemon, and the risk of death?

It's not a job? Well that can't be! Otherwise, this whole sidebar distraction would be a complete non-sequitur. It would have no relationship to the discussion at all. :eyes:

Besides, if being a woman is so dangerous, why do you live 10% longer?

Besides besides, the mortality rate for any given profession is per year. Unless you're octomom, the lifetime risks are not comparable.

Besides besides besides, adding all deaths "of maternal causes" from your link (540 in 2004), plus all the women who died of workplace accidents, is still less than just the truck drivers killed last year.

Math isn't really that hard.

The fact is that most men DON'T die on the job. They die earlier because of natural and lifestyle risks. Which, I hate to break to you, are NOT the fault of women.

AND, I should point out to you that ALL those men who died on the job CHOSE to be in those jobs. Seriously, each and every one of them did. You cannot say the same of the women who died in childbirth.

I'm sorry that you hate women so much, I really am. But however much you hate women (and you clearly do, though you pretend to like children), the fact is that most of the problems of men are NOT caused by women whereas most of the problems of women ARE caused by men.

Since the LPN isn't a four year degree, it's not really an apples to apples comparison.

http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes_nat.htm#b00-0000

Most people with English degrees cannot get a job as a English professor, male or female.

But most people with a RN degree, male or female, are always on the short list for hiring. They always can get a job no matter what. But, can you handle being a nurse? Can you handle being in health care? So many people get nursing degrees and leave.

I had a waitress friend who thought it would be wise for her to become an Actuarial. She had read about Actuarials as being the top, best, most prudent career for 1999 (or something). She now is an accountant.

Anyway, Romulox, just find a career and stop whining.

which is obviously false. The rest is mere misdirection.

I notice that when facts are not on your size, you're not above a little gratuitous insult, btw. Who's whining, and why would you assume I don't have a career? I could as easily assume someone with weak analytical skills has little in the way of career prospects... :hi:

Is expected to support his family with a dangerous, unpleasant and demeaning job which is beneath his sister's station in life.

So, mom and dad spend their finite college savings on sis. Brother will be fine. I'm told that EOD detail in the army pays pretty well.

"Is expected to support his family with a dangerous, unpleasant and demeaning job which is beneath his sister's station in life."

Speaking from anecdotal evidence or do you think all families operate this way?

And back up your 3:2 ratio claim.

I never had the opportunity to go to college, but even I know that 60:40 = 3:2.

to try to explain why more women are in college than men.

But it's demonstrable that men are relegated to ALL the dangerous occupations.

Some of the more dangerous jobs require physical strength. There are many female firefighters now, and they fought hard to be able to join the ranks. When my dad was a firefighter (retired in 1987), that was unheard of.

A job which requires above average physical strength will have a constrained pool of potential applicants, right?

Seems reasonable to suggest that a job that anyone could do would pay less, don't you think?

Further, if it's dangerous, unpleasant, and arduous, you'd have to pay a lot to get someone to do it... and even more if it requires skill and experience.

Do you think that this would go a long way toward explaining the gender pay disparity?

... and I'm pretty sure biology doesn't compel anyone to choose to freeze to death in the Bering sea.

Because they are bigger on average than women, have a structual advantage, and testosterone makes muscle development easier, which is why some athletes take steroids. I think that some workplaces have not made changes in technology or logistics to make heavy lifting unecessary because there are enough strong young men with little other skills other than being able to lift heavy things all day. Some of these workplaces enjoy being male dominated. It is like being in a fraternity.

... in order to keep out the wimmenz. Keep it a terrible, dangerous and demeaning activity and we can continue enjoying our male domination.

I've heard this more than once from people who did get the benefit of a college education. I use "benefit" loosely.

The workplaces that suck are most likely to be male dominated
a) because parents are less likely to pay for their sons education and
b) because society expects that a man's primary purpose to his family is a paycheck.

I know my mom, the oldest, and the more serious student, didn't get a college education - that was for her brother - who had to support a family after all.

These sort of generalizations don't achieve much.

More women are seeking higher education. This is a good thing, particularly in light of the continuing lag in women's salaries vs. men's in the same jobs.

