Two sociologists analyzed data from 1971 to 2002 on students in 225 academic fields. They found that the share of bachelor’s degrees earned by women rose from 44% at the beginning of that period to 58% at the end, but based on this report (which is the only thing I’ve read) their article, “Desegregation Stalled: The Changing Gender Composition of College Majors, 1971-2002,” strikes a pessimistic note.
Starting in the 1970s, college majors became less divided by gender, as women increasingly entered disciplines traditionally dominated by men, but progress toward a balance between the sexes has stalled in recent years, say Paula England, a sociology professor at Stanford University, and Su Li, an assistant professor of sociology at Wichita State University.
Why, you may ask, did this happen? Well, for starters:
Desegregation of the academy by gender stalled beginning in the latter half of the period studied, say Ms. England and Ms. Li. That stall resulted from several factors. As the authors explain, “women’s probabilities of choosing the historically male-dominated majors failed to continue their upward trek, and their probabilities of choosing fields traditional for women, … which had been falling, stopped their fall.” Desegregation was also stalled, they write, “by the fact that, as fields feminized, men eschewed the fields.”
But then there was this:
In explaining this last finding, Ms. England and Ms. Li say “any field associated with women has been culturally devalued, so that women have more to gain than men in status and rewards from majoring in fields nontraditional for their gender.” Such devaluation also explains the finding that “feminization of fields deters men from entering,” the authors add.
The authors clearly regard the movement of women into fields traditionally dominated by men as a Good Thing and lament that men have not moved into “women’s” fields and, worse, flee any field that becomes associated with women (much as new labels for “disadvantaged” groups are abandoned as soon as they become firmly associated with those groups: colored to Negro to black to African-American, etc.)
Their primary culprit seems to be the “cultural devaluation” of women’s work. But wait a minute. Women are no longer limited to fields such as nursing or teaching, nor are they even still being “chanelled” into those fields. Indeed, quite the opposite. Thus, by regarding the choices that women themselves now make as amounting to “stalled” “progress,” the authors themselves would seem to be contributing to that devaluation.
Devaluation of the feminine. In making predictions about change, we
draw heavily on the devaluation perspective. The central idea is that our
culture devalues women, and this leads to devaluation or stigmatization of
all things associated with women—styles of clothing, names, leisure
activities, fields of study, or jobs.2
That’s because women have cooties.
The authors should be embarrassed to present such asinine views in what is supposed to be a scholarly work.
Seems like a truism
‘as fields feminized, men eschewed the fields’
Obviously if entry is limited then every woman admitted excluded a man.
The authors avoid this point, more or less, by saying undergraduate admission is not limited and students can freely select a major and change as desired.
It is not my experience that admission itself or admission to a major is all that easy.
But that is not a crucial point anyway.
The huge rise of tuition costs and the difficulty of graduating in four years has greatly increased over the last three decades. Students aren’t as free as the study implies.
The true value of a given field must somehow be known if it is to support a contention that fields are culturally devalued by a high ratio of women.
Yet what is the true value of a field? We can know what various fields pay but that does not tell us if that pay is somehow too low or high.
Too high or low is a matter of opinion. What is ‘fair’?
The authors appear to decide what is ‘fair’ by declaring that all fields receive the same amount of education. How so? I guess equal means students go to college until they take an undergraduate degree.
The paper is moderately complex and I’m too lazy to read until I master every detail. It is solid work.
And if I misread – well, never happened before.
If 44% is a bad thing, then why is 58% a good thing?
I have noticed something (though I don’t have peer-reviewed research to back it up) that certain fields, such as women’s studies, are totally dominated by women.
I think in the interest of gender equity, some of the faculty and students in these fields should be shifted over to some overwhelmingly male fields, such as arc welding or plumbing, and men drafted to take their places.
Sounds fair to me.
John,
I believe that one of the reasons’s men avoid career fields that are dominated by women is that those fields, in an effort to be female friendly, become very male unfriendly.
An anecdotal example is speech pathology. To work in the field requires a masters degree and an intership. I have never meet a male speech pathology but have probably meet at least 50 women speech pathologist. Most of the entry level jobs are part time. Many speech pathologist job share. There is no clear career path. Many of them jump around between jobs. The same could be said for many nursing jobs, social wokers, physical therapy, occupational therapy, etc.
Part of the signaling for many female dominated career fields is that the people in those fields are not really serious about work. Compare that to litigation in the law, engineering, or surgery.
Got another great example:
Pharmaceutical Sales…20 years ago this was a male field, but it is now a female field (one major source is ex-NFL Cheerleaders), because someone figured out that most doctors were middle aged guys.
But thank God that’s not sexist. Go figure.
I am a Speech Pathologist in the public school system in California. On our staff there are usually 2 or 3 men and 40 to 50 women. There is a lot of job-sharing and part-time jobs in this profession but I don’t think that is “masculine-unfriendly”. I haven’t done job-share or taken a part-time position but that has been mostly a question of money. I had some idealistic notions about changing gender roles in the schools back when I started in the 70’s. Since then the ratio in Speech Pathology has not changed much at all, just as the ratio of men teaching at the primary levels (K through 3) hasn’t changed (if anything it seems to have gone down but I haven’t any real data to support that). I still enjoy my profession and only regret the lack of money.