No Map to Manhood
Published in Gender Issues, 2009.
Citation: Judith Kleinfeld,
2009. No Map to Manhood: Male and Female Mindsets Behind the College
Gender Gap, Gender Issues, 26, (3-4)
171-182.
Abstract
This study explores the basis
of the gender gap in postsecondary enrollment through qualitative interviews
with 99 high school seniors who are making decisions about college.
While individual differences occurred, female high school seniors were
far more apt to have well-developed plans to attend college based on
their views that education is a vital educational investment, that the
occupations they seek require a college education, and that they want
to make a difference to society. Male high school students evidenced
two different mindsets. Those from families whose parents had graduated
from college saw higher education just as the expected path. Those
from working class families had little knowledge of the labor market,
the likelihood of obtaining "dream jobs," and the income they would
need to live comfortable adult lives. Far more young men disliked schooling.
Both sexes have developed a stereotype of males as "lazy," a label
which covers a host of problems reducing college enrollment.
No Map to
Manhood:
Male and
Female Mindsets Behind the College Gender Gap
A
college education not only confers benefits to the individual but also
to American society. College-educated men earn more income, are less
apt to be unemployed during times of recession, and pay more taxes (Mortenson,
2006). Men with only a high school education have shown a 26 percent
decline in real income since 1973, and men without a high school diploma
have shown a 38 percent decline. Men with higher levels of education
also vote more in state and national elections, are more likely to marry,
and less likely to become involved with the criminal justice system
(Mortenson, 2006, Sum, Fogg, & Harrington, 2003). Higher educational
attainment increases the skilled labor force, labor productivity and
economic growth (Sum et al., 2003). A higher education even affects
levels of happiness. Since the 1970s, happiness has risen among college
graduates but declined among people with only a high school education
or less (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2008).
Young
women are increasingly seeking out the postsecondary education required
to seize the opportunities presented by an increasingly information-based,
globalized economy. High-paying employment in many occupations traditionally
held by men and not requiring a postsecondary education have sharply
declined (Mortenson, 2006). Between 1948 and 2005, employees in
agriculture shrank from 14.5 percent of all jobs to 1.6 percent while
manufacturing dropped from 27.2 percent to 10.5 percent. Professional
and related occupations, requiring a postsecondary education, are one
of the two occupational groups expected to add the most new jobs from
2006 to 2016 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008-09). Men, as well as
women, need to secure the higher education necessary to succeed in this
changing economy.
The
Gender Gap in Postsecondary Enrollment and Attainment
Women
have become the majority of college undergraduates and of students who
earn postsecondary degrees. Their plans for postsecondary education
are evident in high school. In a nationally representative sample
of high school sophomores, 84 percent of young women reported that they
planned to attain a college degree or above compared to just 75 percent
of males (National Center for Education Statistics, 2006). Young
women also reported more pressure from the significant figures in their
lives to go to college. Far more young women say that their fathers,
mothers, school counselors, and teachers tell them that college is the
most important thing for them to do immediately after high school (National
Center for Education Statistics, 2006). Young women are indeed more
apt to enter college right after high school (King, 2006), and such
students have higher graduation rates than students who delay postsecondary
enrollment (Horn, Cataldi & Sikora, 2005). Women are also more likely
to complete a bachelor's degree within five years of entering college
(Freeman, 2004).
Not
only has a substantial gender gap developed in the attainment of postsecondary
degrees but the problem is dramatic among the most disadvantaged groups,
Black and Hispanic men (Knapp, Kelly-Reid, Ginder, & Miller, 2007).
Among Whites in 2006, women obtained 61 percent of associate degrees;
among Blacks, women obtained 69 percent of these degrees; among Hispanics,
women obtained 62 percent of these degrees. Bachelor's degree
attainment also shows a substantial gender gap. Among Whites,
women obtained 57 percent of bachelor's degrees; among Blacks, women
obtained 66 percent of these degrees; among Hispanics, women obtained
61 percent of these degrees. Similarly, White women obtained 62 percent
of master's degrees; among Blacks, women obtained 72 percent of these
degrees; among Hispanics, women obtained 65 percent of these degrees.
