Colleges and universities of today are dominated by female students. Men try to find non-academic occupation or have lower marks than women and are not admitted to education.
– You can see it as an interesting mystery. Why do boys achieve less when they are not less talented? says Mats Björnsson who has done research about gender and success at school.
Women are good at school and go on with their studies. Men prefer to take it easy at school and choose practical, non-academic occupations.
It may sound like a gross generalisation but statistics and research speak for themselves. The students Veronica Hallgren and Lukas Kornfeld are both studying to become psychologists. They see several reasons for the female dominance.
– Many girls don’t think about if they are going to study but what they are going to study. For boys it is not that obvious. A guy who doesn’t want a job that requires education can get far on his good self-confidence and being creative, thinks Lukas Kornfeld.
“It will crack down on the boys”
Their own education is a good example of this. Lukas Kornfeld is one of few men who have been admitted by their marks.
Most boys in my class apply by the higher education test or other alternative ways. But almost all the girls have been admitted by their marks, he says.
Veronica Hallgren thinks that formal education is higher valued by women.
People who are not so self-confident think that he or she doesn’t know anything and therefore apply for university where you get proof of your knowledge in writing. Others with good self-confidence, mostly boys, think they can get a good job without education, she says and Lukas Kornfeld agrees but throws in a reservation:
This will crack down on the boys. In future society the male ideals about being laidback and cool won’t hold anymore. I mean, soon you will need education for cleaning the street, he says.
55 per cent women at the University of Lund
A lot has changed in Lund during the last 50 years. In the 1950s there were 4,000 students at the University of Lund and an overwhelmingly majority were men. Today the number of students is ten folded and 55 per cent are women. In the rest of the country the female dominance is even bigger. Where have the boys gone?
Stig Forneng, investigator at the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, has an explanation.
– One reason for boys to proceed to universities less frequently than girls is that there is more of traditionally male vocational training at high school. The gender competition is thus not so large since girls and boys choose different educations, he says.
At the same time educations dominated by women, like teaching and nursing, have taken the step into the universities.
Could be about ideals
Another explanation is that girls in average have significantly better marks at school. The gender difference is obvious regardless of what social group the students belong to or where they live. Researcher Mars Björnsson thinks that is partly due to the anti-study culture that he means exists among boys.
We need to discuss the male ideals saying that you have to be manly and strong. The boys are not unaware of that it is important to be good at school, but they prefer to be cool than crammers. School is the girls’ domain. At school you go by marks above all/first and foremost and the informal norms and structures from working life don’t exist there, says Mats Björnsson.
Perhaps it is the way school treats girls and boys that in the long run leads to different marks, work choices and studies?
The teaching favours girls
Pia Enochsson, director-general of The Swedish National Agency for School Improvement, thinks that the style of the teacher and the teaching methods should be questioned from a gender perspective in order to help boys to achieve more.
– I firmly believe that the school has acquired a way to teach that is more and more unfair to boys, she says.
Some debaters also claim that boys receive unfairly low marks. According to a paper at the Institute of education in Stockholm boys in general get lower final grades when they leave compulsory school than girls do in mathematics, Swedish and English compared to their results in the National Tests. Pia Enochsson does not see that guy’s self-confidence decreases as a result of lower grades and education. On the contrary.
– Boys have good self-confidence in spite of less interest for studies than girls have. The self-confidence is given through the behaviour of the adults around them. It is fundamental for the trust to your own ability and surely also the reason for men’s high positions, she says.
The female dominance at the university looks different depending on what education you look upon. For example, women are now at majority at several prestigious educations that traditionally have been male domains, such as psychologist, architect and dentist. But men have not taken the same step into traditionally female dominated occupations.
“Men want to earn more”
Annika Linné and Lennart Andersson are study counsellors at the institution of psychology at the University of Lund. They think that psychology educated women mainly work within healthcare, while men become managers or make careers within the academic world. They notice, however, that more and more men want to become psychologists.
– This autumn 19 of 42 students who attend their first term are men. These are exceptional numbers, says Annika Linné.
In the other year groups the guys are mostly in a clear minority. In one class 6 out of 38 are guys, in another 10 of 36.
Lennart Andersson thinks that the female dominance might be due to the fact that men more often try to professions where you make more money than a psychologist does.
– We have more applicants per place than medical training. It is tough to be admitted and it is a long education. But at the end of the day you don’t earn that much money, he says.
However, Lennart Andersson and Annika Linné do not think that the uneven gender balance is a problem per se.
Our ambition is to get people who have a will and an interest to become psychologists. The gender balance is what it is, says Lennart Andersson.
Photo: David Polberger
Translation: Yvonne Tevström
