FEATURED
One men’s rights advocate blames ‘great feminization, which tends to marginalize and exclude men’
There are now more women in professional degree programs than men, including medical, law, and veterinary schools. That’s according to recent research by the Hechinger Report.
The shift has some men’s advocates concerned, with one telling The College Fix he wants to see “gender balance … where neither gender struggles and both excel.” Others view the trend more neutrally. A veterinarian told The Fix it can’t be characterized as “morally good or morally bad.”
As most graduate school applications now come from women, women are earning 40 percent more doctorates and almost twice as many masters degrees compared to men, the Hechinger Report found, citing U.S. Department of Education statistics.
The trend with professional degrees began about five years ago when women began earning more law degrees or enrolling in medical school at a higher rate than men in 2019, the report found.
Additionally, 60 percent of U.S. undergraduates are now women. Meanwhile, the number of men in college has dropped by 4 percent since 2020, according to the report.
While health, biological, social, behavioral, and agricultural sciences are mostly studied by women, men still make up the majority in business, math, engineering, and physical science graduate programs, the report found.
The report did not mention seminary, one of the three traditional professions. Enrollment trends broken down by sex are more difficult to find, but an Alabama Baptist report noted the number of women in seminary was on the rise in the 2010s.
In a recent interview, G. Lawrence DeMarco, executive manager of the International Council for Men and Boys, expressed concerns about schools not addressing boys’ academic needs when asked about the trend.
He pointed The College Fix to an article about how boys nowadays are struggling academically more often than girls.
Regarding whether the gender ratio reversal is a good thing, DeMarco said, “I suppose, as a general matter, that it wouldn’t be a good thing for either men or women to vastly outnumber the other. Women excelling is a very good thing. Men struggling is not.”
“Ideally, there should be a gender balance in the professional class, where neither gender struggles and both excel. Of course, some professions attract different genders, which can’t be avoided, but there should be an overall balance in the professional class as a whole,” he told The Fix.
As for how to promote this balance, DeMarco brought up scholarships: “Currently, there are female-only scholarships, even though they are the majority in academic institutions, and none for men. Privilege should not be extended to the majority class, and there should be gender fairness in terms of scholarships.”
Meanwhile, Edward Bartlett, president of SAVE, an organization focused on “assuring due process, fairness, and equal opportunities for men,” said he does not think the gender enrollment trend is a good thing.
“The great feminization, which tends to marginalize and exclude men” is responsible for fewer men going into professions, he told The Fix in a recent email.
“For years, feminists claimed that there was a ‘patriarchy’ that served to discriminate against females. But the disappearance of men in colleges suggests there is no such thing as patriarchy,” Bartlett said.
He believes there should be more efforts to make enrollment a 50-50 balance. While Bartlett said he’s “not aware of any such efforts,” he suspects that the imbalance is being addressed “informally.”
One of the most female-dominated professions is veterinary medicine.
A report by the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges showed 80 percent of enrollment in 2023 was female, compared to about 17 percent male.
“In the veterinary profession, the process of what’s generally known as feminization has happened more rapidly and earlier than in other professions,” a veterinarian told The College Fix in a phone interview Wednesday. The scholar requested anonymity due to concerns about reprisal and retaliation from within the field.
The trend is happening in other countries, too. “In Norway, I believe it is the most [gender] skewed field of study,” the vet said.
There, the country has had “a bit of a legal battle in recent years over giving men who apply to higher education essentially an advantage in the application process,” the veterinarian told The Fix. “You can see depending on what the courts have permitted year by year a fluctuation of gender breakdown in those entering the veterinarian class there.”
As for whether the female-dominant trend should change, the veterinarian did not want to characterize it as “morally good or morally bad.”
“There’s not much conversation I’ve personally heard about trying to get things to 50-50. We are just working in a feminized profession that’s basically certain to continue as such for the foreseeable future.”
Regarding the future, “there are still higher proportions of men typically as you go further up leadership hierarchies and it will likely take one or more generations to fully discern the degree to which that is the effect of them being from earlier generations of members of the profession,” the veterinarian told The Fix.
When asked why more men aren’t pursuing higher degrees, the vet said, “I think there’s a tendency towards essentially going into professions that give you more money for less training … If you spend five minutes in the ‘manosphere,’ you’ll not see a lot of love for higher education there.”
“You do tend to see a differential level of time worked over the course of one’s career between men and women. Once you’ve kind of gotten to the main course, if you will, you do tend to see men give more time input into their total overall careers. There’s a bit of conversation about what pressures are drawing women to domestic responsibilities, which is a factor for why women tend to give less time to their professions than men,” the veterinarian said.
Additionally, “the less hours that one puts into one’s career for that, the more strain that causes on the output of that profession,” the veterinarian said, while also emphasizing the consequences of overworking and burning out.
The vet added, “This is in part why you do see a push for creating more training institutions which are increasingly going to be filled by women.”
The College Fix also reached out to the National Organization for Women and several feminist scholars for comment on the trend, but none responded.
MORE: Judge tosses case claiming Northwestern Law discriminated against white men
