George Will wrote an editorial about an ominous rise in dog ownership because an increasing number of women “are adopting dogs for security and/or companionship partly because of the great education divide.” Many more women than men are going to college. It was estimated that in 2013 there were 4.9 million more women age 25 or older with college degrees than men in that age group. Apparently women prefer to marry men who have educations at least similar to theirs, which translates to a shortage of suitable male partners. That leads to the women having a dog for companionship, and few would dispute that dogs are more dependable than men.
But that isn’t the end of the story. Amina Elahi writes that women represented 30 to 37 percent of computer science undergraduates in the 1980s. That number dipped to about 18 percent by 2010-2011. There are 75 percent of girls are interested in STEM in middle school, but apparently they then become more interested in makeup and having “the right body type.” There also continues to be a “nerdy” stigma with technology. Watching young girls and boys tells me they are all interested in technology, or at least they’re interested in the technology that keeps them texting each other as they gather for lunch.
It’s all very confusing. Why are many more women attending college but there are fewer of them in technology classes? I would think a young woman could fuss over her makeup and still attend a computer class. And why would they care about body type if they are going to opt for a dog as a companion?
I wonder if the decrease in numbers for women undergraduates in tech has to do with the huge influx in the last decade of foreign tech students? Most of these come from countries where female equality has, shall I say, room for improvement, so one would expect the gender balance to favor males. Only so many slots, and so many ambitious Indian, Asian and eastern European would-be undergrads clamoring for them. Maybe American females are deciding they would rather not fight that battle?