Gender gap: the man drought on campus

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/women-doing-ok-but-men-lagging-behind/story-e6frgcjx-1226093313435

As an arts student, being told there are more women attending university on average isn’t the most surprising news. I’m constantly in tutorials with a ratio of roughly 8:2 girls to guys. Granted, you could argue it’s all to do with the degree I’m taking right? You’d find that ratio reversed in the ‘manly’ subjects- Engineering! Maths! Subjects with an apparent pre-requisite in testosterone that really make you wonder how the works of Wordsworth or Advanced trigonometry became gendered in the first place.

The fact is, regardless of ‘male’ versus ‘female’ subjects, a 2011 article in the Australian related the massive gap of university attendance between men and women: the article states “International education consultant Alan Olsen said about 603,000 domestic female students had obtained higher education qualifications between 2000 and 2009, almost 50 per cent more than the 404,000 completions by their male counterparts. His 10-year analysis, which tallied domestic completions against the corresponding population of 25 to 34-year-olds, revealed a 39.1 per cent attainment rate among women. The rate for men was just 25.8 per cent.”

The most interesting aspect of the article, however, is not simply the staggering statistics related to the issue. The article quotes Professor Marcia Devlin as arguing: “School success has been skewed in favour of females for some time”

Which brings the idea of gendered subjects into even sharper relief, and brings up the question: Which aspects of Tertiary education are skewed towards women? It’s hard to imagine university is any easier for woman, or that the content taught is meant to appeal to females more than men. I personally haven’t come across any content in class that felt tailored specifically towards my identity as a woman. No, ‘write a poem detailing the pain of menstruation’, no ‘give a detailed account of 6 female historians and their view of the spice girls.’ I suppose my view is skewed personally by my gender and I can’t experience what university truly feels like as a male, but the professor’s solution that “creative, active and integrated approaches to education that rely less on sitting still and listening passively, and more on the active use of multiple intelligences” does seem at the very least ridiculous.

I personally wasn’t aware that all men learnt better while walking at a brisk pace and throwing around a footy- neither did I realize that women had the innate ability to soak up information while passively integrating with material- Cognitive psychology reiterates constantly that students need to be active learners, regardless of their sex, so an improvement in the methods of teaching isn’t likely just to improve male learning, nor the appeal of tertiary education to the men of Australia.

The question comes back to the argument on the true difference between the sexes and the different feminist discourse surrounding the issue. The Liberal feminists might argue women are just as capable as men regardless of the content/subjects and therefore content cannot possibly be gender specific. The Maternal feminists would argue that innate feminine abilities would always elude men, just as innate masculine abilities would women- and yet the relative strengths of both groups hold the same value. Ergo, they’d probably argue that classes veering towards “an open and non-threatening educational environment{where} … teaching is dialogical, students are empowered, and women contribute their own versions of the “truth”’(page 172, M, Arnot. J, Dillabough) is all a positive, feminine thing and should not be altered. Rather, the cult of the masculine should alter and bend to meet the system in place. As for the socialist and black feminists, they would be arguing that even the attendance rates of females were diverse when class, race and socio-economics were taken into consideration. This argument probably holds the most weight, particularly as it coincides with Professor Trevor Gales suspicion that the data shows "boys from low socioeconomic status backgrounds and regional areas” are the one “lagging behind."

Indeed this intersectional approach is the most realistic framework for examining the issue. Though University courses and TAFE courses come with equal opportunities for government fee/loan assistance, most TAFE qualifications are available without prior education pre-requisite such as the Higher School Certificate or an ATAR cut off. Students are able to pursue an apprenticeship and regular stable income at a younger age, and no doubt this will appeal to students who for a number of socio-economic reasons. Naturally, gender is just one factor in the equation, but it’s worth noting that there are far more ‘traditionally male’ avenues of employment that do not require university education. The ABS website states that while "Women outnumber men more than two to one in the fields of society and culture (271,300 women to 121,900 men) and health (176,200 to 73,300), but men lead in apprenticeships. Out of the 220,000 apprentices or trainees, the majority, 77 per cent, were men.”

Is that to say then, that trainee-ships and apprenticeship positions in TAFEs and Colleges are specifically arranged to appeal to men? Should there be step taken to make apprenticeships more appealing to women? Once again the different discourses of feminists would have a field day with the question, but it remains to be settled- Are certain professions and disciplines simply inherently gendered? 


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Dillabough, J., & Arnot, M. (2000). Challenging democracy: international perspectives on gender and citizenship. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Ross, J. (2011, July 13). Women doing OK but men lagging behind . The Australian. Retrieved September 22, 2013, from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/women-doing-ok-but-men-lagging-behind/story-e6frgcjx-1226093313435