British universities only let women in their ranks, fully, in 1920. And where women have actually been let into arenas after hundreds of years of banishment, they thrive. That’s how a record proportion of women compared to men are going to uni this September.
While 409,000 people will be going to uni this September/October (FYI, unis have been able to lift their cap on how many people they admit per course, so entrance fees and profit can go up), there will be 60,000 more first year women than men.
The Times has drawn up a list of the ‘male dominated’ and ‘least male dominated’ topics (they must’ve been meaning ‘female dominated’) and it’s got some interesting points.
The most male dominated subjects were engineering and technology (83.9%), computer sciences (82.9%) and architecture, building and planning (65%). And the so-called ‘least male dominated’ subjects were subjects allied to medicine (basically everything but ‘medicine’), with 20.51% boys (79.49% girls), veterinary science with 23.93% boys (76.07% girls) and education with 24.02% boys (75.98% girls).
What we find interesting is that the whole ‘women don’t like science’ is nonsense. They do like science, but only certain types. STEM recruiters (and schools, because that’s where we start doing science) still have a long way to go to get women signing up, but could bear that in mind.
Professor Alan Smithers from the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Education and Employment Research said: ‘Women are choosing to take higher education opportunities at the moment more than men, who are more often looking for the practical rather than academic, such as apprenticeships.’
Which must, surely, have something to do with rising tuition fees. Why get into lots of debt when you’ve already got a practical skill (one that’s less frowned upon than the beauty and grooming roles women will enter with few school qualifications)?
Professor Smithers also explained: ‘Typically girls are more willing to apply themselves to education over time.’
But this could soon get in the way of girls’ achievements as the rules will be that GCSEs have less coursework and AS levels will not count towards A level results. Which means that girls, who are more likely to be better at coursework than cramming for exams, you know, winning the race by going slow and steady, might end up a little worse off than boys again.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.