G'day Fractelle,

I've provided information on that in the past. Women have entered all schools at Uni but as Master pointed out, are still few in traditional male areas disciplines like engineering.

The extra female enrolments include:

1. Nursing students - since nursing courses became University based instead of deivered from training hospitals.
2. Mature age students who have been able to finally attend Uni - especially with the distance ed option. They are making up for lost time.

The numbers of male attendees are no less than they ever were.

No men are excluded by law or policy from undertaking any course that they choose - unlike the set up until recenty for females wanting to attend.

Males still prefer their traditional areas - relatively few have chosen social work or nursing, for example (which is a pity).

Apart from being excluded by policy (as I was, despite excellent highschool marks) social pressure also acted against women getting a higher educational qualification. In the 80s, I could ask anyone in our small town to mind my baby while I baked for a cake stall or something, but everyone would refuse - often delivering a sanctimonious lecture at the same time - if I asked anyone to mind the baby while I sat an exam. I had to hold the baby on my lap during one examination. Thankfully an older gent who was very kind was the examination supervisor that year.

pynch

I agree with CJ about Antiseptic's mathematical calysthenics ‘making statistics "lie".’

The apparent surge in female enrolments in recent decades is misleading. It reflects the merging of previous non-university colleges into universities over that time. Because a lot of today’s universities were once teacher training and nursing colleges, these mergers have automatically brought a lot more females into university study.

Along with these changes the traditional women’s professions – nursing, teaching and librarianship – have all been upgraded to university degree entry over the last 20-30 years. The other traditionally female-dominant profession, social work, only became a university-entry profession in the 1960s.

And despite the upgrades to university entrance level of the traditional women’s professions, they are among the lowest paid and undervalued of university graduate professions.

Fractelle: “Piper, we need gender parity in the caring professions as much as we do in the more powerful professions such as law, big business and politics. When in hospital recently, I found the male nurse who attended me to be a particularly empathetic and competent person. We need more people like him.”

That’s funny, I remember male and female helpers in hospital when I had my kids and the men were brilliant. If you said hold this (baby) I will back in a minute you would find them exactly where you left them. With the females you’d come back and your baby is in the nursery and the woman nowhere to be found.

I actually have no idea what that means about either gender. Probably in that situation the fem’s are just more confident and the ‘ales terrified of new mums?

Hey funniest thing was when I was in labor with my girl and the midwife says there is this student nurse and was it okay if they came to observe their first birth, I say yes of course… and in walks David the nurse. He was great and we had some really good laughs (between contractions). I hope I made his first birth memorable. And the midwife was really really old and just amazing and comforting woman and she taught me and David a lot at the same time.

The more I stay on OLO the more I figure my daughter out, born into laughter. Oh yeah then I told my mum to hold her and wandered out the door for a smoke. Abandoned at birth.[grin]

Anti, lighten up and ease off with the over-generalizations babe. Our children are not weapons. With fostering you can imagine how “anti foster parents” the biological parents get, they can be very bitter and I don’t blame them most of the time but I do everything I can to make them like me because it is better for their little ones.

Whistler, I reckon one day I am going to be reading your posts and have a eureka moment.

AndIJustBlitheredMyWayto350Words!

Pynchme: "Males still prefer their traditional areas - relatively few have chosen social work or nursing, for example (which is a pity)."

Yeah bugger.

Can any males here give any reasons as to why this might be?

Just no interest in these fields?

Thanks Pynchme & SJF

I found it hard to believe that there would be only 45% male engineering students. Your analysis makes good sense.

Piper

I think that men choosing the nursing profession would've given it a lot more thought than many women - only those who really feel the call would go into such an under-paid, often thankless and long shift type work. So the male nurses are probably among the best of the best. Whereas for some females (but by no means all) nursing would just seem a suitable vocation for a woman. Much as it was in the past: teaching, nursing and secretarial work were the main careers for women. Thank the goddess we have more options now.

Forgetting numbers war for a moment, scrutiny of enrolment by courses by sex proves that women still generally prefer certain courses and occupations. For example, even where women are encouraged into courses like civil engineering, they tend to slide off to something like engineering journalism. It raises the eternal question: 'Do you have courses for horses or horses for courses?'

It is essential to offer full choice and be honest about it, but at the same time the feminist insistence on equality of outcomes will result in unfairly pushing square pegs into round holes, through strongly encouraging students to take up courses that might not intuitively appeal to them.

Similarly the push from the other end by launching a career counselling/career streaming attack on boys and girls as early as pre-school is bloody minded feminist idealism that is far removed from the reality that boys and girls could be different. Obviously, policy formulated by feminist academics who are so 'informed' by their own feminism that they don't need to take advice from others is fraught with error. A reality check wouldn't go astray.

The blinkered way of thinking that attempts to compare the raw numbers of women with men (lumping women together and comparing with men) has already been challenged by feminist thinkers like Dr Catherine Hakim, Work-Lifestyle Choices for the 21st Century, whose preference theory suggests that the more relevant and appropriate question is "Are women getting what they really want?".

http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2004/01/hakim.html

We should follow Dr Hakim's thinking and ask "Are women and men getting what they really want?" and then we might see some improvement. One thing is for sure and that is that the blinkered work-centered feminist thinking in Australia (and the gender war) is the way of the dinosaurs. Feminist thinking is not attuned to home or family preferences and that is an impediment to change. Still, as long as the gender war puts bread on the table for some they will continue to scam women into supporting their own cynical interests at the expense of the good of most women (and their menfolk!).