Achieving Equity for Women in Higher Education Graduate Enrollment and Faculty Status
Throughout every type of college and university in the nation, a selective differential occurs in the proportions of men and women enrolled as students or employed as faculty members. Starting with entrance to college (where men and women are found in approximately equal numbers), proportionately fewer women are enrolled with each advancing year as sophomores, juniors, seniors, or as graduate and professional students. In faculty ranks, proportionately fewer women are employed as full professors than as assistant professors, and where they are employed in the same professorial rank women characteristically receive a lower income. The foregoing are documentable facts. What is not so readily documented-and thus is hotly debated-is the extent to which this disproportionate utilization of men in higher education is the product of (1) lower levels of expectation on the part of women, (2) the use of criteria that are better adapted to the needs and life styles of men, or (3) the unfair application of fair (i.e., sexually neutral) criteria. Although these alternative explanations are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, they are likely to become