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If women have been earning more degrees than men since 1978, why are the majority of educated leadership still men? If women have been a majoritarian sex-based

If women have been earning more degrees than men since 1978, why are the majority of educated leadership still men? If women have been a majoritarian sex-based power movement for 40 years this should be plenty of time to replace professors, CEOs, business owners, presidents and vice presidents, grant reviewers, and significant, public-facing leaders of the world's top educational instutions. Why is this not the case? (For the record: I'm not denying your understanding of the situation. I'm trying to understand your position regarding feminism's role in empowering women and the disparate power between men and women that you're seeing.

FakeComments 7y ago
What do you mean? Women are presently becoming presidents, vice-presidents, etc and forming women advocacy committees inside of corporations and other organizations to use their influence to create special programs for women which advantage them in the same way we’ve seen from the educational system. And women have become prevalent in all of those fields, over the same time period. The reason you don’t see them storming the ranks of business leadership is twofold: 1. It simply takes time. A woman who was 22 in 1978 is 63 now, so the very beginning of that group is only now reaching senior leadership — exactly in line with the timing of female advantage programs in the workplace. If my theory is right (and people don’t do anything — which is unlikely), then we’d see the same sexist programs from colleges rolled out into the workplace over the next twenty years. (I think pointing it out is part of pushing back on excess in democracy — hence me calling it out here.) 2. Biology is a thing, and we see that in equitable societies — where women are free to pursue passions rather than coerced to amass power — they tend to choose a different distribution of lifestyles than men. There’s two cohorts in women that are smaller in men, the ones who want to stay home as caretakers and the ones who want to work part time and be part time caretakers. It’s not clear that women try to lead major corporations at the same rate as men — and as anecdata, around half the small business owners, and majority of crafters or service contracting company owners, I meet are women. We may actually be seeing a more fair outcome than first blush would lead you to believe — and desires simply aren’t evenly distributed. I’m not saying there isn’t sexism anywhere. I’m just saying there’s systemic sexism against men in education — and women who are accustomed to that are trying to bring it into the workplace.
malvosenior 7y ago
The most obvious explanation is that there really are inherent differences between men and women such that (some) men drive themselves harder to attain these high level positions. Sadly, this is an area that's more or less forbidden to investigate and discuss due to politics.
- martin_a 7y ago
  This is fascinating. I would describe myself as "burning for the job", to a level that is not really healthy sometimes. But I love what I do, it's more than a job for me and I will (maybe) stop looking for better jobs and giving 110%, once I reach a salary of 100k or more a year (this is still quite a number in Germany, I think). While some male colleagues also really burn for their jobs and want to achieve great things, my female colleagues are really hard to motivate to go the extra mile. They value free time and work-life balance more than staying overtime, getting something done today and not tomorrow and things alike. Maybe they are doing the right thing, work is not everything, but I think this might lead to men taking positions which require the aforementioned "mindset", no matter whether it's healthy or not.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    I agree that the choice to not prioritize career need not be viewed in a negative light. The focus on everyone having a high powered career seems somewhat anti-human to me. It devalues the very important role of family in society. It also seems somewhat sexist to label what has traditionally been a stronghold of women (motherhood) as being somehow less important that working a full-time job. Being a stay at home parent is very difficult and very valuable work.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  Arguably, if it was the case there is a systematic push of women to dominate all levels of higher education, then only a minority of extremely hard working or talented men would achieve high level positions while the vast majority would be women who used nepotism and social networking to achieve their standing (via feminism-boosting). So it still isn't making intuitive sense to me why most leadership is still male if it holds true that women should have the most power and have held the most power over the leadership pipeline for over a generation.
wvh 7y ago
(Not parent poster) Because many women don't want power over others, preferring co-op over hierarchical structure, while a lot of men don't want equality but to fight and climb the ladder (or die)? I'm not asserting as univocally true, just musing that the environmental structures in which "normative" men and women thrive might be quite different. In other words, are men collectively squeezing women out of the game, or are men playing each to the death for personal victory, not handing out free passes to the other opponents, male or female? While the former might regrettably happen, I feel the latter is really the common case.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  It doesn't make sense that women don't want power over others but simultaneously are presumably actively oppressing the male gender.
  - wvh 7y ago
    This is a silly generalisation, but women want to live in a female world and men want to live in a male world. Male thoughts and drives are not acceptable in a modern mixed environment – at least openly – so the rules of mixed environments really become the rules of female conversation and social behaviour. Oppression conjures images of physical force, so perhaps intolerance is a better word than oppression, by a small but very vocal group of women. You can control others without taking part in a hierarchical structure.

