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The Gender Gap in College: Implications for Understanding Today’s College Women. Prof. Linda J. Sax Graduate School of Education and Information Studies UCLA Presentation to the Women’s College Coalition November 17, 2010. Headlines.
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The Gender Gap in College: Implications for Understanding Today’s College Women Prof. Linda J. Sax Graduate School of Education and Information Studies UCLA Presentation to the Women’s College Coalition November 17, 2010
Headlines Disappearing Act: Where Have all the Men Gone? No Place Good • Washington Post, December 2005 At Colleges, Women are Leaving Men in the Dust • New York Times front page headline, July 2006 Wanted: College-Educated Male Leaders (Is That Too Much to Ask?) • Huffington Post, February 2010
Total Enrollment in Colleges and Universities Data gathered from National Center for Education Statistics, 2010
Gender Gap Most Pronounced Among Lower-income Students Source: ACE 2010 Gender Equity Report
Beyond the Enrollment Gap • What are gender differences in the characteristics of students who come to college? How has that changed over 40 years? • Do women and men experience college differently? Are there gender differences in the “impact” of college?
Entering Student Trends • “Freshman Survey” conducted by Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA • Data from 1966 to 2009 • More than 8 million students entering more than 1,000 baccalaureate institutions • Trend data combines coeducational and women’s colleges
Key Gender Differences Among First-Year College Students • Socioeconomic Background • Academic Self-Confidence and Engagement • Physical and Psychological Well-Being • Careers and Majors
Higher GPAs for Women Regardless of Study Time % Earning "A-, A, or A+" High School GPAs, by Time Spent Studying 80 70 60 Percent 50 40 Men 30 Women 20 10 0 6-10 11-15 <2 3-5 16+ Hours studied per week Source: CIRP, The Freshman Survey 2007
M W M W M W M W Student Clubs 1+ HPW Housework/Childcare 1+ HPW Volunteering 1+ HPW Studying 6+ HPW
M W M W M W M W Exercising/Sports Watching TV Partying Playing Video/ Computer Games
Career Aspirations • Continuation of long-term trends… • Education, health professions, social work (dominated by women) • Engineering, computer programming, business (dominated by men) • A shifting of the gender gap in law, medicine
Gender Differences are Evident at College Entry, But...Are there Gender Differences in the “Impact” of College?
Are there Gender Differences in the Impact of College? • Examined three categories of college outcomes: • Personality and Identity (11 measures) • Political and Social Attitudes (8 measures) • Academic Outcomes (7 measures) • Assessed how these outcomes were influenced by various aspects of college • Type of college attended • Place of residence during college • Financial situation • Characteristics of college student body • Forms of curricular and extracurricular involvement
Institutional and Student Samples *All coeducational institutions
Gender Differences in College Effects:Examples From Two Themes Theme #1: Impact of Student-Faculty Interactions for Female Students Theme #2: Salience of Family Connections for Female Students
Student-Faculty Interaction Implications for Practice • Encourage faculty to reflect on their teaching practices and out-of-class demeanor with male and female students • Use orientation and first-year seminars to develop realistic expectations among students Implications for Research • Assess the qualitative dimensions of student-faculty interactions (quality vs. quantity) • How does the nature of student-faculty interactions depend on: • Where the interactions take place (class, lab, office hours) • The academic discipline • The instructor’s gender
Connection to Family Implications for Practice • Encourage parents to “let go” of their daughters • Be wary of the technology tether • Consider the needs of women who cannot go away to college Implications for Research • Study the consequences of women’s ongoing connections to family • How does the type and frequency of student-parent communication relate to students’ personal, academic and social development during college? • How does this vary by students’ gender, race and class?
Considerations for Women’s Colleges • To what extent do these findings reflect the experiences of women at women’s colleges? • Enrollment gains for lower-income and minority women? • Persistently low math self-ratings? • Declining sense of physical health and emotional well-being? • Growing sense of stress? • Gendered perceptions of career opportunities? • Sensitivity to student-faculty interactions? • Influence of family?
