Women, historically less educated than men, now totally dominate higher education: They make up 57 percent of college students and earned 57 percent of college degrees in 2013.
Girls have always excelled in school, but they used to be discouraged from seeking higher education. But as the feminist revolution brought more women into the workplace, young women and their families became more willing to invest in their economic futures. That allowed them to not only equal men’s academic achievements but surpass them.
How women caught up to men in college-going
The story of how women started earning more college degrees than men is more complicated than you might think. Three economists — Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz, and Ilyana Kuziemko — explored how it happened in a 2009 paper on women’s success in higher education.
They found that women didn’t gradually increase their share of the college population over a century. They pulled almost even in the early 20th century, fell behind, caught up, and then began to dominate.
It was rare for anybody to go to college in the early 20th century, but men and women attended at roughly equal rates (although women were more likely to go to two-year teachers colleges and men to go to four-year universities). During the Depression, women began to fall behind as unemployed men went to college to get an edge in the labor market. When the GI Bill opened up college to many more white men after World War II, it cemented women’s status as a minority; in 1950, they earned just 27 percent of bachelor’s degrees.
