"scarce" resources, college and sexism

[rm]

And then there's this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23britz.html

It's the sort of thing that makes it hard for me to imagine any world in which women, at least as a group, don't always lose.

via rackmount

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Not only make guesses. I believe people would seek out the information intentionally and to nefarious purpose. The zip code thing in particular.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

*nods sadly*

And one thing that got me from the admissions person's op-ed. It concentrates on why more women are having to be turned down. Maybe the question should also be, are fewer men applying in the first place, and if so why?

[offbalance.livejournal.com]

Yes, this. I wondered about that too. Where are the men? What are they doing?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Also:

- do we really think it's acceptable that men are being held to lower standards? Men who will go on as a group to make more money and have better careers than the women?
- why do people not want to be educated in environments that may have more women than men?
- first women had to be twice as good as men to prove they were worthy at all. now they have to be twice as good as men to compete for resources that need not be scarce, but we've decided to make scarce because too many women is inherently a negative?

It's just. I mean.... *rage*

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I was going to post a comment, but you got here before I did.

Not only these three things, but it also reinforces socially and professionally toxic competitiveness and distrust among women. Which is already a problem.

Argh.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Not only these three things, but it also reinforces socially and professionally toxic competitiveness and distrust among women. Which is already a problem.

I think on at least a subconscious level, many women recognize benefit in this: the competition will knock each other out, and then I will step forward to claim my prize.

Hence the "reward" you often see women get in online drama for keeping their mouth shut, instead of pointing to actual injustice or bad behavior.

*nod*

[the-ogre.livejournal.com]

This makes no sense to me. Why is there any need to "gender balance", especially if the applicants to do so aren't there or if in doing so, the standards become unequal.

I had no idea that colleges and universities did this - and I really can't imagine why they would.

Re: *nod*

[rm.livejournal.com]

As the piece says -- apparently too many women makes a school less desirable to applicants of both genders.

[weirdquark]

Women's colleges need better marketing.

To be fair, when I was looking at colleges, I didn't really want to go somewhere where the gender balance was off either -- I wanted to either go to a women's college or somewhere where the gender ratio was reasonably even. I don't remember why I was thinking this way, but now it feels like going somewhere that the gender balance was off would create an atmosphere where the women would feel like they were competing for dates because men were a scarce resource instead of good grades, and that's not something I wanted to deal with -- at a women's college, you kind of assume everyone there isn't interested in competing for men. I ended up going to a women's college, and it was awesome. I still live with some of the women I met there and am going to continue doing so.

But most women aren't interested in women's colleges either.

It's funny, because one of the arguments I've heard against women's colleges is that the world is co-ed -- and yeah, it is, but women outnumber men at least three to one where I work, so it's not like life is always going to be fifty-fifty either.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

yes. yes yes yes.

so not as many men are applying.

maybe they should get off their asses.

[rackmount.livejournal.com]

this was exactly why i posted it.

FIRST prove you're 10 times better to prove that you're anywhere near as good as men.

SECOND prove you're 10 times better because god forbid the guys should fall behind.

wth? or, as i said, damned if you do, damned if you don't. i mean jesus. there are lots of places i considered applying that were man-only until the 60s/70s.

[sethg]

One theory I've read is that men are more likely than women to be able to get a middle-class income without a college degree[*] and therefore they are less motivated to apply.

[*]...or, they are more likely to get an upper-class income without a first-tier college degree.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

I have read about this lately - because of the difference in elementary school curriculum in our public schools. They have focused on higher academic achievement at an early age (my daughter is in Kindergarten and has at least two pages of homework a night). Apparently, this is much easier for most girls to adapt to than boys. More boys are having to be held back because they aren't able to cope with the flux, and are not getting socialized the same way, and not having the hands-on tactile learning that the early grades used to provide.

From what I have read (parenting magazines, online articles, etc. - I have a son and a daughter, so I read it all) boys are more likely to do things if they think it will impress other boys, and girls are more likely to do things to impress their teachers - so girls are doing better in school and the dropout rate among high school boys has apparently been rising.

I was already worried about how things will be for my son when he starts school. Now I am really worried about my daughter's chances at being accepted to a good school when she is older.

[mellacita.livejournal.com]

I used to work in admissions at my undergraduate university. We did whole analyses based on zip codes and census tracts. I was just a workstudy so I can't speak to how such analyses were used, but...yeah.

Even if race or gender (or economic status) were not a ticky box, there are countless proxies that folks will use. % receiving reduced price lunch, % of people who speak another language at home, % of families headed by a single person.

Before working in admissions I was a census enumerator for a summer. We wore an official badge, and asked so many rather instrusive questions, and at the time I truly thought it was simply so public funding could be allocated properly (more $ for bilingual ed, etc). I didn't understand those who distrusted me and didn't want to give me their full names, birthdays, place of birth, languages spoken at home, number of non-relatives living with them, marital status, race and ethnicity, etc. And I didn't realize that the many members of my town who were political refugees from totalitarian regimes looked at my official badge and looked terrified as they answered my questions. I was young and naive. :/ Sorry for the tangent!