4 June 2009
Men, Women, and Higher Education
In the United States at least, people with a post-secondary degree tend to earn more than people without one. For instance, looking at the statistics for people aged 25-34 in 2007, the median annual income for high-school graduates was about $25,000, while people with an Associates (2-year) degree earned $31,000, and those with a Bachelor’s (4-year) degree earned nearly $41,000. Since earning these degrees has such a positive affect on income, it should be good news for women that, as Mark Perry recently noted in his blog, women are now receiving more post-secondary degrees than men, even at the doctoral level.
However, if you look at the situation in more detail, using the US Department of Education statistics for the 2006-2007 graduation year (for bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees), you’ll find that higher education may not be as women-dominated as the overall statistics would indicate:
- In Computer Science, women receive only about 20% to 25% of the degrees at each level.
- In Engineering, women receive only about 15% to 20% of the degrees at each level.
- In Math, women receive about 44% of the Bachelor’s degrees, 40% of Masters degrees, and 30% of Doctoral degrees.
- In the Physical Sciences, women receive about 40% of the Bachelors and Masters degrees, and 30% of Doctoral degrees.
- Women continue to receive more degrees than men at all levels in areas they have dominated since at least the early 1970s: Ethnic and Gender Studies, Communication, Education, English Language and Literature, Foreign Languages, Liberal Arts, Public Administration, Social Services, and Visual and Performing Arts.
- There has been a shift in the area of Biological Sciences from male-dominated at all levels in the 1950s to female-dominated at all levels today.
- Women continue to dominate the Health Sciences area at the bachelors and masters degree level (this has been true since the 1970s), and are also now (since the 1980s) ahead in doctoral degrees.
- In Psychology, women surpassed men at the Bachelors degree level in the late 1970s, and at the doctoral degree level in the mid 1980s.
Looking at the income statistics for men and women separately (again, in the 25-34 age group for 2007, so as to discount any left-over problems from previous decades), we can see that the median income for all women is $27,000 per year, while for men it is about $33,500, in spite of the fact that a higher percentage of women have post-secondary degrees. In fact, men in this age group with 4-year degrees are earning about $47,000, while women earn $36,000. This is likely due to the difference in the subject area of the degrees noted above — salaries for engineers are certainly higher than those for teachers.
So, I am not sure that the fact that women are earning more college degrees than men translates into anything very meaningful.
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Hmmmm. As one of the women with an advanced degree who earns even less than $27,000 a year (partly because I have decided to simplify my life, work only part-time, and volunteer more) I have a couple of comments.
While I have many times – and often resentfully – reminded male friends and colleagues of the money discrepancies even within the same profession, I would never say that my education is not meaningful to me (not remunerative, but definitely meaningful!)
It’s pretty cool that more women are becoming doctors – this means that health care in this country has the chance to become patient-centered again! I consider myself to be a feminist, so I see a certain sexism in my remarks here – but if I have no other information available than gender to help me choose, I will always prefer a woman physician to a man. Whether it’s nature or nurture or choice, women are more empathetic, they listen better, and they are much better primary care physicians than men.
If you look at the areas where women are gaining on men, they are people and natural world oriented professions. As far as I’m concerned, the more highly educated women we have working in the environmental fields and moving up in the bureaucracies, the better.
Judging success only by the salaries of individuals doesn’t allow for the influence women will continue to gain in all fields of endeavor.
Another thought – another possibility for our lower salaries is that we measure our success differently from men. Perhaps men need $$$$ in order to feel effective, whereas women are more likely to value the progress made by group effort, to see the importance of collaboration over leading, to want to have an enjoyable work/life balance. All those are worth more than money. What are we going to do with a bunch of money anyway? Spend it on cars that pollute, clothes we don’t need, shoes that hurt our feet, having more children than the planet can support.
Maybe we are exactly where we need to be…