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  • Career Coach: More on Gender Balance

    By Susan O'Doherty November 15, 2009 5:38 pm

    The undergraduate institution I attended went co-ed the year I matriculated. It had previously been an all-women’s college, the sister school to a nearby men’s university that began admitting women the same year.

    By the time I graduated, there were about thirty men among a student body of 2500. Some of these guys were stellar — bright, committed, enlightened, and fun to be around. Most were not. A number were unprepared for the academic and social challenges of college; a few bragged that they had transferred because “with all these chicks around it should be a piece of cake to get laid.” It was clear to us that there was a double admissions standard. We joked that the entrance exam for men consisted of the ability to sign one’s name, but we didn’t find it funny, really.

    There was one men’s dormitory. It was a beautiful old house — one of several on campus; most were reserved for honors students or those with special interests. I lived in one that was dedicated to French-speaking students. It was a privilege to live there, among well cared for antique furnishings, and we were constantly reminded that the privilege could be revoked for bad grades or bad behavior. The men, however, lived under no such strictures. After two years the furniture in their parlor had to be completely replaced, with sturdy vinyl-covered couches and chairs and utilitarian lamps, because the antiques had been wrecked, some in drunken parties and others through everyday abuse such as cigarette burns and carved initials. When they partied we could hear them clear across campus. And it was sometimes hard to maintain an atmosphere of respect in the classroom with some guy blathering on about a topic he clearly knew next to nothing about.

    Again, this wasn’t everyone. Idiocy wasn’t a requirement for admission if you were a male — it just wasn’t a dealbreaker. The “good” men were embarrassed by the others, and worked to dissociate from them. But the others dominated.

    And the question arose, again and again, Why are they doing this to us? When our “brother” college agreed, grudgingly from what we understood, to begin admitting women, they didn’t lower their admission standards. The women there kept up with their classes at least as well as the men did, despite stories of harassment and shunning. But the quality of our classroom discussions was degraded, and our college’s academic reputation was somewhat tarnished.

    Several years after I graduated, my alma mater moved to change its name from a woman’s name to two last names (officially gender neutral, but the names were famous enough so that their (white) male connotations were clear) “to reflect the changing demographics of the student body,” meaning that men weren’t applying in sufficient numbers because of the girl’s name. Alumnae back to the aughts exploded. Why is it acceptable for women to attend schools named after men, we demanded, but not vice versa? Why do they always have to be catered to?

    My school backed down — and began focusing for the first time on competitive, rather than recreational, athletics. The number of men on campus increased. The school itself is now much larger than it was in my day (“bloated,” according to one of my old professors). Academics are okay, from what I understand, though the presence of “student-athletes” on campus has shifted interest away from the arts and humanities, the college’s original strength.

    And I’m still asking the question: Why? I appreciate Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur’s explanation (in the comments section of last week’s column) that admissions departments believe that “once an elite college tips too far towards a female majority, the best female applicants will no longer consider the school because they feel there will be too much competition for dates.”

    But is this really the case? Are women, even today, willing to compromise their education for dates—and are fellow students the only fish in the pool? Men in all-male schools (think the Citadel) seem to want to keep it that way, no matter how qualified female applicants are. Do they worry about getting dates?

    What is going on here?

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Comments on Career Coach: More on Gender Balance

  • Huh?
  • Posted by anonymous on November 16, 2009 at 7:00am EST

  • I don't want to comment on the final questions because I do think that they are serious ones and I haven't thought enough about them. But the paragraphs that lead up to them are really insulting. If a man had written such stuff about how women had changed to tone or about their behavior at his previously all-male campus that had taken on females, we would be howling about sexism. I get it that you didn't like and continue not to like the fact that your alma mater went mixed --- but displaying your prejudices in this way is not particularly attractive. My own all-women's college at Oxford went mixed 30 some years ago (the year after I left) and today it is annoying how many faculty and top administrators are now male (whereas male colleges that went mixed at the same time haven't taken on nearly as many female faculty, etc) -- so I do have some perspective here.

  • How can we help boys?
  • Posted by JD on November 16, 2009 at 12:00pm EST

  • I guess I would have to say, are we asking the right questions? What is happening with boys/men and academics in our society? Can we have equality without continuing to tip the scales 1st one way and then the other?

     

    No matter what you believe the cause might be there is something going wrong educationally with boys. As I have been looking at grade schools for my young son I am continually faced with schools were there are ever widening margins of academic performance between the girls and boys. Is this the fault of the education system? Media and continued reinforcement of the slacker male image that has become popular? Lack of strong male role models in the home? I don’t know, but something is wrong.

     

    I also have to say; yes the date ration might be important from the women’s perspective. This is purely antidotal, but I am complete perplexed by the number of friends I have who would like to be married but can’t seem to find quality educated men. These are beautiful, well educated women who can’t figure out why they can’t seem to find men who are their intellectual equals. Even many of my married friends the woman is better educated than the husband and/or is the primary bread winner (not all but more than 50%). We have broken down the traditional gender roles, we can have it all, but has there been a cost to men, and possibly ourselves, in the process? I hear too many women asking where have all the good men have gone.

     

    Admissions clearly has identified a problem in the gender balance of qualified applicants. However, the college admissions office might not be the place to address the problem. The problem might be better addressed in the kindergarten or the homes absent of strong male role models.

     

    Incidentally I had the reverse experience, although not at the undergrad level. I attended a private high school that had been all male until just a few years before I attended. It was still predominantly male when I was there. I transferred there after attending an all girls school. I learned a lot from being in classes that were predominantly male, and benefited greatly from the experience. My public speaking course, where I was the only girl, stands out. I think both men and women have a great deal to learn from one another and each benefit from having the other in the classroom. However, it is all of our responsibility to ensure that when these young people get to Admission’s door they are well prepared to compete in the classroom.

  • Posted by EF on November 16, 2009 at 4:15pm EST

  • The likely answer to these question is male privilege. Which distorts whatever surveys yield bogus crap about girls privileging marriage over education when they're 18. This may be true for some but points instead to another more important issue: why must we consistently understand women's choices only in terms of the heterosexual family norm? If women perceive that an all-girl's college is less prestigious, it's because women are less prestigious. Men can get away with being assholes and abusing the educational and living spaces because of their privilege--someone will always come and clean up after them, help them out with their typing, whatever. People who lack certain privileges (gender, race, ability) have to work extra hard to even get accepted for competition in the public sphere of college and professional life. They will be more likely to appreciate opportunities that are more rare for people like them. Sexism is the answer to the gender gap in schools. Not sexism against boys, but the longstanding disproportionate institutional favoritism and the cultural expectations that boys don't need to work as hard bc they have all that privilege that will shore up their weaknesses when they grow up.

  • Being a woman comes with priviege too
  • Posted by JD on November 16, 2009 at 8:00pm EST

  • EF, I suppose that depends on how you define privilege and advantage. I have always considered being female to be an advantage and have its own set of privileges. Your own view of the world and yourself will frequently shape how you interact within that world and with others. Rather than pitting women and men against one another wouldn’t it serve us all to have a more symbiotic relationship? Women’s choices can certainly be defined in many ways not just heterosexual family norms, however, all of us are in some ways defined by our relationships. It is not only women or heterosexuals who make life choices based on the people in their life be they family or otherwise. It reminds me of that song…”if more people were for people…all people everywhere, there’d be a lot less people to worry about and a lot more people who cared”. A bit idealistic perhaps, but certainly couldn’t hurt. However, I come from a stand point of never feeling that I was held back by being a woman, and as the parent of a boy being concerned about what is the trend with men. I think it is far more complex then just chalking up to historic male privilege.

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