It was quite a while ago (a decade maybe?), and it could be that the latest numbers reflect a growth in incomes of women with degrees compared to when we read the stats. Or it could be that the numbers look a little worse for men with high school now because of the loss of manufacturing jobs that gets worse even as we speak. Either way some here evidently want to pick nits rather than face economic sexism head on.

Bill

... as simply an artifact of sexism is not confronting it head on.

Instead, since shitty jobs will still need doing, and it will always be that way, it sets up the conditions where no corrective action will ever be effective.

In the last year, four out of five people who lost their jobs are men. According to the media, the main problem with this is the stress it causes the breadwinner wife.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103979497

Want to earn a high wage? Choose an unpleasant job, but be prepared to give it up to a lower wage resident alien.

so please tell me more about unsafe jobs. Have you ever neutralized 25,000 ppm cyanide solution? There were lots of women in labs where I've worked, and they have. Now tell my cousin the nurse about unpleasant jobs, like cleaning up patients with no bowel control. And tell her how women are in nursing in such great numbers because the work is so pleasant and the conditions so safe. Sorry, there may be some truth to the notion that unsafe and unpleasant jobs pay more, but I don't see any evidence that this is the reason for the pay disparity between men and women. Got any?

Bill

How many Chemists died last year from workplace accidents?

Don't get up, I'll tell you... 24 people died last year while engaged in chemical manufacturing. That translates to a fatality rate of 1.9 per 100,000 workers. You're confusing potentially hazardous with truly dangerous.

Logging, for instance, took the lives of 89 people last year, or a fatality rate of 91 per 100,000 workers - almost 100 times more hazardous. I have never met a woman who worked in the woods, except biologists.

Look at fishing... Fatality rate of 110.

http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfoi_rates_2007h.pdf

Sorry, there may be some truth to the notion that unsafe and unpleasant jobs pay more, but I don't see any evidence that this is the reason for the pay disparity between men and women. Got any?

So you're accepting the idea that shitty jobs pay more, but not that this would explain the gender pay disparity? So, I'm guessing that the aerial construction workers, garbagemen, taxi drivers and sewer cleaners in your neighborhood are all women? Are you disputing the idea that dangerous jobs pay more, or that men are doing them?

Check out that BLS link again. Find me a single women-dominated field in which the fatality rate is greater than 2. I can only find one mixed-gender occupation in which the rate is greater than 10... law enforcement, and to call that mixed-gender kind of distorts the definition of mixed.

Many studies, including the one done by AAUW funded for the purpose of finding a huge disparity, found that after normalizing the data men and women made within 5% of each other, easily explainable by the fact that men are more likely to negotiate for a salary.



http://www.aauw.org/research/upload/behindPayGap.pdf

Nice to see that you agree with the insurance companies that this is dubious and hard to prove. Anyway, since I didn't die from the chlorine gas I was exposed to last year I guess you must be right, my job is safe. Hell, the mercury won't kill me, just addle my brain to the point where I think people are basically good, just confused sometimes and they will see the sexism still rampant in our society if it is pointed out to them. I do know a woman with logging experience. She has 3 curved scars on one cheek from a chainsaw. She and her boyfriend quit to move back east and get away from the arrest warrants, but even here they did cutting from time to time.

Have you got any studies about the sexual harassment faced by women in the woods, or on fishing boats? Do you spend much time recruiting women in your area? Have all the women you've asked to log with you rejected the job due to the fear of death by tree? The lack of women in the jobs you name is not by itself proof that women don't want the jobs, or will not do the jobs. Does that study that controls "for all the factors" control for hiring discrimination? How about for women that are told not to bother applying?

Have you noticed how many of our women in uniform in Iraq are raped by men in uniform? That should tell you that there may be something other than being crushed by a tree or drowning that keeps women out of your unsafe jobs. Perhaps women know they need to be safe from men, and an offshore fishing boat or backwoods logging site is not the best place to do that. My friend logged with her boyfriend, and she had no fear of other men with him around to keep her safe. Will you do that for women who want to work in the woods with you?

Sorry, I don't discount sexism the way you do, I've seen to much of it. Even here.

Bill

Great post. Men who discount sexism often haven't had much experience with women in general, or are walking around with huge chips on their shoulders. I think we're seeing a lot of that on this thread unfortunately.

