Each Wednesday, Taylor Felts and Jacob Broyles will tackle two sides of a contentious issue facing the Transy community. This week, we ask the question “Does the fact that 57% of the student population is female pose a feminist issue for Transy?” Taylor Felts argues that there is not a feminist issue, and that there are more useful measures of feminism on campus.
Read Jacob Broyles arguing the opposite here.
Transy’s student ratio undoubtedly boasts more women than men. However, as to whether this is an area requiring rectification, much less a feminist issue, I would have to say no. All that one must do to ascertain that this is true is to take a look at the student body. One definition of feminism is that it is “the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.” Are women at Transy not the equals of their male peers politically and socially? (As for economically— as most here are receiving moderate to considerable stipends from their families, we’ll omit that one from discussion.)
That answer is undoubtedly yes; there is no issue with feminine attendance. If anything, this evidenced reversal of the college gender gap is to be celebrated. In 1960, for every female graduating a four year college there were 1.6 men. However, data from the US Federal Education Department in the fall of 2014 showed that women constituted 55 percent of undergrads at four year colleges. Here at Transy, that is certainly the case, and no doubt this marks a commendable achievement in regard to the representation of women within institutions of furthered learning. Clearly, women in the United States, much less at Transy, are becoming more and more prolific on college campuses. But I suffer confusion in regard to how this becomes a feminist issue.
No doubt, for many women (and men) around the world, going to college is still largely unavailable, but here—at home—at Transy, there are plenty of women receiving degrees. The real issue with the disparity in Transy’s student body ratio is that there are 14 percent less men represented, and this is only a microcosm of what’s happening on a national scale. In the 2009-2010 academic year, women received a staggering 57.4% of all bachelor degrees in the US. Given this, there are clearly fewer men earning degrees from colleges and universities, and this would be a feminist issue, except that current study does not give clear causation for the reversal phenomenon, save our society’s stringent gender assumptions that dictate what men and women do and do not. It could be that these assumptions are what hinder men from applying for traditional “female” occupations, while females are simultaneously so relatively liberated as they are able to enjoy the possibility of engaging in a traditionally “masculine” field.
So should this be a feminist issue? Not yet. Why? We have to consider the history or college enrollment. Women and men only began attending colleges and universities in equal numbers in the 1980’s. This equity was a long time coming—150 years after Oberlin College was chartered in 1833 (Oberlin was the first college in the United States to admit women). Also of note concerning Oberlin: even though women were admitted to the university in 1833, they were not admitted to the standard baccalaureate program until 1837, instead recieving diplomas from the “Ladies Course,” where overwhelming emphasis was upon the arts of domesticity. It should also be considered that the first university in the United States (Harvard) was chartered in 1636; so if women did not begin to catch up to men until the 1980’s, not only were they were laughably outnumbered across campuses for 150 years, they were denied higher education for a period of almost 200 years before that. With this in mind, a small disparity favoring women now looks minuscule in comparison to the historical enrollment gap.
While the aims of feminism are, in fact, to promulgate equality for both sexes, this is not the most pressing issue. After almost 350 years of landmark struggle, first to be allowed within a college, and later to be equally represented alongside men, if a few decades later we’re seeing a five to ten percent disparity between men and women enrolled in US colleges, well, this is certainly to be looked into, but also certainly not as pressing as other ongoing issues of inequity within the United States. There are issues of racial and ethnic inequality and discrimination, violence against the LGBTQ community, etc that require more attention.
As for whether a feminist cry should be sounded about Transy for the lack of men on campus, I think the more important issue is whether both men and women within Transylvania feel that their environment is egalitarian. There is no specifically feminist critique that I would be able to apply to the variation in boy/girl attendance and enrollment, nor to the university as a whole. Keep in mind the goals of feminism: to eradicate inequality between men and women. We recognize the harmful potential in enforcing our society’s imposed gender norms and unfair expectations. We should not be concerned about which gender is more represented on campus. We should instead seek to bolster and respect all members of the student body—for their individualism and for their personal identity, and not the one that is assumed by society.
Head To Head: Is there a feminist issue in college enrollment? Obviously.
Each Wednesday, Taylor Felts and Jacob Broyles will tackle two sides of a contentious issue facing the Transy community. This week, we ask the question “Does the fact that 57% of the student population is female pose a feminist issue for Transy?” Jacob Broyles argues it is a feminist issue, but one that underlines the hypocrisy of modern feminism.
