Nancy Gibb's essay in the most recent Time Magazine discusses the fact that women are being rejected by some private colleges because the schools want to keep their male to female ratio more equal. Approximately 58% of undergraduates nationwide are female, and this number could grow to 60% within a few years. As a result, colleges have begun to target less accomplished men to make sure their gender ratios are more equal. This means women who are more qualified than men are being wait-listed or rejected from some schools.
It's amazing to me that historically women have had so many barriers to education, and yet within three decades of the women's movement, the tide has turned. I wonder if all those who scoffed at women's education in the past could have fathomed that women would be denied access to education because they're too accomplished and are outshining the men? And it's also amazing that the high enrollment of women isn't heralded as an amazing accomplishment by women, but an indicator that men aren't achieving as much as they could. I feel that if the tables were turned, and male enrollment continued to be higher than women's three decades after the women's movement, some would use this to indicate that men were just smarter than women. Funny how when it's the other way around, it means that we need to change the system so males can succeed.
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You know what would be interesting? If a university's admissions department was willing to conduct a study for one year that removed a person's name from the application and assigned a number to the application and then removed the "check male or female" box and required that essay's were gender neutral. What would the m vs. f enrollment numbers look like if the people stamping "admitted/denied" on applications didn't know if the student was a dude or a chick? Makes me wish I was doing a PhD in feminist theory...
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