A glance at the current issue of Gender & Society: The stalling of gender diversity in college majors
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Thursday, October 26, 2006
by Jason M. Breslow
Starting in the 1970s, college majors became less divided by gender, as women increasingly entered disciplines traditionally dominated by men, but progress toward a balance between the sexes has stalled in recent years, say Paula England, a sociology professor at Stanford University, and Su Li, an assistant professor of sociology at Wichita State University.
In a recent study, Ms. England and Ms. Li analyzed data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics from 1971 to 2002 of students in 225 academic fields. Beyond strong gains in the share of bachelor's degrees that women earned -- 58 percent in 2002, compared with 44 percent in 1971 -- the authors found a substantial decrease in "gender segregation" of college majors.
Before 1971, they write, women often saw their degree options confined to traditional fields like nursing or teaching. Especially in the first half of the period studied, the authors write, "successive cohorts of women changed their field choices quite dramatically toward fields dominated by men ... especially into business-related fields." They further note that "virtually none of the desegregation came from more men choosing fields traditional for women in significantly greater numbers."
Desegregation of the academy by gender stalled beginning in the latter half of the period studied, say Ms. England and Ms. Li. That stall resulted from several factors. As the authors explain, "women's probabilities of choosing the historically male-dominated majors failed to continue their upward trek, and their probabilities of choosing fields traditional for women, ... which had been falling, stopped their fall." Desegregation was also stalled, they write, "by the fact that, as fields feminized, men eschewed the fields."
In explaining this last finding, Ms. England and Ms. Li say "any field associated with women has been culturally devalued, so that women have more to gain than men in status and rewards from majoring in fields nontraditional for their gender." Such devaluation also explains the finding that "feminization of fields deters men from entering," the authors add.
The article, "Desegregation Stalled: The Changing Gender Composition of College Majors, 1971-2002," is temporarily available free through Sage Publications.
