Feminist Hypocrisy
From today's NY Times:"Women have represented about 57% of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education (see chart above for BA degrees, data here). Researchers there cite several reasons: women tend to have higher grades; men tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers; and female enrollment skews higher among older students, low-income students, and black and Hispanic students."
From the article "Feminists Still Defending Radical Gender Inequality in Education":
"There was a time, of course, when feminists railed against gender inequality in a wide variety of areas, and rightly so. What possible reason could there be for inequalities based on sex in education, the workplace, academia, government, etc.? And they had a good point; there was no legitimate reason.
But the instant the shoe gets onto the other foot, the principle of gender equality vanishes from feminist discourse. Funny how that happens. Indeed, when it comes to the radical gender equality in education, feminists tie themselves in rhetorical knots justifying the very thing they were screaming about just 30 years ago.
Once feminists pretended to care about gender equality, but when that principle could conceivably benefit men, all of a sudden they’re not. There’s a word for that – hypocrisy."
8 Comments:
So, are you calling for affirmative action for men?
Do you think that men are less likely than women to obtain a diploma because of sudden, wide-spread prejudice? Or are they given every opportunity to succeed, but drop out anyway?
The numbers on gender inequality in higher education have to interpreted along with the numbers on the value of education. There is some debate on exactly how valueable a college education is:
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/questioning-the-return-on-educational-investment/.
If a college degree isn't worth the debt, maybe males are "smarter" for staying away from college. Or, maybe males can make more money than women without a degree. Or, ... there are a lot of possibilities, but the value of a degree must be ascertained and consedered when trying to understand the situation.
Actually based upon comments by admissions directorys we already have affirmative action for men. The directors want to have a "reasonable" gender ratio and so tend to favor men a bit. Recall the discussion about small colleges starting football programs as a way of getting men to come as well.
Historically of course men could do ok without a degree until manufacturing got automated.
Now it would be interesting to take these figures and normalize out the prison population or those who have ever been convicted. Given that this is larger in men than women for various reasons, it would move the needle a couple of percent.
Once you have a criminal conviction a college education is likley not worth it because you can't get a job that would use such an education. Checking a bit the odd of being incarcerated in the age group for men vary from 1 in 6 for blacks to 1 in 17 for whites, while for women they are 1/7 the rate of men. Taking 1 in 12 as an average rate thats 8% for men and 1% for women. So it looks like this difference might account for 1/2 of the difference in graduation rates (I could not find an easy site for conviction rates which would be better than incareration rates) In any case it does look like the increased crime rate among men can explain a good part of the difference.
Women also complained about the all male colleges and forced them all to go coed; but the all women colleges still exist. Double standard? But women aren't the only ones who are hypocritical. Blacks complain about inequality in sports (e.g., professional baseball) but for some reason aren't upset by the disproportionate number of blacks in basketball and football.
Perhaps it would be better to look at the ratios among the various disciplines.
I suspect there is a female inflation of the statistics in fields that offer low-grade investments as careers... if personal observations are an indicator.
Universities may be liberal in their politics, but a definitely market driven in the diplomas that are offered... a market in everything.
Imagine that. People with an entitlement mentality being hypocritical. Who would have ever guessed?
Interesting comments. I long for a day when all women respect themselves. When all women throughout out planet claim their rightful place as partners in building human society. Let go of the zipper girls and refuse to apologize, we have a planet to save.
Gender equality, there is no such thing as equality between men and women. Let's stop this foolish attempt to place round pegs into square holes. How about we deal with each other as human beings with competing needs. A little cooperation goes a long way.
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