FakeComments 7y ago

What do you mean? Women are presently becoming presidents, vice-presidents, etc and forming women advocacy committees inside of corporations and other organizations to use their influence to create special programs for women which advantage them in the same way we’ve seen from the educational system. And women have become prevalent in all of those fields, over the same time period. The reason you don’t see them storming the ranks of business leadership is twofold: 1. It simply takes time. A woman who was 22 in 1978 is 63 now, so the very beginning of that group is only now reaching senior leadership — exactly in line with the timing of female advantage programs in the workplace. If my theory is right (and people don’t do anything — which is unlikely), then we’d see the same sexist programs from colleges rolled out into the workplace over the next twenty years. (I think pointing it out is part of pushing back on excess in democracy — hence me calling it out here.) 2. Biology is a thing, and we see that in equitable societies — where women are free to pursue passions rather than coerced to amass power — they tend to choose a different distribution of lifestyles than men. There’s two cohorts in women that are smaller in men, the ones who want to stay home as caretakers and the ones who want to work part time and be part time caretakers. It’s not clear that women try to lead major corporations at the same rate as men — and as anecdata, around half the small business owners, and majority of crafters or service contracting company owners, I meet are women. We may actually be seeing a more fair outcome than first blush would lead you to believe — and desires simply aren’t evenly distributed. I’m not saying there isn’t sexism anywhere. I’m just saying there’s systemic sexism against men in education — and women who are accustomed to that are trying to bring it into the workplace.

malvosenior 7y ago

The most obvious explanation is that there really are inherent differences between men and women such that (some) men drive themselves harder to attain these high level positions. Sadly, this is an area that's more or less forbidden to investigate and discuss due to politics.

martin_a 7y ago
This is fascinating. I would describe myself as "burning for the job", to a level that is not really healthy sometimes. But I love what I do, it's more than a job for me and I will (maybe) stop looking for better jobs and giving 110%, once I reach a salary of 100k or more a year (this is still quite a number in Germany, I think). While some male colleagues also really burn for their jobs and want to achieve great things, my female colleagues are really hard to motivate to go the extra mile. They value free time and work-life balance more than staying overtime, getting something done today and not tomorrow and things alike. Maybe they are doing the right thing, work is not everything, but I think this might lead to men taking positions which require the aforementioned "mindset", no matter whether it's healthy or not.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  I agree that the choice to not prioritize career need not be viewed in a negative light. The focus on everyone having a high powered career seems somewhat anti-human to me. It devalues the very important role of family in society. It also seems somewhat sexist to label what has traditionally been a stronghold of women (motherhood) as being somehow less important that working a full-time job. Being a stay at home parent is very difficult and very valuable work.
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
Arguably, if it was the case there is a systematic push of women to dominate all levels of higher education, then only a minority of extremely hard working or talented men would achieve high level positions while the vast majority would be women who used nepotism and social networking to achieve their standing (via feminism-boosting). So it still isn't making intuitive sense to me why most leadership is still male if it holds true that women should have the most power and have held the most power over the leadership pipeline for over a generation.

wvh 7y ago

(Not parent poster) Because many women don't want power over others, preferring co-op over hierarchical structure, while a lot of men don't want equality but to fight and climb the ladder (or die)? I'm not asserting as univocally true, just musing that the environmental structures in which "normative" men and women thrive might be quite different. In other words, are men collectively squeezing women out of the game, or are men playing each to the death for personal victory, not handing out free passes to the other opponents, male or female? While the former might regrettably happen, I feel the latter is really the common case.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
It doesn't make sense that women don't want power over others but simultaneously are presumably actively oppressing the male gender.
- wvh 7y ago
  This is a silly generalisation, but women want to live in a female world and men want to live in a male world. Male thoughts and drives are not acceptable in a modern mixed environment – at least openly – so the rules of mixed environments really become the rules of female conversation and social behaviour. Oppression conjures images of physical force, so perhaps intolerance is a better word than oppression, by a small but very vocal group of women. You can control others without taking part in a hierarchical structure.