Yeah, we had that argument here. Funny how that works.

Hekate

they must get more education. Maybe Pat Buchannan is right; we need affirmative action to combat prejudice against white, Christian men. JUST KIDDING!

I am studying to be a preschool teacher and in my child development class we talked about boys having trouble in language and verbal skills. They were always lagging behind girls but its getting worse perhaps as attention spans are decreasing.
There is also fewer male role models for boys to emulate in a positive way. Sad but true. We are abandoning these boys. We need to support them like we have done for girls in regard to math and science. It might not be a mental thing but a societal issue that they do not do as well in English class. To read and comprehend is huge in college.

I've always wondered if more boys had male teachers, they might not shut out school so much.

so far.
If the boys have no role models at home (with divorce and single parenting) then they could benefit from male teachers. Sad that many guys consider it a lowly profession to go into.
I am in Early Childhood Ed but I heard from other people studying to be teachers in the higher grades that there is still hardly any men taking the courses.

He has a waiting list of requests for his Fall starting class. Every other teacher at this school, and it is a large school, is a female.

The guys I have come across in my classes are always great with kids and really dedicated to it. I just think traditionally with young children, its considered a "nurturing" profession and not something that men really look at going into. Hopefully societal perceptions about males and females will change in time.

Nobody wants to be accused of beng a child molester.

if they didn't associate it with being a little kid.

My high school had math and government departments dominated by retired navy officers. They were all pretty cool, actually.

More men should be teaching younger grades.

"And it would make men feel better about female authority figures if they didn't associate it with being a little kid."

I'll have to think about that one a bit.

And, if so, do you have issues with male authority figures based on your experience?

K-5. This was ca. 82-87. Don't know if things are better, worse, or the same now.

and, believe me, the boys all knew they were going to college. Whether they had male or female teachers didn't matter; their position in the world after HS depended entirely on college, or whether they were going to inherit their fathers' businesses, or whether they were going into one of the highly-paid union trades. I was a mail carrier in 1983 in the south and I can tell you stories about harassment; plenty of men thought women shouldn't be mail carriers!

where there are few men in the homes.

For some boys the only male role models they see at school are the custodians.

with regard to reading comprehension after the first few years of school. I do agree that it would be nice if more primary school teachers were male.

how boys are not as good with language skills...yet all the lists of "great books" are dominated by male authors. Kinda makes it obvious that it isn't anything innate about boys...it's a societal thing. Gender stereotypes hurt everyone.

I think you meant to say "fewer"?

It seems that studious girls are admired but boys seen as studious are not.

Just a guess at one part of the puzzle.

and I'm sure she'd tell you that smart kids are generally not much admired regardless of gender!

Well, she wouldn't actually tell you. She'd text you.

could also be tied to expectations. Educational achievement is certainly an expectation in my family, and valued.

I never remember thinking poorly of smart guys. Quite the opposite, in fact. Intelligence always has been an absolute requirement for me. Kindness and a sense of humor would be up there, too.

It sucks, but there's a tremendous stigma attached to being male and intelligent these days, especially in grade school and high school. Jocks make the rules and bully those boys who like to read books, do math, etc. It's increasingly part of our culture now, the presumption that men are big, bumbling idiots who only care about beer, sports, and pussy - that basically, adult men, deep down, are the most boorish high school jock imaginable, plus fifty pounds, a beer gut, and an endless capacity for fart jokes: that's the male paradigm we're fed constantly in the media (think of all those terrible post-"Married w/ Children" sitcoms like "King of Queens," "Two and 1/2 Men," think of phenomena like "South Park," "Jackass," think of every beer commercial you've seen in the last two decades....now think of the cultural environment such phenomena have engendered: can you imagine what would happen to a dude who reads and enjoys and wants to talk about Theodor Adorno in such an environment? He'd get critcized and shunned for being an effete snob, for being uninterested in beer and football and hoisting his glass to the ceiling and going "wooo!" We all know, from endless TV-bred conditioning, what happens to the smart guy when placed in a room full of so-called "real" or "regular" people: he becomes the butt of jokes. And if he's a boy still in school, he gets the shit kicked out of him until he's forced to either mask or jettison his intellectual nature.)

