University
Gender Gap Examined
The
increasing number of children growing up in
single-parent homes – usually with their mother – may be one reason why
women
now outnumber men on Canada’s university campuses, the Victoria Times
Colonist reported last week, citing Statistics
Canada data.
Being
raised without a male role model, wrote
researchers Marc Frenette and Klarka Zeman, “may have benefited girls
more than
boys if one believes that mothers have a greater influence on girls
than on
boys.”
As
the study’s title – Why Most
University Students Are Women – suggests, it
seeks
to understand why in 2003, 39 per cent of 19-year-old females attended
university, compared to only 26 per cent of males, and why in 2004-05,
58 per
cent of university students were women.
That
is a clear reversal from 1971, when 68 per
cent of university graduates aged 25 to 29 were male.
But
the changing face of the family is just one
possible explanation the authors present for what is widely described
as the
“feminization of education.”
Other possible reasons cited include the finding that most parents seem to have greater confidence in their daughters completing university compared to their sons, and the declining proportion of male high school teachers in recent years.
