Gender Gap 101

Open a small window of opportunity to women and they will
take full advantage of it.  Education is the best example.

Until the ’80s, there were more men than women in our
universities.  Today, all that is but a memory.  The gender gap
is continually widening in our colleges and universities.  These
days, our lecture halls in our universities are filled more
frequently by female students than their male counterparts.  In
our Canadian universities, women now make up more than 60% of the
total student population!  The professor (if he is a male) and
the male students are drowning in a “Sea of Skirts.” This
phenomenon has aptly been called “Gender Gap 101.”

The matter doesn’t end once we leave the portals of the
university.  There are today more women professionals than men in
our Western society.  The person you are consulting with on a
difficult legal matter could very well be a lady lawyer.  Your
family doctor (if you’re lucky to have one) can be a woman.  If
you have a medical problem, you (as a male) will, well, ahem, be
examined by the lady doctor.  A neat role-reversal of the decades
when women were examined by male doctors.

Accountants?  Long before there were more female lawyers and
doctors, there were more female accountants.  I should know; it’s
my profession!  And the buck doesn’t stop there.  Women are
making more and more inroads as economists, actuarials, and
administrators.

One last bastion still remain male, engineering.  However,
this is changing too.  The days when a woman in an engineering
faculty was as rare as a tooth on a hen are in the past!  That
engineering fortress is destined to fall in the not so distant
future.

Bridget Jones Effect

You’ve added to your vocabulary a “Sea of Skirts” and
“Gender Gap 101.” Now add one more expression, the “Bridget
Jones Effect.”

Beyond the halls of academia and the professions, the above
phenomenon (of the women surpassing men academically) presents us
with one more issue:  A relationship crisis.  Many well-educated
women are unable to find an equivalent male partner.  There are
simply more educated young women than there are young men.

According to an article in the UK Daily Mail, this is called
the “Bridget Jones Effect.” The name is based on Helen
Fielding’s 1996 novel (there is also a movie by the same name).

We are faced here with a painful situation.  A man who can’t
go out and bring a decent paycheck will be unable to hold a
family together.  The result is more marriage breakdowns, and an
increase in the number of single parent families.

It can get even more tragic.  Men (already cursed with a
fragile ego) can suffer more and more from unemployment.  Does
that mean that society faces an even bigger struggle between the
genders based on who brings home the bacon and who has the best
degree?  Only time will tell.

Sources

1) NewsHour Extra:  Effects of More Women Than Men Attending
College
October 2002
www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec02/college.html

2) iVenus/ Women seeking educated men – apparently
www.ivenus.com/forums/viewthread/570/

3) Breakdown of the family caused by “educated women,
undereducated men”?
“Bridget Jones effect” said to be causing breakdown of the family
Kate Oczypok
10/1/08
www.collegenews.com

4) Female University Enrolment Exceeds Male
By John Intini
Maclean’s
June 26, 2006
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0012889

Site Search Tags:
none