Doctoral
degrees also show a growing gender gap (Snyder, Tan, & Hoffman,
2004). Among Whites, women obtained 54 percent of doctoral degrees;
among Blacks, women obtained 64 percent; among Hispanics, women obtained
56 percent. The gender gap in attaining higher degrees in mathematics
and the physical sciences, however, remains. Women in 2006, for
example, obtained only 21 percent of doctoral degrees in computer sciences
and 29 percent of degrees in both mathematics and the physical sciences
(Burelli, 2008).
For
first-professional degrees, White women obtained 53 percent; Black women
obtained 64 percent; and only Hispanic women obtained slightly fewer
than Hispanic men, 48 percent. In the prestigious, high-income fields
of law and medicine, women have almost reached parity with men in both
initial enrollments and graduates (American Bar Association, 2008; Association
of American Medical Colleges, 2008).
To summarize the college gender gap, with which this paper is principally concerned:
Among Whites, women obtained 57 percent of bachelor's degrees
Among Blacks, women obtained 66 percent of bachelor's degrees
Among Hispanics, women obtained 61 percent of bachelor's degrees.
The
increasing postsecondary achievement of women is cause for celebration.
At the same time, men and especially minority men are less likely to
earn the degrees which will enable them to earn a good living, stay
employed, marry, and be attractive to the increasing numbers of highly
educated women.
Explanations for the Postsecondary
Gender Gap
Numerous
explanations have been proposed to explain the gender gap. Some
emphasize the high dropout rate of young men from high school, especially
the very high dropout rates of Black and Hispanic young men. The calculation
of high school dropout rates is highly controversial (Chaplin &
Klasik, 2006; Greene & Winters, 2006; Orfield, 2004). Whatever the
method of analysis, the fundamental story is the same: Far more males
drop out. Among all students, 75% of females compared to 68% of
males graduate from high school (Education Week, 2008). Just 48%
of Black males and 52% of Hispanic males are high school graduates-- a
social and economic catastrophe. A dramatic proportion of young Black
men ages 16 to 24 (17 percent) are "idle," neither in school
nor employed (Edelman, Holzer & Offner, 2006).
Other
explanations for the gender gap emphasize the influence of the Women's
Movement in raising women's expectations for achievement and economic
independence (Goldin, Katz, & Kuziemko, 2006). The ages of marriage
and having children are rising, young women increasingly aspire to prestigious
careers, and see themselves as working outside the home for much of
their lives. The rise in divorce rates since the 1960s has also made
young women aware that they must be prepared to support themselves and
their children.
Some
researchers see the primary explanation of the college gender gap in
the greater economic returns of a college education for women compared
to men. The wage premium of a college education is higher for women,
especially minority women, which encourages women to obtain a postsecondary
education degree rather than take jobs in clerical, sales, or other
poorly paid fields which do not require a college degree (Dougherty,
2005; Perna, 2005).
Other
explanations of the college gender gap emphasize girls' better preparation
for college demands. Young women have higher achievement in the foundational
skills of reading and writing, necessary to college success. At
the 12th grade level, 31 percent of young women achieve at the proficient
or advanced levels in writing, compared to just 16 percent of young
men, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.1
In reading, 41 percent of young women are achieving at the proficient
or advanced levels, compared to 29 percent of male students. Girls
also are more apt to have important "soft" or non-cognitive skills,
for example, having the self-discipline to complete assignments and
spending longer hours doing homework (Duckworth & Seligman,
2008; Jacob, 2002; Pryor, Hutardo, Sharkness & Korn, 2008).
Perhaps young women are more apt to see college as an arena in which
they will do well.
To
understand the bases of the college gender gap, a significant and neglected
issue is the thinking of students themselves, especially high school
seniors who are in the immediate process of making decisions about whether
or not to attend college. Are young men and young women aware of the
changing opportunities of the labor market? Do young women enjoy
the experience of schooling, for example, while young men want to avoid
further schooling, an experience which they find distasteful?
Understanding the mindsets of young men is important to developing approaches
to increasing college attendance, which take into account their actual
thinking, and thus what may motivate them.