Read Taylor Felts arguing the opposite here.
The gender enrollment gap is not a problem that only faces Transylvania University, but instead, it is a nationwide problem. Roughly 58% of the students enrolled in college in the United States are female. Is this an issue that should concern feminists? A feminist issue is an issue that concerns feminists ideologically; what then is the ideology of feminism?
The most agreed upon definition of feminism is “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.” Due to the universal and egalitarian nature of feminism’s goals, feminists have often involved themselves in other movements, such as the anti-slavery movement over one hundred years ago and the LGBT rights movement of today. For the very same reasons that slavery and LGBT rights became feminist issues, the gender gap in college enrollment should be a feminist issue as well. This is especially true considering this inequality is gendered, and feminists tend to focus on problems concerning the opportunities afforded to men and women.
Given that the seemingly appropriate response from the feminist perspective is to be concerned with the inequality posed by the disproportionate number of women that go to college and receive a higher level education, it is worth noting that this is not a topic feminists discuss often if at all. This points to a key problem within the modern third-wave feminist movement. It shows very little concern for true equality and instead picks and chooses what groups they will concern themselves with and the groups that they won’t.
Therefore, I would posit that feminism is no longer a true equality movement, but at the very least, a women’s advocacy movement. I have no doubt in my mind that if there was a similar gap between men and women enrolled in college going the other way, it would be pointed to as an example of “The Patriarchy” systematically oppressing women. This should clearly be an issue that would fall within the realm of stated concern that feminists have, but it does not.
But is the gendered enrollment gap really a problem? When dealing with problems like these, it is important not to confuse the concepts of inequality of outcome with inequality of opportunity. Clearly, we have inequality in the outcome. Considerably more women than men are currently enrolled in college. But this is by no means the result of any sort of systemic discrimination. There is actually no evidence at all that is the case. Part of this could be attributed quite simply to the different choices men and women make after high school. Men are more likely to choose to go into the military, learn a trade, or to just go directly into the workforce full-time after high school. The case has also been made by some scholars that it is in part due to the value of college increasing for women faster than it did for men after barriers to entering the workforce broke down for women. It is a complex issue, and the experts are still working to pin down precisely what causes this gap, but none of the reasons it may exist are even truly relevant here.
In the absence of another definite explanation that accounts for the enrollment gap, the default explanation is not—or should not be—discrimination or oppression. This is another key mistake often made by feminists. Unless it is determined for a fact that it is systemic discriminatory forces that are keeping men out of higher education, there is nothing to be rectified!
A couple key points in closing— for one, the solution to historical oppression is not to over-correct in the present or future and just accept a rising gap going the other way such as the gender enrollment gap. The fact that it took so long for women to be equally represented in higher education should not be used to justify present inequality. This is a regressive and counterproductive way of looking at things, and it is certainly no legitimate reason this topic should be excluded from those considered to be feminist issues. Second, to say that having an egalitarian environment at Transy is what is important misses the point. To determine if this is a feminist issue, we must examine the process by which feminists determine what they consider feminist issues. Only then can we determine if feminists must consider the enrollment gap a feminist issue in order to remain logically and ideologically consistent.
To do this, let’s take a look at one of the most prominent and widely discussed feminist issues, the wage gap, to try and understand how feminists apply their ideology in a real-world context. The wage gap has many similarities to the enrollment gap, but with one difference: the wage gap advantages men, and the enrollment gap advantages women. It is a well-known fact that if you average the full-time earnings of all women and then compare them to that of men, women overall make roughly 76 cents for every dollar men make. There is no solid evidence whatsoever that this is the result of discrimination. In fact, the wage gap is the result of a complex combination of differences in the choices men and women make that almost entirely accounts for this disparity. Despite this, even President Obama implied in his 2014 State of the Union Address that women are not paid equally for the same work on the basis of gender even though there are already laws on the books disallowing this. The wage gap has very little, if anything, to do with a difference in the rights and opportunities afforded to men and women. But it is certainly a feminist issue.
Feminism mistakenly equates equality in outcome with equality in opportunity when making the assumption that the gender wage gap is the result of systemic discriminatory forces. Looking at Transylvania University’s enrollment rates through this dogmatic and dishonest lens, women are clearly afforded more opportunities as a result of discrimination against men in academia. So, by feminist standards, this is clearly a feminist issue.