Professors and Students Discuss Changing Gender Gap in 'Feminist Initiatives' Lecture

While the term “gender gap” is generally associated with disadvantages for females, an event held Monday afternoon in Schermerhorn Hall addressed the increasing female advantage in the American education system, as sociology department chair Thomas DiPrete and Vice Provost for Diversity Initiatives Geraldine Downey spoke to a crowd of roughly 20 students and fellow faculty members.

“The Rising Gender Gap in Education: Explanations and Potential Implications” was one installment in a series of public lectures titled “Feminist Interventions: Works in Progress,” which was organized by Columbia’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. All the lecturers in the series are Columbia faculty members, and this particular event focused on the research of faculty studying topics related to feminism.

“The goal is to exchange views,” IRWAG Director Marianne Hirsch said. “We really want to find out the details of the research and then also have a discussion with students and faculty from different departments. Our goal at the institute is to really facilitate this kind of cross-disciplinary conversation.”

DiPrete, who studied sociology at Columbia and earned his Ph.D. in 1978, noted that women are becoming more educated than men, as shown by the drastic increase in women relative to men who obtain four-year college degrees. While males continue to dominate scientific fields, research shows that since the 1980s, women have been surpassing men in the extent of their education.

This shift, DiPrete said, could have a number of causes. Discrimination may have until recently prevented women from reaching their full academic potential.

Additionally, DiPrete said, women tend to major in subjects—such as liberal arts—that have higher average grades, which may make it easier for women to graduate.

“It used to be that an education was a bar to marriage for women,” DiPrete said. “That’s been turned around in the last 20 or 30 years. Marriage rates are higher for the more highly educated. ... In a world in which men still make more money than women, the value of education in the marriage market has gone up faster for women than it has for men.”

Downey added that behavioral differences between male and female children can significantly impact the quality and extent of their education. She explored the idea that boys “get into trouble” more often than girls, who are said to mature more quickly than their male counterparts.

Nick Mirotchnick, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences ’09, said he attended the event because he has noticed a gender gap in his experience at Columbia. He feels his program is dominated by females, but doesn’t think that has affected his education.

“I hadn’t realized how much education levels had converged and then diverged, now in favor of women,” Mirotchnick said. “I guess I thought we were more at a parity right now.”

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