Gender gap at USM: women take the lead

If you're reading this article in class or while eating in the Fresh Food Company, take a look around you. You may notice a pattern in your peers.

If you haven't noticed, there are probably more female students around you than males.

Senior sociology major Elizabeth Cadner speculated that this is a result of post-modern feminism.

"We're getting out of the house and doing things our mothers didn't do," she said.

In a 2005 article, USA Today pointed out that the gender gap in higher education was continually widening. At the time of that article, women made up 57% of the students at a Minnesota university. That year marked the first one that women earned more degrees than men at that school.

Five years later, here at USM, that gap has further widened, where females make up 61% of the student population. That's a ratio of three female students to two males.

It isn't just at USM either. In fact, this change in enrollment has not gone on under the radar of the National Center for Education Statistics.

NCES statistics on degree-granting institutions show that in 2007, 7.8 million students enrolled in higher education were male. Females, on the other hand, make up 10.4 million of the enrollees, or 74%.

Sophomore from Brookhaven, Miss., Hannah Byars, said she had not noticed the disparity.

"I had never paid attention to it before, but now that you mention it, there is a pretty big difference," Byars said. "In one of my classes there's probably 20 girls and maybe six guys," she added.

Cadner said the disparity may become more evident with time.

"In the future there'd probably be more stay-at-home dads because more women are entering the workforce," she said.

Cadner also pointed to the divorce rate as possible evidence of society's emphasis on careers and therefore education.

"Parents teach their children it's okay to get married and have a family but ensure your future with a career, too," she said. "You don't have to rely on a man."

In Mississippi specifically, women made up 79% of the new students in fall 2006. For comparison's sake, in 1970, women made up 42% of college populations.

One of the university's most obvious reactions to the change in enrollment can be found in the new Century Park residence halls. Of the four buildings that make up Century Park, only one of them houses males. Of all of the housing available to freshmen, six of the eight residence halls are inhabited by girls.

Although women continue to outnumber men in higher education, according to statistics from the U.S.Census Bureau their earnings still fall short of men's. On average, women with a bachelor's degree earned 33% less money annually than their male counterparts.

Associate professor of sociology Amy Miller said that women outnumber men in higher education across all degrees, excluding the Ph. D. Miller pointed to occupational segregation as a cause of the discrepancy in pay.

"Women tend to get degrees in fields and take jobs that make less money than [those that men do]," Miller said.

"It's not cut and dry," she said. "There are certainly women who make a lot of money, and men who make very little."