An exaggerated prophecy or a coming reality? The number of women in the academic community is increasing, whereas the boys’ performance in elementary school keeps deteriorating. Will the women take power, or is the status associated with higher education about to dissolve?
Hedda Andersson was nine years old when the program at the Faculty of Medicine in Lund started to accept women. Her mother and grandmother were confident in their cause. If their girl child had any inclination and propensity to succeed, she was heading to the Faculty of Medicine to become a doctor. A bold thought, according to many people, but ten years later, it came to fruition. In 1880, Hedda became the first woman to ever attend Lund University. Her entrance into the lecture rooms broke a pattern in university history, which had seen more than 200 years of male dominance. A dominance, which by 2013, has been consigned to the history books.
Since the end the 70s, the number of women attending universities has been exceeding their male counterparts. The fact is that the number of female students and employees at universities and colleges is increasing throughout all of Europe, whereas the alarming reports on the boys’ inadequate performance in school keeps piling up.
“Boys performing worse than girls is something that may result in a considerable social problem with quite grave consequences in the long run,” says Svend Dahl, currently serving as investigator for the committee directive “Men and Gender Equality” on the behalf of the Swedish government.
During the course of the last 20 years, much has been made of the fact that boys’ performance in school keeps deteriorating, whereas the girls keep increasing the performance gap. The average differential between girls and boys in elementary school is approximately 20 award credits. The difference is especially prominent as it pertains to reading comprehension. The government appointed “The Delegation for Gender Equality in the Academic Community”, where people such as Lund University Vice-chancellor, Per Eriksson participated, concluded in their final report in 2011 that girls performed considerably better than boys. One out of four boys did not attain the basic level of reading comprehension, whereas the number of girls not attain the basic level of reading comprehension, was one out of ten.
“Unfortunately, I’d guess that there is reason to believe that the differences are growing,” says Erik Nilsson, Head of Department at the Swedish National Agency for Education.
A frightening thought for a society highly relying on its well-educated work force. Without basic reading comprehension capabilities the thought of university studies is likely to be totally unfamiliar. Among the people graduating from high school in year 2008/09, 45 % had enrolled in a university by the school year 2011/12. The proportion of women was 51 %, and the proportion of men was only 39 %. A report from the then operating Swedish National Agency for Education says that Swedish women since 2001 have elevated their educational level by 6.2 % annually, in comparison to the mens’ elevated educational level at 5.7%.
“Naturally, there’s a backlog, but in the long run I think that the academic community will be one of the arenas where women will play a more prominent part,” says Svend Dahl. “Structures move slowly, that’s why they are called structures,” he adds.
But what is the reason for boys performing so poorly in school? Kajsa Widén is an expert assistant for the Gender Equality Group for Equal Conditions at Lund University. The book shelves in her office contains thick books with titles containing the words “gender” and “equality”. She says it is matter of gender roles and the way girls and boys are raised.
“Within the academic community we have to deal with problems which already arise in pre-school. The way girls and boys are raised and encouraged results in girls having better capabilities of taking more responsibility, performing better, and more easily getting admitted to the university,” she says.
Swedish National Agency for Education representative, Erik Nilsson, brings up the same theory, and he believes the problem is that elementary school places too much responsibility on the individual pupil, at the same time as boys are encouraged to not take school seriously.
However, it is not only the boys’ uneven performance in elementary school indicating that the girls will increase the gap even more. Also among the positions in the academic community, there are alerts hinting about a male underrepresentation if the current trend maintains its course. In October, Swedish Higher Education Authority (SHEA) published an analysis on the increase of women employees at universities. Statistics show that the number of women among the teaching and the researching staff increased by a little over 3,100 full time employees between 2002 and 2012, whereas the number of their male counterparts increased by 1,400 people. It is assumed that this pattern will continue during the next few years.
Irina Schmitt is an assistant lecturer and Director of undergraduate studies at Lund University. Her desk is covered with documents and on the walls are richly colored pictures of different feminist catchwords. She views the SHEA analysis with critical eyes.
“Why are women problematized when society has put forth great efforts to make women more successful, and now that they are, there is something wrong again? How come it’s a bad thing for men when women excel?, she says, raising her eyebrows inquisitively.
“If there’s an increase, that’s a good thing, but things are still not equal. How can anybody be satisfied with that?”
Irina Schmitt also claims that there’s no point in simply basing statistics on the categories men and women. She says that we have to observe the intersectional aspect, that is, taking into account features such as ethnicity, class, mobility, as well as sexual orientation. We have to ask ourselves who is able to be successful within the academic community.
There are more people than Irina Schmitt who remain critical, because just as surely as the number of women is increasing among the ones employed in the academic community, it is just as clear that women are virtually non-existing among the higher positions. Barely 23 % of the professors in Sweden are women, and the higher in the hierarchy you look, the scarcer the women are.
The most apparent imbalance is found within Science and Technology, where only 14 % of Sweden’s professors were women in 2011. If the current pace maintains, the teaching posts will be evenly balanced around 2050.
“Saying that women are taking over would be an inaccurate analysis, it’s an exaggeration. The fact that the number of men at the university is decreasing is something we have to take seriously, but we can’t let the analysis become too imbalanced,” says the historian of ideas and the masculinity researcher, Niclas Järvklo.