So anyways, my point is that after decades of this conditioning, the effects are starting to be felt in profound ways in schools and in academia: boys don't want to be seen as "not normal," because not normal means you become a target - so they become anti-intellectual, anti-education. Thus, boys underperforming in school due to societal/cultural pressure (that's my guess, anyways).

the Powers That Be just LURVE this whole scenario. Provides them with plenty of economically desperate cannon-fodder for their war machine.

Nearly every post of yours is about some conspiracy theory.

What's with the need to blame every failure of one's own on some conspiracy?

I haven't seen any conspiracy theories, unless you think feminism is a conspiracy theory.

on this thread, I'd have a hard time calling my master's a failure. :shrug:

And if you don't think the upper class in this country has a vested interest and does everything in their power to ensure a large, under-educated underclass that they can exploit, then you just haven't been paying attention. Last time I checked that was a pretty mainstream opinion around here.

I saw this attitude ALL the time in my high school and university - the pressure to be the dumb jock, the dumb frat boy. I think this trend finally seems to be abating - finally, due to a variety of factors, it's becoming more socially acceptable - for both boys and girls - to be a "geek." Maybe it's the popularity of movies like Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and all the comic book/graphic novel movies; maybe it's the increased reliance on technology and online networking, which leads to geeky internet memes; maybe it's something else. But I have noticed already that it is far more socially acceptable for me to be open about being a smart "nerd" now than it was when I was in high school, and the same is true for my male friends. So I certainly hope the deification of the idiot drunk anti-intellectual fratboy is coming to an end.

One thing I would mention in relation to this, and it has nothing to do with gender, once we get significant numbers of our own gaining and using higher education, our system immediately takes steps to suppress wages and opportunities.

I would personally revert into beer commercial guy and beat them up,

On average, women have to get more education to have the same standard of living as a man. Since women realize this, they are more likely to seek higher education.

I'm sure there are other factors, but like anything, it's best to first follow the money.

As blue collar jobs continue to rapidly disappear, however, look for patterns to change in the future.

girls tend "buckle down" and study more in high school, and may get better grades, which opens the door to more grants...

.....

families are pretty stressed-out financially these days, so boys who are not as academically "endowed" may be trying to work their way through, and get lost in the weeds?

......

college girls may party less/study more?

......
:shrug:

Very few males are applying to the social sciences that aren't international students.

The other four men were from China, India, Turkey, and Latvia. 5 men, 13 women. Only three of the women were international students.

is leaving boys behind.

As a woman myself, I am thrilled by the news that girls/young women are doing so well with their education.

As the mother of 2 boys, who graduated in the top 10% of their class and are both now in engineering college, I saw how the emphasis on making sure girls had everything they needed in primary and secondary school left a lot of boys sitting the sidelines. With so much institutional focus on girls, it was as if boys had become second class citizens.

Unfortunately, as I expect to here, you will only get flamed if you dare mention this out loud in a school setting.

My boys were lucky because they had involved parents at home who made sure they had all the things they needed to excel.

Seems to me these studies (and I say studies because this isn't the first to show that we've more than closed the gap on educating girls) show that we need to take seriously the education of both girls AND boys starting at the earliest age.

When a boy is energetic and maybe a little disruptive there are two usual responses: People act like it's normal boy behavior or (more common in recent times) they pathologize it and medicate him. When a girl is she's told sternly to cut it out and "act like a young lady". This starts from a very early age and has the effect of reinforcing obedience and passivity, which may serve a girl well in her grades but not so much in other areas.

This isn't a zero sum game where if females get ahead then males MUST lose out and there can be no other explanation for a decline (or more accurately in this case a lack of growth) in the status of males than that. It also may be that you didn't notice all the programs and emphasis on boys in schools (and believe me there's plenty, especially in low income communities with a lot of single mothers) because you were so involved with your own sons. That was probably what made the biggest difference.

Spent one day a week in my sons' kindergarten classes as a reading lab aid and watched boys who needed help be ignored while the teacher flitted from girl to girl in the reading lab. (Obviously that meant I started spending a lot of time with the boys.) Also spent one day a month helping out in the classroom. This teacher had no patience for high-energy children and gravitated to girls simply because they were quiet and sweet and did all their work. She should never have been a kindergarten teacher in the first place.

