American women now earn more advanced degrees than men, according to a United States census bureau press release.
Among employed Americans 25 years and older, 37 percent of women obtained at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to only 35 percent men, according to the press release.
While women tend to fall behind in business, science and engineering, the gap between men and women has narrowed in recent years.
Census figures showed that more women enrolled in college than men in the 1980s, which coincided with an increase of women pursuing professional work instead of homemaking.
This increase has enabled women to secure jobs better than men throughout the recession and as a result, caused a shift in gender roles, with more men acting as stay-at-home dads, said Barbara Gottfried, the co-director of the Boston University Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies program.
Some reasons why women have felt compelled to pursue advanced degrees, she said, include women’s tendencies to require more credentials to compete with men and feel “excited” to have opportunities in the workforce.
“There are so many different ways to find satisfaction in life, and women were pretty much barred from most of them until relatively recently,” Gottfried said in an email. “There is perhaps very little as satisfying as self-sufficiency.”
However, many BU students said that this does not necessarily mean that gender equality has been achieved yet.
“I don’t know if women ‘need more advanced degrees’ than men, but I think many women find that graduate degrees increase their career opportunities and help them to advance in the workplace,” said Meghan Faulkner, a College of Arts and Sciences senior and a member of the Women’s Resource Center.
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student Jared Champion said he has found in his research on masculinity that shifts in gender norms are in fact challenging what society believes constitutes masculinity.
This switch in gender roles shows men acting in ways that have been “traditionally understood to be less masculine,” such as nurturing children, he said.
“There’s a certain promise,” Champion said. “It’s about women getting better jobs, but it’s always about men doing things that were not allowed. It shows a vested interest for working on tearing apart these gender norms.”
“I think this is part of changing gender roles in society, which is something that has been changing ever since women started attending college and entering the workforce in greater numbers,” Faulkner said. “I think this increase in advanced degrees among women could definitely lead to less strict gender roles, and more flexibility in child care responsibility- which I think can only be a good thing if more people are able to organize their family lives in a way they prefer and that works for them.”
While the census figures show a gain for women in the workforce, some students said they fear it might be overstated as a sign of gender equality being achieved.
“Although I am thrilled that women are now getting more Ph.D.’s than men, I hope it results in greater economic liberties and opportunities for women,” said graduate student Josh McDonald. “I worry that women will still be passed by for the high-prestige and high-paying jobs; and that statistics like these may be used as lip-service to gender equalities, while real, tangible equalities remain more elusive for women than men.”
Champion said while he acknowledges there is more to be done, this shift represents a change that will lead to a new level of understanding among generations.
“This generation and the next generations will come to understand gender in ways that are inaccessible to our grandparents,” he said.
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