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April 20, 2010 in Nation/World
Census says women equal to men in advanced degrees
WASHINGTON — Women are now just as likely as men to have completed college and to hold an advanced degree, part of an accelerating trend of educational gains that have shielded women from recent job losses. Yet they continue to lag behind men in pay.
Among adults 25 and older, 29 percent of women in the U.S. have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 30 percent of men, according to 2009 census figures released Tuesday. Measured by raw numbers, women already surpass men in undergraduate degrees by roughly 1.2 million.
Women also have drawn even with men in holding advanced degrees. Women represented roughly half of those in the U.S. with a master’s degree or higher, due largely to years of steady increases in women opting to pursue a medical or law degree.
At current rates, women could pass men in total advanced degrees this year, even though they still trail significantly in several categories such as business, science and engineering.
“It won’t be long before women dominate higher education and every degree level up to Ph.D.,” said Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan-Flint who is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. “They are getting the skills that will protect them from future downturns.”
While young women have been exceeding men in college enrollment since the early 1980s, the educational gains have now progressively spread upward to older age groups. That could have wide ramifications in the workplace: more working mothers, increased child-care needs and a greater focus on pay disparities among them.
Women with full-time jobs now have weekly earnings equal to 80.2 percent of what men earn, up slightly from 2008 but lower than a high of 81 percent in 2005.
“I don’t know if we can be heartened by the educational gains, because it is persistent wage discrimination that is driving women to get a higher education,” said Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. “As more women enter the workplace, I think they will realize the unfairness of the situation they’re experiencing and demand change.”
Women outnumber men in the U.S. — among adults 25 and older, 103 million are women, 96 million are men.
And women now represent a majority in the nation’s work force. They have consistently outpaced men in employment rates in the current economic downturn that some researchers are now dubbing a “man-cession.” The main reason is that the male-dominated construction and manufacturing industries, which require less schooling, shed millions of jobs after the housing bust.
Still, despite recent gains, women’s advantage in the work force is expected to be temporary as job losses spread to other sectors, such as state and local government, where women are more highly represented. Some men are also returning to school for degrees in female-dominated industries such as nursing and teaching, which tend to fare better during recessions.
Unemployment for men now stands at 10.7 percent compared with 8.6 percent for women. That 2.1 percentage point gap is down from a record of 2.7 in August but remains far higher than in the previous three recessions, when women were almost as likely as men to be out of work.
The findings are the latest to highlight a shift of traditional roles of the sexes, caused partly by massive job losses in the Great Recession. The effects have included a growing number of working moms who are the sole breadwinners in their families, declining births and small increases in stay-at-home dads.
Other census findings:
—The share of women who hold an advanced degree has doubled to 10.1 percent from 5 percent in 1980. In 1960, the share was 1.7 percent.
—Eighty-seven percent of adults have a high school diploma or more. A higher proportion of women (87 percent) than men (86 percent) have at least a high school education, a reversal that first appeared in 2000.
—Broken down by race, more than half, or 53 percent, of Asians have a bachelor’s degree or higher. That’s compared with 33 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 19 percent for blacks and 13 percent for Hispanics.
The shifts come as Congress considers legislation that would make it easier for women to file wage discrimination lawsuits and empower the government to collect payroll data from private corporations. The bill passed the House last year, but has stalled in the Senate.
Jane Henrici, a study director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said continued efforts are needed to ensure that women can compete for jobs on an equal footing, such as flexible work policies involving sick-day and onsite child-care as well as training for future green jobs.
“One of the things that concerns us is why more women are not going into higher-paying jobs given their higher levels of education,” she said. “Some of it is choice, but some of it is discouragement.”
© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Obama honors Medal of Freedom recipients as heroes 
edmitch on April 20 at 11:20 a.m.
I guess this is why our school district has “girls only” special programs after school to encourage young women to go on to college because of how under-represented girls are in college programs?
Oh wait, turns out there are more women than men in college.
I’m looking at a data table that estimates 57.4% of Bachelor degree graduates in 2010 will be women, 60.3% of the Master’s degree graduates, 49.5% of the Professional degree graduates, and 51.6% of Doctorates will be awarded to women.
Take a look at your local districts’ “honor roll”. Chances are girls outnumber boys by 3 or 2 to 1.
Why are schools failing the needs of boys?
Too bad they will be yelled at as sexist if they ran “boys only” special programs after school to encourage young men to go on to college.
deat3098 on April 20 at 12:31 p.m.
The reason why I think an undergraduate degree is worthless these days is because more women have been earning them.
Men still earn more than women. A man running heavy equipment, who doesnt have a degree, earns more than a woman who is a social worker or similar occupation, who does have a degree.
Megan_B on April 20 at 1:48 p.m.
“The reason why I think an undergraduate degree is worthless these days is because more women have been earning them. ”
Please God, in the next 50 years (or preferably less) let these medieval sexist statements fade away into the history books.
And as for school boys being left behind, it has a lot to do with culture here in the U.S. Being smart isn’t generally seen as “cool” among young school-age boys, while it is accepted for girls. Boys will be considered “nerds” or associated with homophobic sexual slurs. Schools need to be implementing programs that help curb this culture, in addition to parents and communities doing their fair share.
zelda on April 20 at 3:17 p.m.
The fields of study are what matters. “…they still trail significantly in several categories such as business, science and engineering.” Scarcity + demand drives up wages. You’re not going to make $75,000 as a starting salary with a B.A. in psychology but you can in chemical engineering.
Women, for various reasons, persist in getting degress in low-barrier-to-entry fields or pursue careers with what they see as glamor potential, e.g. “I want to be an anchor,” where the odds of landing a job on national TV are astronomical.
One thing I have to say is that among the women in TV land in Spokane, Kris Crocker stands out because of her Forecast Focus segment. She delves into the science and doesn’t do the whole “Aw, shucks, I’m such a nerd” number while the anchor team rolls their eyes. She is a good role model for women in meteorology and the sciences. She does her reports in a straightforward, friendly and understandable way.
A couple of weeks ago KREM’s Tom Sherry apologized for presenting some scientific information and the anchor team just dug in, saying what a bore he was at parties, stifling laughs and putting as much distance as possible between themselves and uncool stuff like barometric pressure.
We could do a lot better by women and for American society if people who know math and science felt they didn’t have to apologize for being someone who actually paid attention in class.
Megan_B on April 20 at 3:44 p.m.
“Women, for various reasons, persist in getting degress in low-barrier-to-entry fields or pursue careers with what they see as glamor potential…”
Yeah, and I don’t know any men who pursue becoming rock stars. Riiiight….
It makes more sense to conclude that women peruse careers that are more emotionally fulfilling, considering that we are the more sensitive gender. Or, women are less encouraged to partake in the careers that are male-dominated. Same could be said for the opposite, though I am seeing more and more male hair-dressers (and no, not all of them are homosexuals.)
Megan_B on April 20 at 3:45 p.m.
*pursue
zelda on April 20 at 4:48 p.m.
I see your point, M, but with either sex, the odds of ending up with a job as a pro athlete, rock star, movie/TV star or network anchor are very long. But that would be a discussion of statistics and that’s geeky.
Non-science jobs can be seen as more emotionally fulfilling, but since everyone has feelings, it’s a low hurdle to be qualified. I can think of a lot of ways that jobs in math and science help humanity and make the world a better place. That, too, meets an emotional need.
misjustice on April 20 at 9:41 p.m.
One reason that women have faired better during the recession is that we are paid less than a man…earning “80.2 percent of what men earn.”
Megan_B on April 22 at 7:49 a.m.
…and we’re better workers.
hahahahahahahahaha
jk ;-)