Anyone on campus will tell you that there are many — maybe even too many — girls at Boston University.
But BU is not alone in that respect. Since the early 1980s, women have attended college at a higher rate than men and now outnumber men by almost 1 million on campus nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
BU spokesman Colin Riley said every school in the country is aware of the influx of young women in colleges and universities, and 20 years ago only half of high school graduates attended college. Today, that percentage has risen to two-thirds.
“That increase was disproportionately female,” he said. “Since the fall of 1985, every subsequent freshman class [at BU] has been majority female.”
Since 1995, there has been about a 3 percent increase in the number of female students, but Riley said the male-female breakdown of the university has been relatively stable over the past five years. According to the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education, women only accounted for 41 percent of college undergraduates in 1970, but today, of the 10.8 million 16- to 24-year- olds enrolled in college, 56 percent are women.
At BU, this figure is even higher — 60 percent of the student population is female.
Experts attribute the steady increase of women enrolling in college to a number of different social and economic changes.
For example, more and more women see attaining a college degree as a natural and necessary part of their lives, even if they want to get married and have children. Many women are choosing to start families later in their lives and women are choosing to be more independent by working and sharing family responsibilities with their partners, said Avis Jones-Deweever, a study director at the Institute for Women’s Policy and Research.
Also, unjust practices, such as expelling college students for becoming pregnant, used to be “commonplace” in the ’70s, said Catherine Hill, a senior research associate at American Association of University Women. But these types of policies have been abolished as other social changes, including reproductive rights and the widespread use of birth control, give women more choices. For some women, it has allowed them to plan and complete their education before starting a family.
ain’t nothing but a she thing
And while women outnumber men in college enrollment, men still lead in the workforce, although only by a slim margin. Of college-educated workers in 2004, 26.3 million were men and 25.5 million were women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A study conducted by the AAUW found that “the most dramatic changes occurred in professional programs such as medicine, law and business, where the proportion of women shot up from 9 percent in 1970 to 47 percent in 2000.” Women now earn more than 60 percent of undergraduate degrees in biology and 47 percent of undergraduate degrees in mathematics.
While women have advanced in traditionally male-dominated fields, they have maintained their dominance in teaching, nursing and secretarial work. But college degrees have been an integral part in a woman’s ability to move ahead, Hill said.
“Education has played a very critical role in expanding opportunities,” she said.
Women’s interest groups said they are pleased to see more and more young women going to college, but noted post-graduate employers need to do more to keep these educated women in the workforce by giving them flexible working hours and paying them the same salary as they pay men. And despite the steady escalation of women enrolled in college, researchers say women still face more obstacles than men once they enter the workforce.
Jean-Marie Navetta, a spokeswoman for AAUW, said the culture on campus is changing for the better, but a lot of women still lack opportunities in the workplace.
“People are sort of stopping at the sheer number [of enrolled women] and not looking below the surface,” Navetta said.
Because many women have to balance their careers with motherhood, employers often view women as dispensable workers and pay them less than men, according to a study conducted by the Institute for Women’s Policy and Research.
According to an AAUW report, economists agree there is a wage gap between men and women because women choose to work fewer hours at lower-paying jobs than men. And although discrimination against women in the workplace has declined over the past three decades, the study found it is still a factor in setting wages.
Massachusetts has more college-educated women than any other state in the country, according to AAUW’s website, but it also has the country’s 29th-highest wage gap between college-educated men and women.
“Every young woman is being treated as a potential mother,” Hill said. She said “If you’re a mother, you can’t really be a star,” but noted that employers do not treat men differently for being potential fathers.
And this becomes evident as soon as young women begin their careers. One year after graduating from college, women in 2001 earned about 83 percent — or $6,800 — less than men, Hill said.
While men who do not attend college can turn to other lucrative job opportunities in fields such as construction and manufacturing, women without degrees are limited to child care and earn some of the lowest wages, according to Hill.
A “stagnant place”
Although college has become part of the “natural evolution” of a woman’s life, stringent workplace policies make it difficult for women to pursue careers and have a family life simultaneously, Jones-Deweever said.
“Women are high achievers throughout the education process,” she said. “They obviously have the intellectual ability to be very successful, [but] our corporations are not allowing women to maximize their dual responsibilities of being an employee and being a mother.”
Jones-Deweever said employers need to make the workplace more family-friendly by providing benefits such as paid medical leave, more flexible work schedules and more child care options.
Because of the challenges working mothers face, many women choose to work part-time or end their careers altogether when they have children, but researchers agreed that a college education is never wasted because studies indicate that college-educated women raise smarter children, Jones-Deweever said.
According to Hill, women will continue to gain in education, but will not be allowed to reach their full potential until employers make efforts to accommodate them.
“Women have made enormous gains,” she said. “Now the question is making those gains translate into economic equities. … We’ve reached a stagnant point.”