“Too Many Women Are Going to College!”
This is how male victimhood works.
There’s a male supremacist narrative out there that increasingly more women are going to college than men because of educational bias, unfair advantages, and so on. Just like every other male supremacy talking point, it’s based on a male victimhood narrative, cuz that’s how male supremacy works.
These narratives always have a grain of truth. Yes, boys are struggling in many educational contexts. Yes, a lot of programs have been implemented to encourage women in STEM and other areas. Fine. We get that. We need to address what’s going on for boys. Thanks for that grain.
But why do women gravitate towards education? First and foremost, women and non-gender binary people pursue education because there is great joy for all humans in exploring the issues and ideas we’re interested in.
But there’s another reason why girls and women pursue education.
Globally, girls and women pursue education at whatever level is available to them to gain financial and personal independence from controlling men. Education is freedom for women. Full stop.
Patriarchal power over women is counteracted by higher levels of education in every possible way. From freeing women from the need to be married, to allowing women’s ability to choose work that is meaningful and validating for them, to their increased ability to demand fair and equal pay.
And yet, when I say this some man drops in to say… “This is total crap. Every woman in college didn’t go there to get away from the controlling men in their families.” Some men say things like this because millions of us are oblivious to the larger systems and structures which advantage us. Patriarchal power and control systems that have been in place for generations? That detail goes right over our heads.
So, to be clear: A global context of systemic sexism across every aspect of women’s personal and professional lives is driving girls’ and women’s focus on education. They pursue education to whatever degree is allowed them by systems that still seek to control them.
For example: Women being introduced for the first time in business meetings will often add their level of education to their job title as part of how they introduce themselves. This is something men don’t need to do. Women do so to get men to respect them when they speak during the meeting. Additionally, women pursue education as a way to negotiate equal pay for equal work. “You aren’t hiring a women, you’re hiring a PhD.”
MRA’s and other masculinity extremists are pointing to the 57% higher college enrollment for women as proof the education system is increasingly biased against men. The implication is higher enrollment for women is something new. It is not.
From the New York Times:
Women have outnumbered men on campus since the late 1970s. The ratio of female to male undergraduates increased much more from 1970 to 1980 than from 1980 to the present. And the numbers haven’t changed much in recent decades. In 1992, 55 percent of college students were women. By 2019, the number had nudged up to 57.4 percent.
While the shift in the college gender ratio is often characterized as men “falling behind,” men are actually more likely to go to college today than they were when they were the majority, many decades ago. In 1970, 32 percent of men 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, a level that was most likely inflated by the opportunity to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. That percentage dropped to 24 percent in 1978 and then steadily grew to a stable 37 percent to 39 percent over the last decade.
Oh, did I mention the title of this article?
And finally, men have always been able to make a decent living in trades like plumbing and construction. Careers that women have traditionally been kept out of. Which goes a long way to explain the college disparity. Men choose to not go. Women have few alternative options.
Male supremacist falsehoods designed to drive men’s victimhood narratives cherry pick data and then invite boys and men to set aside self reflection, accountability for their own choices, critical thinking and cultural awareness and collapse into white and male supremacy.
My suggestion that women chose to pursue education to gain independence from controlling men simply acknowledges women’s willingness to work for their own betterment instead of blaming others for their failing to do so.
Would that MRA’s had the ability to do the same.
I have books. I would rather you have them. All books are here: http://amzn.to/3iTG69H