That was only the beginning of my involvement. I participated in the classroom at every opportunity, joined my children as a chaperon on field trips all through their school career, went to every parent-teacher conference. Listened to several teachers tell me one son or the other needed medication while female students swirled around the same teacher like butterflies to a sweet flower.

I didn't go looking for a bias in the classroom. In fact, I was floored several times by teachers who I never expected to be the type to fall for it. I absolutely understand the subtle variations of bias and know that in several classrooms I saw it and on occasion heard it justified by the presumption that girls are always left behind and need extra attention.

BTW, my boys were never put on medication. We never even had them tested for adhd or anything else. They were absolutely normal boys who earned praise for good behavior and being good citizens in their school on a regular basis. Clearly, there were teachers who, though they spent up to 30 hours a week in the classroom with them, never even came close to seeing them for who they are. Was it because they were boys? One does have to start wondering.

on edit: my husband is has been on the school board since my boys were in middle school and before that regularly attended school board meetings in this small community with relatively high poverty rates. Through him, I am quite aware of programs available for helping children. All of them are distributed on a need basis as doing so on a gender basis is against the law. The bias I spoke of in my original post is an intellectual bias - ingrained in teachers who for so long saw that girls underperformed and sought to correct that imbalance. Why are these teachers now so blind to the boys underperforming in their own classrooms and the potential causes of it?

:grr: :banghead:

First, compare within a career or job category and you'll find that the number's simply "77.8 cents on the dollar". In some cases the disparity is worse, in some cases better. But comparing between professions produces a fairly meaningless average.

Second, compare by age cohort. Often the decisions made wrt salaries 25 years ago, i.e., choosing to pay women less than men, keep on showing up. But if you look at those who are 1-5 years on the job, you'll see the difference is much smaller. In other words, part of the difference is fossilized history.

Third, compare by length of time on the job. Not just days, but also hours. Often you'll find that men put in more hours then women for the same job, or don't take off as much time. In my wife's dept. the childless women make more than those with children because children acted as a drag on their careers--they took off time to be with them, they nursed them when sick, they took maternity leave and spent it being maternal. Men (in other depts. that I've been exposed to) that took paternity leave usually got a book or a few articles out of it, not a child. Even when they're home taking care of a sick child, they tend not to sit and keep vigil, but try to be in a different room "being productive."

Fourth, compare risk taking and sheet competitiveness. You may be docked for taking a risk, but it's also likely to get you promoted (in the absence of a major cock-up). Same for competitiveness.

There are a few other factors, but when you're done with them all there's still a discrepancy, men still get paid a bit more than women. But the difference is a few, not 25, percentage points.

People using the number 77 % are just decieving.

To me the best example is public school teaching. I was a teacher on the salary committee for a few years. We all got paid on a salary schedule. There was nothing about it that had anything to do with men or women. A 18 year veteran with a master's got X dollars per year.

Therefore, 47 year old women and men with bachelor's degrees made the same income.

Right?

Wrong.

At every age we checked men made more than women. Why? It turns out the 47 year old man had a bit more experience on average than the 47 year old woman. Some of the women took time off to raise kids. Maybe some men too, but not as many as women.

But even when we factored in experience, it turned out the 53 year old man with 27 years experience also made more money than the 53 year old woman with 27 years experience. Why? The man was more likely to coach, do extra bus duty, teach summer school, teach the extra class, come in Saturday for suspension monitoring. All those little extras that pick up extra bucks were more likely to be done by the man than woman?

Why? Often the woman wanted to get home so she was home when the kids got home.

Anyway, just like you said igel, when you factor out the differences that have nothing to do with discrimination, you still get a discrepency in pay, but it's very small. No where near the 77 %.

are less dangerous and have greater nonmonetary reward.

Ever met a teacher who said "Yeah, working with kids sucks but where else can I make $40,000 a year!"

http://www.warrenfarrell.com/articles.php?id=11

Great source there, lumberjack. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/fathers/farrell2.htm

On second thought, I'd rather not. :scared:

fail any good UA tests lately?