Methods
Alaska
is a fruitful locale for examining the phenomenon of the college gender
gap because the state has the third highest college gender gap in the
nation, with 149 women enrolled in degree-granting institutions for
every 100 men (Sum et al., 2003). This study began with exploratory
research with approximately 490 college freshmen at the University of
Alaska, the main statewide institution of higher education. Students
in a required social science course from the fall of 2003 through the
fall of 2008 were asked to interview four key informants, two males
and two females, about their college decisions and the influences on
their plans. Students typically interviewed their close relatives
and friends, brothers and sisters, and boy friends and girl friends.
Many students wrote papers on the college gender gap that showed considerable
insight, based on family histories, parental attitudes, and insider
knowledge that an outside researcher would find it hard to obtain. These
exploratory interviews were used as a basis for questions in the later
systematic study.
Sample:
High school seniors were stratified by grade point average ("A,"
"B," and "C" or below) and randomly sampled from two representative
urban high schools in Alaska's two largest cities, Anchorage and Fairbanks.
They were interviewed in the spring, just before high school graduation,
when they were thinking about what to do next. The final sample consisted
of 99 high school students, of which 53% were female. The students were
diverse with 57% White students, 15% Asian students, 12% African-American,
6% Alaska Native, 5% Latino, and 5% from other cultural backgrounds.
Measure:
The semi-structured interview began with an open-ended question, "What
are you thinking about doing after you graduate from high school?"
The interview then addressed five topics: 1) students' specific plans
and the ideas informing their choices, 2) their experiences in high
school, 3) their desired occupations, 4) influences on their decisions,
and 5) whether they perceived a gender gap in school success, and, if
so, their own thoughts on the causes of this gap. Each of these topics
began with an open-ended question to reveal students' unprompted thinking
and the open-ended questions were followed by closed questions so that
systematic data was obtained. After each section of the interview, the
interviewer repeated what the student had said, using the phrase, "So
what I understand you are saying is..." The boys especially
listened to this summary with great attentiveness and some relief, since
it often revealed more systematic thinking than they realized.
One-tailed
chi square tests were used to examine gender differences, since our
expectation from previous research was that females were more apt to
go to college and to have reasons for this choice. We emphasize that
statistical significance should be interpreted cautiously because these
questions come from the same interviews and thus do not meet the formal
assumption of statistical independence.
Focus
Group and Key Informant Interviews: In addition to these interviews,
we also interviewed high school counselors and school administrators
about students' postsecondary decision making. We conducted as well
single-gender focus groups of nine students each on their decisions
after high school and the bases of their ideas. The focus groups revealed
dramatic differences in peer group pressures and norms. In the male
group, the students joked around and pointed to examples of men they
knew who had earned a lot of money without a college education. In the
female focus group, all the young women detailed their college plans
with great seriousness except for one young woman who was going to live
with her aunt in Chicago after high school. She left abruptly in the
middle of the focus group session, even though she had said she was
available for the session and had been paid for her time. She appeared
to be nervous and embarrassed that she was not going to college as were
the other female students, and, unlike her peers, was drifting.
Institutional
Review Board permission to conduct the research was secured from the
University of Alaska and consent obtained from the two school districts,
the principals of the schools, parents, and the high school seniors
themselves. Students were paid $10 for their participation.
Limitations:
One obvious limitation, of course, is that all students came from urban
Alaska and this study needs to be replicated in more diverse locations.
Another limitation of this study, inevitable in current research
which requires elaborate consent processes, is that the sample is skewed
toward students from more stable families. These families were more
apt to return their consent forms.
Another bias, but an informative and revealing one, is the lower number of male students who agreed to participate and who thus had to be replaced. To our surprise, a number of male students would not consent to an interview on what they were doing after high school, even though they were released from classes and got a ten-dollar bill on the spot. Talking about their futures was evidently something that they did not want to do. Perhaps they did not wish to reveal to themselves, as well as to the interviewer, how confused and insecure they were. This is alarming-- Šsuch young men would be unlikely to request help from a guidance counselor or otherwise express their anxieties about their futures. The lack of reasonable plans among senior boys at the end of the school year indicates a serious failing on the part of the school and its guidance counselors.
Findings
We
begin with a typical interview of a female high school student, who
told the interviewer a narrative which became all too familiar: "The
Star Sister and Her Brother the Slacker."
Annie's
passion was horses-- she owned two and a family of dogs as well.
