Conference turris::womannotes-v3

531.0. "Article: Putting Women's Education to Work" by LEZAH::BOBBITT (but you're *french* vanilla...) Thu Nov 15 1990 10:00

 
 
<dist. lists deleted>
 
 
Putting Women's Education to Work Could Enrich U.S. Economy
  by Clifford Adelman, senior associate in the Office of Research, US Dept. Ed.
  in LA Times, October 28, 1990, Opinion Section
 
    The economic pundits are fingering their worry beads and pronouncing
    the doom of the United States' work force.  It will be wholly eclipsed,
    say columnists in publications ranging from Newsweek to Barron's, by
    those of other advanced post-industrial nations.  We are unprepared for
    the upheavals and opportunities of a global economy, this school of
    thought would teach us, and ultimately our standard of living will
    fall.
 
    Reality teaches something else: If we play it right, if economic
    justice can determine economic strategy, the women of the US will make
    the difference.  We will not be eclipsed.  If we play it right -- and
    just.
 
    The US will enter the next century with a remarkable edge over its
    global competitors.  US women, of all races, are the best educated and
    trained in the world.  They will constitute 64% of the new entrants to
    the work force over the next 10 years.  US women now comprise more than
    half of enrollees and degree recipients at all levels of higher
    education -- except the doctorate.  In contrast, women constitute only
    42% of higher education enrollees in what was West Germany and 34% in
    Japan.
 
    Labor market equity in the US, sadly, is another issue.  ``Americans
    are missing something,'' says Kerstin Keen of Volvo,.  Keen, who wrote
    a work-force education report on behalf of 24 major European
    corporations, adds, ``Your're not utilizing women as well as you have
    prepared them.''
 
    The most telling evidence of this unhappy paradox comes from the
    richest archive ever assembled on a generation of Americans -- the US
    Department of Education's study of the high-school class of 1972. The
    22,600 men and women who initially participated in this survey are now
    ``thirtysomething,'' and represent the ``critical knowledge work
    force'' of the year 2001.  While there are dozens of stories in their
    records over 14 years, the most stunning is that of the women.
 
    Consider, first, the evidence of women's superior academic performance: 
 
    * Matching women and men who took equal amounts of math or science in
    high school, the mean class rank for women exceeded that for men by 10
    points.  That is: Women beat men on conventionally ``male'' turf.
 
    * The parents of the class of '72 had lower educational aspirations for
    their daughters than they had for their sons.  The daughters themselves
    had lower educational aspirations than the sons.  Yet a higher
    percentage of women than men entered college directly from high school
    and won scholarships.
 
    * Once in college, women earned consistently higher grade-point
    averages than men, no matter what field they studied.  The differences
    in performance are greatest in matching women and men who majored in
    science, business and engineering, traditionally ``male'' fields.
 
    * Achievement in college had a striking impact on the further
    educational plans of women in the class of '72.  When they were
    surveyed in 1976 and 1979, the proportion of those aspiring to graduate
    degrees vaulted over that of men.
 
    These data show that women's aspirations are less inflated than men's,
    their plans more realistic, their focus on goals more intense.  They do
    what they say they will do.  Women ``walk away from their pasts'' in
    late adolescence, Mary Belenky and her colleagues wrote in ``Women's
    Way of Knowing.''  Further education supports their development.  And
    further education -- along with realistic plans and determination -- is
    the basic currency of the world economy of the 21st Century.
 
    The US economy, however, seems to discount all the evidence of women's
    superior educational performance and commitment.  Between age 25 and
    32, a substantially higher percentage of women from the class of '72
    experienced genuine unemployment and underemployment than did men. This
    experience was as stubbornly true for women who earned bachelor's
    degrees as it was for those who earned no degree.  And at age 32, the
    women who were college graduates tended to hold lower-paying and
    traditionally female jobs -- for example, nursing and health technology
    (11%), teaching (23%) and office or financial-services support (9%).
 
