What's going on here? More girls than boys get into colleges these days. In public education, when they have selective schools that are geared towards college-bound students, girls are more represented three to one.
Is sexism something of the past? Something only represented in the percentages of high salaried CEOs? With traditional 'service jobs' replacing traditionally male production jobs, is this equation changing? As a mother of boys, getting increasinly worried about my own childrens' chances of having a place in an affordable college, these issues are a concern to me. I'm not really sure what to do with these statistics, but put them out to you and see if you can come up with an answer.
Harvard has more girls than boys enrolled today.
Today, women make up 57 percent of undergraduates, and the gap is projected to reach 60/40 in the next few years. This year, even manly Harvard admitted more girls than boys to its freshman class.
http://www.thenation.com/...
In all colleges, the gap of boys vs girls is also strong, again at a 60 - 40 split
http://www.usatoday.com/...
This trend continues down to the grade schools, where this question was broght up on this blog.
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/...
However, the racial imbalance of CPS selective enrollment high schools is not the only disparity that is raising alarm among educators and parents. Should we be equally upset (or outraged) about the gender imbalance that also currently exists in these selective enrollment schools? There are 1,596 girls in the eight selective enrollment high schools as compared to only 933 boys. Thirty-one percent of all female applicants were accepted in 2005 as compared to only 23 percent of male applicants. All but one of the selective enrollment schools maintain at
least a 60 percent/40 percent female-to-male student body ratio. At Brooks College Prep, the female students constitute almost 70 percent of student body.
There have been a lot of diaries on the dailykos about sexism. When we talk about income disparity, where is it? When we average incomes, and come up with women earning 80 cents to the man's dollar, is this mostly at the top-earning level? This seems to be the case.
The labor statistics at nationmaster (there is no date for this website and I know nothing of its source) show unemployment roughly the same between women and men. Long term unemployment is slightly higher for men than women.
There are more men working in agriculture and more women working in the service industry, but it's a majority for both genders. men are still in the industrial sector at a higher rate than females, but the difference is not that big - 30% to 12 %. The disparity seems to come from the highly professional jobs, such as doctors, where women are at 23%. Professional women are at 54% (a slight majority), but it seems most of these are in the service industry. Here's the link :
http://www.nationmaster.com/...
Again, I'm writing this not to make an argument, but to see other people's take on this trend we're seeing in education. Boys seem to be falling behind. What does this mean for equality?