She came from a working class family, living in a trailer with her parents
and brother. She had paid for her two horses herself and supported them
by working at a veterinary clinic after school and on weekends. She
planned to own a Kentucky horse farm one day. A fantasy? Annie
had already taken courses at the university, even though she was still
in high school and planned to graduate with a business degree, which
would give her the skills to run her own business. She had made it a
point to learn at the veterinary clinic how to give her horses their
injections so she could keep her future veterinary bills down. Annie
had her life planned out until the day she died, her unfocused boy friend
told her with a mixture of awe and disgust. She had a clear life
script: First came college and then came an interesting, fulfilling
career. Sometime in the distant future she expected to marry and have
a family. Of course, Annie was going to college. She was already taking
college courses on the university campus and doing well. She radiated
confidence and excitement.
Annie
felt a heavy responsibility to fulfill her parents' hopes for their
children and to make up for what she interpreted as her brother's
laziness. Her brother John would not do his homework, was doing
badly in school, and spent every free minute playing videogames. When
she pestered him to work harder in school, he told her to "Shut up
and fuck off!"
Like
Annie, the young women we interviewed were far more likely than the
young men to view college as crucial to their future success, with 72%
of the young women agreeing that college was a "vital educational
investment" compared to just 49% of the young men (x 2 = 4.93,
p =.026). Female students (75%) were significantly more likely to desire
jobs requiring a college degree than male students (41%), for
example, wanting to be a researcher, a doctor, or a diplomat (x2
= 9.47, p =.009). When asked why they sought a college degree, the young
women were not motivated primarily by the additional income or their
knowledge of the demands of the labor market. When asked why they chose
their desired occupation, only 29% of the young women, compared to 50%
of the young men mentioned a high income as the reason for their choice.
Altruistic values strongly influenced the future aspirations of the
young women and they saw a college education as critical in their ability
to make a difference. These values suffused the young women's
interviews. When asked why they had chosen a particular occupation,
for example, 46% of the young women gave as a reason the desire "to
help people" or "to make the world a better place," while only
9% of young men mentioned such motives (x2
=10.83, p =.001). Even when a young woman's future plans were nebulous,
she often said that she wanted to make a difference. As one young
woman put it, "I really don't know what I want to do, but I want
to do some sort of service to society."
The
female high school students were choosing college because: 1) they wanted
interesting and meaningful, not necessarily high-paying jobs, 2) they
wanted jobs that would allow them to help society, 3) they were aware
of how much everyone-- especially their parents but also their teachers
and the professional women they met-- expected of them, 4) they were
aware of how much opportunity they themselves enjoyed compared to previous
generations of women and felt an obligation to take advantage of these
new opportunities, and 5) they wanted to be independent and not have
to rely on a man. "Girls feel more obliged to take advantage of the
opportunities because of the women's rights movement, because our
mothers didn't have these opportunities," one young woman explained.
Another high school girl elaborated, "Back in the days when women
didn't have to go to college, they could just get married and start
a family. Women now want an education. They don't want to have to
rely on a guy to support them."
These
young women had, for the most part, clear plans for the future, well
scripted. When asked, "What are you thinking about doing after
high school?" they had a road map. At the end of their senior
year, far more young women (64%) than young men (40%) had already applied
to college and more were planning to apply while fewer stated that they
planned no college or future education (x2
=17.78, p=.007).
While
this mindset emerged among young women of different socioeconomic backgrounds,
two different mindsets emerged among the young men. The first framework
for thinking was typical of young men with college-educated parents
and the second framework was typical of young men from working-class
families. The young men from college-educated families were rarely excited
about pursuing a college education. The common refrain was that college
was what their parents expected of them. "I always felt like
I was supposed to go to college," one young man put it.
Young
men from working-class families, on the other hand, did not for the
most part view college as necessary to their future success or social
standing. Only 29% of males from working class families saw college
as a vital educational investment, compared to 70% of their female counterparts
(x3 = 5.67, p =.01).