Gonna respond to what I posted about Farrell or just going to pretend it never happened?

I'm not going to get sidetracked from the essential issue you want to avoid.

Warren Farrell is a scumbag who thinks men raping their daughters is okay. And you link to him.

to the official storyline that we as progressive men, must not deviate from. Its been tiring for me to even read this exchange, and feel a little guilty for sitting on the sidelines, but I'm old and haven't got the amount of patience I used to for arguing with those whose minds are made up. Unlike some of your detractors here, I've actually read Warren Farrell ( beyond, "I just googled him and he's a horrible sexist pig ...") Farrell says a lot of stuff that I've found to be anywhere from stupid to offensive, but for every one of those, he's said 10 or 20 things that are right on the money and make utter sense to anyone with an open mind. And as I said, my days of arguing with those not in possession of open minds ( usually , but unfortunately not exclusively, meaning republicans) have come to an end. But I wanted to let you know , that you're not alone here. There's also an on line columnist named Glenn Sacks who ( while I have also vehemently disagreed with SOME things he's written) has made similar points as yours about the issue of pay re: dangerous, unpleasant working conditions,and similar to Farrell ( oops, forgot, Farrell has said some some dumb and objectionable stuff, we therefore should of course dismiss every word the guy ever wrote no matter how much sense it makes ). One of Sacks' anecdotes I remember was about some construction job he'd had, dangling high above the ground in 100 degree heat in order to provide for his family while the secretary sat in an air-conditioned office and that he goddam well be better be making a lot more than her. I thank you ,again, for your strength and perseverance this morning.

... nothing is to be gained by silence. Society won't be improved via monologue.

One of the last elements of the patriarchy to be discarded will be the cultural expectation of men's stoicism.

for you doing what I've become too weary to do.

I've become used to tilting at windmills, nice to hear I'm not the only one. :hi:

Warren Farrell has never, from what I've gathered, backed down from anything he said about incest or rape. He didn't go through with the book he was going to publish about incest because it got too incendiary and he wanted to establish himself as a 'respected' anti-feminist. But Jesus God, it's not like there aren't plenty of anti-feminists out there for you guys to quote who say essentially the same things as Farrell about pay issues and whatnot who haven't endorsed child molestation and rape. You can gloss over it by saying "oh he says stupid and offensive things sometimes". No, the Rude Pundit is stupid and offensive at times, Warren Farrell is just a scumbag.

And I'll tell you what, maybe I'll overlook what Farrell said about how it's okay to rape your children and consider some of the other stuff he says when guys like you read all of Andrea Dworkin's works with an open mind.

:rofl:

You have totally revealed yourself to be a big fat hypocrite, you realize that don't you? We're supposed to give ol' incest apologist Warren a chance because it's not fair to write a man's whole body of work off because of a few disturbing things he said but, Andrea? Oh hells no! She said that thing once about all sex being rape (at least that's what the men's rights sites tell you since you probably never read anything of hers) and that's all you need to know!

Uh huh. It's your prerogative to feel that way. Just as it's my prerogative to think Warren Farrell is a scumbag who defends child rape.

He said that it was a disservice to men everywhere, characterizing American men as pathetic and weak, and painting them as victims. One of Farrell's silliest assertions was that the names on the Vietnam war memorial were all men-and he never mentioned that women were barred from combat at the time and generally barred from military service. Farrell blames women for this instead of the powerful men that created the laws to begin with.

He also denies that 'women make 70 cents on the dollar' and '98% of the Fortune 500 CEOs are men', even though there are hard stats to back that up and he offers none to support his claims.

Farrell is doing more to perpetuate the gender divide than offering concrete solutions to address it.

And let's not forget this quote:

"Before we called it date rape, we called it a good time." :wtf:

And pretty disgusting that so-called "progressives" on DU are quoting a pig like him. :puke:

We actually have recruiting efforts to get men.

:eyes:

Glad you learned something in college besides "Brownies... not to be eaten before a drug test."

Oh, wait.

I mean, if you do, then, that's something serious that you need to bring up with your counselor.

But I am capable of seeing inequality.

A quick read through this thread makes the answer to the OP's question apparent.

