Stuff about the differences between the gents and the ladies.

Gender differences are an important topic in higher education these days because the achievement gap between men and women seems to be growing. Certainly where I work, I've noticed that women are more likely apply for leadership positions and be qualified for them. National GPA and persistence data indicates women are winning college.

Catching up on my journal reading, I came across an article in the Journal of Higher Education that documents a study of GPA differences between men and women in science majors. Women, even though they are way underrepresented in majors such as engineering, tend to do better academically in those majors.

Takeaways from Sonnert and Fox's findings:

1. The achievement gap was most pronounced at non-elite universities. In other words, at colleges the researchers classified as "Research 1" schools, the achievement gap was small or none. The article hypothesized that women are more likely to stay closer to home, whether due to protectiveness of their families or socialization to stay closer to home or something. The implication here is that these same women would be out-achieving their male counterparts at the elite universities if they went there in greater numbers.

We talk a good talk, we academics, about equality and generating more equal representation of women and minorities in sort of traditionally white-dude majors and work fields. But I have to wonder if there are holes in the admissions process that systemically hold the gender proportions right where they are. Nobody will ever be able to study this because nobody will ever share their admissions processes or data in a meaningful way that would shed light on it. But . . .

2. Women have to do better academically to have a chance at even remotely equal compensation in the engineering fields. Sonnert and Fox propose that this leads women to work harder in a compensation effect that puts them in position to compete. Is it also true that women have to have better qualifications out of high school to receive the same spots? Or are girls in high school just not applying to those programs?

If spots for girls are systemically (if not consciously) limited at elite university programs, it does seem to follow that the students "left over" would be higher-achieving that the men "left over" at the regional colleges. In other words, if the top engineering colleges take the best 10% of men and the best 5% of women (these are made-up numbers), the 90-95% women would be competing against the 80-90% men. And the 5% of women who are in the elite colleges would be driven by a compensation mechanism, knowing they have to do better to do equally.

3. Counterintuitively, the GPA gap gets smaller when the number of women professors in a field is more equal. This was the most interesting finding, I thought. One hypothesis (addressed by the researchers) is that when there are more women role models in the field- such as bio, a major they studied- there are more role models for women students; more women select the field; the group of women selecting the field is therefore less inherently confident and extra-motivated; the achievement evens out. I think there could be something to this. The researchers mentioned an area for additional research would be to look for performance gaps in traditionally women-dominated fields. Stay tuned . . .

Reference:
Sonnert, G. and Fox, M., 2012. Women, men, and academic performance in science and engineering: The gender differences in grade point averages. Journal of Higher Education. Jan/Feb 2012, Vol 83 Issue 1, p73-101.