Could
young men view the opportunities presented by the skilled trades as
more attractive than a college-education? While this hypothesis
seems reasonable and many students themselves saw the reason for the
college gender gap as the availability of high paid, high-skilled jobs
in traditionally male occupations that did not require college, the
data did not bear it out. Among the young men, just 13% had plans to
pursue technical training after graduation. High school counselors said
that many high school boys were not interested in the skilled trades
and would not fill out applications even if the counselors encouraged
them and handed them the application forms. Many of the young men expressed
interest in implausible "dream jobs," such as designing videogames,
owning a recording studio, directing movies, or becoming music stars.
They had virtually no idea of how to get into these occupations.
Many
male seniors from working-class backgrounds were drifting, saying they
would "take some time off" or postpone planning in hopes that some
lucrative opportunity would eventually present itself and everything
would work itself out. The absence of rational economic decision-making
surfaced in many young men's ignorance of the job market and the amount
of money they would require to live a comfortable life. As one young
man noted, "Some of my friends were tripping out because they raised
up the minimum wage to $7.15 an hour and they're saying that's a
lot of money, and it's really not, but they were like 'forget this'
(getting a college education). I'm going to go to work for $7.15 an
hour." "High school dropouts make $100,000 a year in the videogame
industry," another young man enthused. Virtually every working class
young man could name a person who had made big bucks without a college
degree.
Among
working class young men, parents were less apt to "push college"
as the path to a desirable future. While 76% of female students with
working class parents mentioned family encouragement to go to college,
the same was true for only 41% of young men from similar families (x2
=6.506, p=.039). Indeed, 18% of the young men from working class families
reported negative family pressure. One such student said that
his brothers and father told him that he could make lots of money in
trade jobs and that he didn't want an office job because his brothers
would think it was a "fruity job for a guy."
In
the absence of pressure from family and friends to pursue postsecondary
education, young men from working class families talked about "going
with the flow." We rather admired one boy who said that upon
graduation he and a like-minded friend planned to take some "souped-up
trucks and jet-skis and travel down Highway 101." When they
ran out of money, they would just "find jobs and take it from there.
Might as well do it while we're young and still have money." When
asked how his parents felt about his plan, he said they told him, "If
you put yourself in a hole, that's your deal." But few young men
planned such adventures. Maybe they would continue in their after-school
jobs and work more hours, maybe they would go to college after awhile.
Many didn't have much of an idea of what they were going to do after
high school graduation.
Another
striking difference in our interviews concerned the dramatic gender
gap in students' enjoyment of the experience of schooling. When
asked if they liked going to school, 54% of the young women expressed
strong enjoyment compared to just 21% of the young men, while 26% of
the young men expressed strong dislike of school compared to only 8%
of the young women (x2
=11.895, p =.003). One young woman put it plainly, "I love school!"
When asked for details, she lavished praise on passionate teachers who
pushed her "past her comfort level" and encouraged her to "achieve
her dreams." She was looking forward to heading to college in the
fall, in part because "college shows you're able to learn."
Young men made such comments as, "I'm pretty much going to high
school just so I can graduate" or "School is a chore. You gotta
do stuff you don't like doing." Several young men complained that
vocational classes were no longer available, and classes like shop used
to provide a bright spot in their boring school day. One young man complained
about the irrelevance of school, "You have to read literature. Why
read stuff that isn't even true?"
An
important reason for these gender differences in liking school may well
be gender differences in learning styles, a theory which
has already received a great deal of attention (Gurian, 2005; Gurian,
Stevens, & King, 2008a; 2008b ; Sax, 2005 ; Tyre, 2008
). The conference held by the National Association of Single Sex Public
Schooling, for example, featured two days of presentations, many of
which consisted of teachers describing learning styles which worked
better for girls versus boys). According to this view, the structure
of schooling is not compatible with the learning styles of many boys.
Boys do far better in classrooms which allow activity, encourage competition,
and structure the day in short chunks. Boys do better when teachers
speak at high volume, when the temperature is cooler, and when many
kinesthetic learning opportunities occur. While these suggestions
have not been rigorously tested, the "wisdom of practice" of many
teachers is consistent with this view.
Most
of the students interviewed (58%) had noticed the gender gap in school
success and college attendance and had folk theories about the causes.
Their explanations centered on three themes:
Theme
1: Young men are lazy.