Efforts to increase the number of women have been made, but without any significant results. In 1997, the government made decisions on recruitment aims in order to increase the number of female professors. In September this year, the public consultation ended for the memorandum of the Ministry of Foreing Affairs labeled Recruiting aims for a more equal gender distribution among professors, a memorandum suggesting that each educational establishment provide for quantitive recruitment aims in conference with the government.
“This is a highly sluggish process,” says Emelie Lilliefeldt, Political Science postgraduate and investigator at Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations.
“Once you become a professor, you tend to retain that position for the rest of your life.”
What is often referred to is the so called glass ceiling, a kind of invisible obstacle, which women have a hard time getting past, or are not allowed to break through. According to Kajsa Widén, these structures still exist at universities.
“The structure we have benefits men to a greater extent, for instance through networks who are nameless. It could also be official trips and conferences which everybody doesn’t have the opportunity to attend. All of this characterizes your possibilities of making a career,” says Kajsa Widén.
She also says that the academic community has a certain inherent sluggishness, due to its considerable size. That is why it is important not only to discuss these problems, but also do something about them.
“Traditions are a good thing, but they’re also meant to be broken.”
However, taking history into account, there is an issue at hand.
In each sector where women such as Hedda Andersson and her fellow colleagues have entered the stage and dominated, the result is often a plummeting of the power and the status. An evident example is the teaching profession which was previously dominated by men, but which has regressed in terms of wages and status since women’s entrance. This phenomenon is slowly starting to appear within the academic community.
“We have an academic community which by and large relies on positions that are hourly paid, and we are starting to have a work environment that to some degree is mirrored by other female dominated sectors, such as health care,” says Svend Dahl.
Few believe that the essence of education loses its status just because the number of women increases. The cooperation organization OECD recently published a report indicating that higher education to greater extent is becoming a necessity, since other professions often are rationally disregarded, as those positions can be filled by machines or computers. But to draw the conclusion that women are soon to dominate within the sphere of well-paid professions just might be a bit presumptuous.
Irina Schmitt says that the logic of “poor boys” which exists in our society today disregards the fact that men ultimately have higher salaries in throughout the professional sectors. This is something that several other agree with.
“It’s is a paradox that women, despite better grades, have lower salaries than men. This is due to the fact that men and women do not compete for the same positions, but rather that the men have jobs in the technical sphere, whereas the women operate within the healthcare sector,” says Niclas Järvklo.
The uneven distribution among the educational programs selected is remarkable in certain places. In 2011/12, 93 % of the students beginning their pre-school teaching studies were women, and 76 % of the ones who entering the Bachelor of Science program were men.
According to Svend Dahl, it is especially the Bachelor of Science program that determines the norm in Sweden, as as it’s considered the yardstick for good education. He says that this type of educational program is accredited and that this is why men will be able to continue their dominance in society.
– “If you pass your high school classes you don’t need extremely good grades in order to be admitted to certain engineering programs, for instance.” These are the boys that did not have great grades in elementary school or high school. They are admitted and they can later on progress and be accepted an executive position in trade and industry.
This is not, however, a one-sided coin. Something has happened to women’s and men’s selection of educational programs. Emelie Lilliefeldt has reflected on this particular phenomenon.
“Women have begun to gravitate towards many domains previously male dominated. What I find alarming is the fact that you don’t see the men making the same change of course,” she says. The number of female students has grown and also on prestigious programs, such as the Law and Medicine programs. Prior to the fall semester of 2013, a total of 6,026 people applied for the Law program in Lund, and 60 % of these were women.
“The fact that women make high status careers is the result of a highly successful gender equality struggle,” says Niclas Järvklo and continues:
“It is important to notice that women have begun to benefit from their educational advantage much more. Women have gone from physiotherapist studies to medical studies instead.
When the pieces of the puzzle come together, one by one, it is impossible to deny that something is transpiring. In only 100 years, women have made a journey upwards within the academic community, a journey that seems to continue.
“I am quite confident in the significance of education and the shift that is unfolding, for instance, in the gender distribution at universities will make an impact as it pertains to the distribution of power resources in society, I believe,” says Erik Nilsson, Head of Department of Education at Sweden’s Higher Education Authority.
It is an understatement to say that Hedda Andersson’s study years in Lund were different from what it is like for today’s female students. She got used to people being surprised, stopping and turning around as she passed them on the streets. As a woman at the university by the end of the 19th century, you could not move as you may have wished. If you attended a party, a chaperone was mandatory.
However, Hedda was popular among her fellow students, and to her honor, balls and spexes were organized. That fit Hedda very well, and she showed her appreciation by singing during the balls and supper events at Stadt Hamburg in Malmö. She made her mother and grandmother immensely proud as she, after several years of laborious studying, obtained her medical degree and opened a practice for children and women diseases in Malmö.
Today, 133 years after her entering as the first female student in Lund, there is a specially established professorship in her name, aiming to promote an increased number of women in high status positions within the academic community. What the future brings is yet to be discovered, we can only guess what Hedda Andersson herself would have thought of the academic community development. One thing is certain. Her current colleagues are making good use of their educational rights.
Text: Annika Skogar och Karolina Jakstrand
Photo: Tim Jedeur-Palmgren
Translation: Maximilian Aleman-Tennell
