# Women Outnumber Men in College Because of Sexism ![rw-book-cover](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1200,h_600,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb66881a-2ce7-464f-a18e-1abd6afc4207_598x351.jpeg) ## Metadata - Author:: [[Noah Berlatsky]] - Full Title:: Women Outnumber Men in College Because of Sexism - Category: #articles - URL: https://www.everythingishorrible.net/p/women-outnumber-men-in-college-because?r=3e10f&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post ## Highlights > Today, more women than men attend and graduate from college. The media, and especially the right has framed this as a problem of male abandonment and ennui. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm2tvp5qfvxe0c3ss5xxbxv)) > Some colleges have [lowered standards](https://hechingerreport.org/an-unnoticed-result-of-the-decline-of-men-in-college-its-harder-for-women-to-get-in/) for men in order to achieve gender parity in the classroom. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm2v3mf6vc69xar37a71zrz)) > The assumption driving this little moral panic is that (untrustworthy, feminist, leftist) educators, and the culture at large, are discriminating against or discouraging men from entering college. The truth, though, is that women are pushed to college because of *ongoing discrimination against women*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm2w8mjg2q5akzfw44jvby2)) ##### Women want education because they’re discriminated against > Women fell even further behind in the 80s. But then they started to make up ground. By 2010, the genders were about even, with 30% of each having college degrees. In 2021, women had surpassed men, with 39.1% of those over 25 holding a college degree compared to only 36.6% of men. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm2xj96p165ye125d4fzjj7)) > What happened is just that colleges moved somewhat towards egalitarianism, and as a result women began to see them as a desperately needed tool to balance out the rest of society’s sexism. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm2yf3saq73et6kekh84xz5)) > Women are still largely excluded—often by on-the-job harassment and employer discrimination— from the careers that provide a middle-class income without a college degree. Women are [4% of firefighters,](https://www.washingtonpost.com/gender-identity/women-firefighters-in-la-are-reporting-harassment-its-a-nationwide-problem-others-say/) only [13% of police officers](https://www.statista.com/statistics/195324/gender-distribution-of-full-time-law-enforcement-employees-in-the-us/), [14%](https://www.suretybondprofessionals.com/what-percentage-of-construction-workers-are-female/) of construction workers. They are only [1.4% of plumbers](https://absolutefix.com/blog/the-challenges-that-a-female-plumber-faces/) and [2.3% of electricians](https://datausa.io/profile/soc/electricians). Women inherit only [31%](https://www.johnson.cornell.edu/smith-family-business-initiative-at-cornell/resources/family-business-facts/) of family businesses—which indicates that even women’s parents discriminate against them when it comes to employment. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm2zd7bg0qa5gytv8qswxgm)) > There are a couple of exceptions here; flight attendants don’t necessarily require a college degree, and they are about [75% women](https://datausa.io/profile/soc/flight-attendants). Women without degrees have also traditionally dominated the secretarial field—but that’s been [changing](https://freopp.org/how-unnecessary-college-degree-requirements-hurt-the-working-class-e1812b42a2f). In 1990 only 9% of secretaries had college degrees; now it’s 33%. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm2zte7yn5gdma60gkqjn38)) ##### College is a gender equalizer > Despite these excpetion, it’s overwhelmingly men who can afford to skip college—and that’s reflected in attitudes and earnings. Men are [more likely](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/08/whats-behind-the-growing-gap-between-men-and-women-in-college-completion/) than women to say they didn’t attend college because they didn’t want to (34% to 25%). They are also, significantly, more likely to say they didn’t attend college because they didn’t need it for their career (26% to 20%.) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm30s5yfd2st3x2ham7m89p)) > Men’s sense that they need college less is born out in earnings. Researchers Oksana Leukhina and Amy Smaldone [ran](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/mar/why-women-outnumber-men-college-enrollment) the numbers and found that men without a college degree earn about $12/hour in 2015 dollars, while women make 25% less, or $9/hour. Men with an associate degree earn 22% more, but women with the same degree earn *27%* more. Men with a bachelor’s earn 62% more than those without any degree; women earn a 67% increase. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm31mdtt47hf7eq8v3k1tqn)) > But in doing so, it normalizes and whitewashes sexism *against women*. Women need college because they face *systematic discrimination across a range of careers*. Women firefighters report that sexist and racist harassment is [endemic](https://www.washingtonpost.com/gender-identity/women-firefighters-in-la-are-reporting-harassment-its-a-nationwide-problem-others-say/) in the industry. Female police officers [report](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14613557231157185) the same. So do [construction workers](https://19thnews.org/2023/07/construction-industry-women-people-of-color-discrimination/). So do [women in manufacturing](https://www.aauw.org/resources/research/factory-flaw/). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm336xm6zvchzbmr5dtsze4)) > The “different incentives” women face are misogyny and sexism. There are more women in college not because of discrimination against men, but because of discrimination against women. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm33vczm091stdb5wtfg2xq)) ##### The GOP hates college because it helps women > When the right works to [defund](https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/) public education, or denigrates four-year schools in favor of [vocational education](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-big-push-vocational-schools/story?id=53988808), or [attacks](https://www.chronicle.com/package/the-assault-on-dei) DEI programs—they aren’t doing those things because education is failing. They do those things because education is *succeeding* in providing some limited upward mobility for people at the bottom of the hierarchy. [Black people](https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/2019/12/06/college-degree-black-social-mobility/2621328001/) (of every gender) with college degrees get an important earnings boost. And women (of every race) close the gender-pay gap when they earn associate or bachelor degrees. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm34w1qsh8v16scxs448xym)) > The current right wing war on higher education is of a piece with the current right wing hand-wringing about college failing men. Conservatives want to preserve and expand (white, heteronormative) patriarchy. Colleges challenge that hierarchy—not because colleges are dens of leftist critical race theory feminist indoctrination, but because colleges give women (and other marginalized people too) a chance to gain credentials that give them options in a system rigged against them. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpm35k692eqwe2bwq1p9prj3))