"Guys have the brains but they don't want to put forth the
effort." (Female senior)
"Guys
are guys...It's the slacker generation. Girls have a certain
drive that we don't have." (Male senior)
Theme
2: Young men don't plan ahead.
"Ladies
know what they want. They set goals and they go for it. Girls plan weeks
in advance, guys wake up and see what happens." (Male senior)
"Girls
set a plan and do it, where I go with the flow; whatever happens, happens
and I just go with it." (Male senior)
Theme 3: Young men are easily
distracted and prone to peer pressure.
"Guys
have a different kind of peer pressure. Cars and drinking are cooler
than school. Guys get sidetracked a lot easier." (Male senior)
"Guys
have more interests outside of school, like video games or hanging out...Like
my brother, he really got sucked into games on the Internet and that
takes up a big part of his life." (Female senior)
"Laziness"
was the theme that both boys and girls mentioned most often in explaining
the gender gap. The label covered up other problems. When
we asked one young man, for example, why he didn't fill out scholarship
forms when he needed the money, he said that he was "just too lazy."
The interviewer pointed out that he was doing backbreaking work at a
lumberyard. Why did he say he was lazy? "Lazy" turned
out to be the word he used to hide a host of problems: insecurity about
his ability to make it in college, problems in understanding applications
and scholarship forms, difficulty in writing required essays, reluctance
to ask for help, and the lack of goals worth pursuing with energy.
None of the young women mentioned that they were lazy, had troubles
planning and working in school, felt negative pressures about studying
hard, or refusing social engagements because they wanted to study.
Conclusion
At
this point, few college officials are troubled about the gender gap
at their institutions. When the gap reaches 60-40 in favor of
women, some say, they will begin to consider it a problem (Vickers,
2006). A few institutions like Kenyon College, a private institution,
are establishing quiet affirmative action programs, which allow men
with lower grades and other qualifications to enter. Other institutions
are making feeble attempts to attract males. Brandeis University, for
example, offered free baseball caps to the first 500 male undergraduate
applicants. Boston University's president, John Silber, asked
that the university's publicity materials be gender-neutral and that
a ROTC photograph showing a woman should also include a male. It is
hard to imagine free baseball caps or a change in a ROTC photograph
having any effect on male enrollment. Moreover, such strategies, even
if successful, do not increase the number of young men who go to college
but merely redistribute them.
This
research suggests strategies to increase the numbers of young men who
go to college which take into account their mindsets. First, young men
need information on the changing job market. Many young men have unrealistic
ideas about occupations in high demand and little understanding of their
chances for actually getting "dream jobs" in computers or the music
industry. Many young men have little idea of how much money they
will need to live a comfortable adult life and how vulnerable the lack
of a college education makes them in times of economic setbacks.
Activities to develop their ideas about the labor market could be introduced
into many courses, such as English courses which require a research
paper.
Second,
young men need to see higher education as a satisfying arena for achievement
rather than merely an extension of high school. Many young men
would be interested in programs better linked to typical male interests
and images of masculinity, such as emergency medical services, justice
and law enforcement, and computer technology. Dual enrollment programs,
which combine high school with courses on college campuses in such high-interest
programs would provide a structured pathway to college and
would circumvent the tendency of many young men to drift after high
school.
Third,
schools need to take seriously the emerging "wisdom of practice"
experience of teachers who have adapted their classrooms to the learning
styles of boys. Some teachers have done so in the context of single
sex schools or single sex classrooms, where such adjustments are easier
to make. To make such changes in a co-ed classroom is more difficult
but certainly possible. Allowing boys more movement and physical
activity, for example, could be done without much difficulty.
More movement would benefit many girls as well, and any child who needs
more activity (whether a girl or a boy) would have the opportunity.
While such adaptations are not research-tested, the growing consensus
that movement, for example, benefits boys makes sense and is consistent
with the experience of many teachers.
The
Women's Movement has done an admirable service for young women, increasing
their achievement in areas where they were behind, such as mathematics
and science, alerting teachers to their needs, and encouraging them
to go to college and pursue a range of careers. The Women's Movement,
above all, has stimulated the imaginations of girls and young women,
who see new possibilities for success and for making a difference. We
need now to turn our attention to the many young men who are falling
behind and developing a self-defeating image of themselves as "lazy
slackers."
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