Reversing the gender gap: Women surpass men at CSU

Submitted by anthony on Tue, 2011-12-20 01:06

Article here. Excerpt:

'Women are leapfrogging men into the classroom at the nation's largest university system, redefining the gender gap on California State University campuses in a startling way.

About six out of 10 CSU graduates last spring were female -- a complete reversal over the past four decades. Some campuses, like Dominguez Hills and Stanislaus, have almost twice as many women as men, feeling eerily like women's colleges.

The trend is so pronounced that last month Cal State East Bay held a special one-day "Male Initiative" conference for young minority men, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Women are pouring into college at elevated rates all over the country -- not only at two- and four-year schools, but also into professional and graduate programs. The profound shift comes two decades after educators issued an alarming report entitled "How Schools Shortchange Girls."
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Women's advances don't "translate into a loss for men," said Mikyung Ryu, Associate Director for the Center for Policy Analysis at the American Council on Education. "It's not a zero sum game."
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But at other campuses, students say they miss the male voice.

"We lose the perspective that comes from men when there are open classroom discussions. We get a lot of the female view," said Jesseca Stone, 35, who is earning a Liberal Studies degree, along with a teaching credential, at Cal State East Bay's Concord campus.'

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From the quote:

'Women's advances don't "translate into a loss for men," said Mikyung Ryu, Associate Director for the Center for Policy Analysis at the American Council on Education. "It's not a zero sum game."'

Actually, they do, just as men's advances in a field holding an interest to or for women do also. Here's the logic:

1. There are a finite number of opportunities for any given person. There may be a whole lot, but they are not infinite.
2. There are finite resources people can use, such as educational and material. A lot maybe, but not infinite.
3. Given that there are limits to these two critical areas, whenever one class of person (be it men or women, short or tall people, people of different ethnicities, etc, however you want to divide up the human race in arbitrary ways) excels or gains more of one of these resources, the other class (or classes) of necessity has less of that resource.

It's really not that hard to figure out. Feminists and their fellow-travelers have been sloganing that using "affirmative action" (i.e., hiring preferences largely benefiting Caucasian women) is fine because advances for one group do not equate to losses for another are simply lying to the rest of us. Don't think they believe what they are saying for a moment. They laugh their kiesters off at the people who actually believe them.

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2011-12-20 03:39