Men don't go to college because society (as typified by the DU microcosm) thinks women should go instead. This is to our society's detriment because it is in no one's interest to ensure a generation of ignorant men.

Disparate impact.

It was never really a valid argument, just a common and politically acceptable one. Now it's not so much refuted as adduced in fewer and fewer contexts, although I have seen it dismissed as meaningless (only when the "wrong" group is disparately impacted, of course--I've even seen claims that women or some ethnic group is physiologically predisposed to do better, in other words the unacceptable arguments from the '50s and '60s now made politically correct because they yield the "correct" result).

Why do I think it's so? Lots of reasons. Some deal with how we're raised and expectations in K-12, others deal with expectations faculty have of men (vs. women) in college. Men also have different expectations of themselves, and biology may well enter into it--men's brains mature a bit later and so they have trouble not acting on their inhibitions and finishign school, instead going for the easy and at the time better paying jobs.

In some cases there are holdover sexist males from antiquity, but I've personally run into far more feminist warriors out to bust men's balls just because the men are privileged. Continuing with different expectations, I've seen lots of support mechanisms for women, both peer groups and institutional mechanisms to assist and encourage women. Whenever any men have tried to get this kind of group going they're knocked for it, even though between the two cohorts, men and women, the women have better acceptance to college, better grades, are more numerous, and have higher graduation rates *and* lower times to degree. In other words, the ones who are doing better get help, those who are doing worse are ridiculed and called "oppressors" when they try to organize for help. Attitudes are 30 years out of date, in other words, and 19-year-old males are being lumped in with 60-year-old males.

Then there are some institutional reasons. For example, most of the women in a college will be in specific departments, all of which have a low cost per student and where the facilities to accommodate more students can be easily and quickly expanded. English, sociology, psychology, history, etc. When you get to departments where the cost per student is high and where facilities are difficult to come by, you get closer to 50-50 or even some male dominated departments. Science, engineering.

It's also likely that the types of jobs men and women get assist or hinder. If you're working 9-5 as a secretary, you can finish your degree at night. If you're working construction or some such job you're less likely to have the stamina to sit through class. Esp. if the secretary is going for a degree in English or poli-sci and the man is finishing a degree in EE (not that the subject matter is crucial to the argument).

I've also seen the looks that men get when they are the stay-at-home dads or students while supported by their wives. It's hard on their psyches, the women tend not to be as happy, and peers look at it as not per the norm. So when a woman is thinking of quitting her job and returning to school she'll feel encouraged, by and large; when a man is thinking of quitting his job and returning to school he'll feel discouraged, on average. Small numbers in this group, but probably breaking decisively for one sex.

I'm gonna get flamed royally for this but I'm going to say it anyway: I have personally observed sooooo many teenaged and young adult males whose parents coddle them, give them no responsibilities, and make excuses for them ("He's got ADHD!") it is sickening. They loll about the house playing on the computer all day, with no responsibilities or expectations placed on them. And now that, duh, there are more girls going to college and getting ahead in the world it's OMGZ A CRISIS!!1! Well what the fuck did you expect would happen, moms and dads, when you bought into all that "boys will be boys" horseshit and failed to instill self-discipline in your sons? And don't give me crap about how "oh but the schools make the poor boys sit at a desk all day and they get so bored cuz they have all that testosterone and energy!!" Really? So how is it that those same boys can sit (practically immobile) in front of their Game Boys playing the same fucking game for 17 hours in a row? I am not exaggerating, BTW, I can literally count eight young men off the top of my head, the sons of friends and acquaintances, who fit the aforementioned description and (maybe) one young woman.

Face it, no one was concerned about the plight of girls back when the majority of college students were boys. The only "crisis" facing boys in America is the fact that so many of the adults around them have their heads up their asses.

See, this is the thing which most bothers me about DU.

Fill in the blank in the following sentence:
"_____________ loll about the house playing on the computer all day, with no responsibilities or expectations placed on them."

If you filled in the blank with any collective noun other than "men" or "boys" a tombstone will promptly follow.

"Whew, I was scared for a moment that you would show bigotry against someone we like."

You know what? A lot of boys are failing because their PARENTS are fucking useless. You can cry and piss and moan about how meeeeeeeaan it is to point that out all you want but it's the truth.