    The data are dry; the stories are not.  Janice, for example, a former
    student of mine in a mass-communications course, was always prepared,
    articulate and searching for knowledge beyond the course syllabus. She
    organized three or four of her peers to do a group study that involved
    commuting to Manhattan to interview TV rating service researchers.  She
    stood out in a class of 140.
 
    Janice Graduated in 1978, with a major in allied health sciences. Three
    years later, she was passing out towels in a health club in downtown
    Washington, waiting for a job testing exercise equipment in
    Pennsylvania or one in a physical therapy clinic in New Jersey.  And
    out of work for two months before she started passing out towels.
 
    We're not talking here about the ``glass ceiling,'' that fragile
    metaphor for the barrier between women in mangement careers and the
    executive suite.  We're talking about the entire labor market for jobs
    requiring more than a high schooleducation, and Janice, a state college
    graduate of some promise, was typical.
 
    Even more telling than the experience of unemployment or
    underemployment are earnings differences between women and men with the
    same undergraduate backgrounds.  If one restricts the women in this
    comparison to those without children -- the group with as many years of
    job experience as men -- the bottom line is devastating.  Our analysis
    of data, reported in 1986, indicates that men who majored in fine arts
    earned, on average, 15% more than the women; men who majored in foreign
    languages earned 54% more than the women, and men who majored in
    education earned 26% more than the women.  These fields are supposed to
    be female turf.
 
    In only four major occupations did the women college graduates earn
    more, on average, than men: chemist, economist, computer programmer and
    purchasing agent -- all requiring solid backgrounds in mathematics.  In
    five other major occupations -- accountant, editor/reporter, physician,
    engineer, health technician -- differences in earning were
    insignificant.  Appearance and dress are not keys to mobility in these
    occupations.  Despite messages from the Glamours of this world, women
    achieve pay equity in fields requiring substance more than fluff.
 
    Outside of these occupations, however, earnings differences in favor of
    men ranged from 15% for pharmacists to 42% for retail sales managers
    to 77% for architects.
 
    Despite this discouraging pattern, a much higher percentage of women
    than men who attended college -- no matter what degree they earned --
    reported at age 32 that their learning and training were relevant to
    their work.  In other words, women tend to use what they've learned
    more than men.  Perceptive employers agree.  ``Women come into the
    workplace like immigrants,'' said Harold Tragash, vice president for
    human resources at Rorer, ``determined to succeed on the basis of what
    they know, not who they know.''
 
    Tragash sees women more likely than men to ``influence co-workers from
    a technical knowledge base.''  People who do that can change the
    knowledge with which we work, and that ability is critical to
    innovation in manufacturing, services and public administration.
    Innovations stemming from this supply of knowledge that women, in
    particular, bring to the job can make the difference in our economy in
    the 21st century.
 
    It has been frequently observed that women make occupational choices
    for more complex -- and personal -- resons than do men, and those
    reasons do not always include economic self-interest.  The currently
    fashionable argument built on this observation is that women will
    continue to perform well academically and then contribute their
    knowledge to the workplace regardless of economic rewards.  This
    argument unwittingly condones both the exploitation of women and
    economic stagnation.
 
    Why? First, because it does not encourage anyone's educational
    achievement.  It certainly does not tell men, who have been slacking
    off in school and college for decades, that genuine knowledge counts.
    Second, because it does not encourage the sharing of knowledge for the
    good of any enterprise.  If we take women's contributions for granted
    at the same time as we treat men's knowledge as proprietary and
    rewardable, we have a half-economy.
 
    The rest of the world doesn't behave this way.  Other nations may not
    educate as high a percentage of women beyond high school, but their
    economies do not leave a Janice passing out towels in a health club at
    age 25.
 
    Our national rhetoric holds that education is ultimately an economic
    investment on behalf of the whole society.  The history of the high
    school class of 1972 strongly suggest that women can prove that point.
    The coming century is theirs to do so.  But if the market rewarded
    women's attainments, everyone would benefit.  That's playing it right -
    -- and just.
 
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