All that feminist rhetoric from the 60s that all women are victims and all men oppressors. And you citing Andrea Dworkin just proves how anti-male you truly are.

Since we're betting about what each of us believe. :shrug:

But those anecdotes would not necessarily be representative of the total female population.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourview/2007/06/women_hold_more_degrees_earn_l.html

While more Canadian women hold university degrees than men, they continue to earn less money.

Statistics Canada released figures Tuesday showing that between 1991 and 2001, the proportion women aged 25 to 29 holding a university degree rose by more than half from 21 per cent to 34 per cent. During the same period, the number of young men holding a degree increased at a considerably slower pace, to 21 per cent from 16 per cent


-----------

So it isn't only a US phenomena.

is an education degree and teaching doesn't pay as much as most other college degreed jobs?

Even more for higher degrees, do you think the reason women with master's degrees get paid less than men with master's degrees might be that the overwhelmingly most common master's degree earned by women is the MA in Curriculum and Instruction, earned by almost all classroom school teachers. It earns the average teacher an extra $ 3,000 a year on the salary schedule.

That is very different than most advanced degrees that people besides teachers earn.

I'm not trying to downgrade teachers. My wife and I were both teachers and we both got our MA degrees. Comparing the work we did for those advanced degrees and the expertise accumulated by them is not comparable to the work my brother did for his advanced degree in engineering.

good jobs with benefits etc. straight out of high school in industry (petrochemical etc.). If you are a woman it is college or pink collar which is basically minimum wage.

Women get PhDs but end up being "lecturers" (teachers)a lot of the time. Men are still favored to get tenure.

Plenty of the guys I knew decided to go trade schools, or go work on the rigs, after finishing high school. They are now making about three or four times what I make with my shitty ass masters degree in biology.

Let's face it.....college hardly means shit anymore. Maybe I'm just cynical and angry, but it doesn't seem to matter if you bust your ass in school anymore. You end up with a job that pays little more than one you would have if you just worked out of high school, plus you end up with a huge debt weighing you down so you have to accept whatever shitty job you are offered.

high with respect to job satisfaction.

I've never seen a study which suggests that working in the weather, high in the air or in unsanitary conditions is positively correlated with job satisfaction.

But, personally, I found building my own house, and sawing lumber to be much more fulfilling than making good money as a middle-manager was.

... not that mid management is a plausible option in this economy.

and now make 700, 800 a day working in the oil fields. started underwater welding and went from there to nuclear power plants. now he is supervisor with certs making sure people do right. he could get more with a degree in his field and connections but at that money, why?

and i wonder with my boys getting a degree what profession will be available for a good living wage.

I have a B.A. in biology that I earned THIRTY YEARS AGO, and I'm female.
Did I ever get a job with it? Hell no.

I also earned a Juris Doctor, which took me five years, and I'm female.
Did I ever get a job with it? Hell no.

The 2 year degree in court reporting? Only career I ever had. Highly paid but the stress of nasty horrible lawyers and judges was too much - I've had high blood pressure for twenty years now, and had to stop working a long time ago.

College doesn't mean shit. Fortunately, I graduated without crushing student loans. My education is paid for. :shrug:

I work at an non-profit organization promoting technology in K-12 education. There are some real interesting things going on with the college ratios. Everyone is concerned and a bit surprised about the increasing dominance of females in college. One really odd fact is that although young women have recently begun testing higher in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) and even shrinking the degree gap in those areas, there is almost no correlation in careers pursued and even some erosion according to some early reports.

In other words, women are excelling in the sciences as never before, but are avoiding science careers. Don't know why.

... and positive work/life balance.

Your anecdote could explain why we educate more scientists and engineers than ever before yet businesses report a shortage.

Progress, but not enough.

This is the fine print in the back of the AAUW study. 95% won't stir up the troops like "70 cents on the dollar" does.

Facts? overrated, when you can elicit more sympathy with distortions.

http://www.aauw.org/research/upload/behindPayGap.pdf

It sounds as though "close enough" works for you. It does not for me. Especially not after a long history of discrimination.

It isn't necessary to prevent the last few men from going to college.

Other than themselves and perhaps their overindulgent parents?

:toast:

;-)