The future is female in medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, law . . .
- Joanne Jacobs
- Feb 1
- 1 min read
Women outnumber men in law school, medical school, pharmacy school, optometry school and dental school, writes Jon Marcus in the Hechinger Report. About 55 percent of future lawyers, doctors and dentists are female, more than two-thirds of future optometrists and pharmacists. "Women studying veterinary medicine now outnumber men by four to one."
Men are the majority in doctoral and master’s degree programs in business, engineering, math and the physical sciences.
At the undergraduate level, the number of male students is down by 4 percent since 2020. Sixty percent of undergraduates are female. "Nearly half of women aged 25 to 34 have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 37 percent of men," he writes.
More-educated women are more likely to delay or forgo having children, Wharton researchers have found. In 1970, 80 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 were married, say Iowa State researchers. That's down to 38 percent. Each additional year of schooling reduces the likelihood that someone in that age bracket is married.
Boys do much worse in reading than girls, writes Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times. "In contrast with efforts to encourage girls in math and science, which have helped shrink their achievement gap with boys, little attention or effort has been focused on improving boys’ reading skills."
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone in academia or in general, as boys (assuming they manage to finish high school and graduate) are at least one to two grade levels behind in reading, math, and writing compared to girls.
Academically, women are usually far more focused on their studies at junior, community, or 4 year programs than men are (the imbalance for women vs men on college campuses could be as high as 2 to 1 by 2030 according to some studies), and in some places in the US, women make up 70% of the student body in co-ed colleges/universities.
Additionally, with little support given to boys with regards to reading and
writing, many of them who need 2…
One of the hidden impacts for career fields becoming majority female is that men in those field have an easier time finding and keeping jobs.
Example: Pharmacy ,when it was overwhelmingly male, was a career where the pharmacist owned his own pharmacy. That made moving, vacations, and switching jobs almost impossible. As the career field became more female, women move in and out of the field more often and want to work for large organizations for a salary. That means that there are more job openings and the job openings occur all over the U.S. Thus, men still in the field benefit.
I'm not sure I see the problem? Is the implication that woman are not as competent in these jobs as men would be? These are jobs that are subject to aggressive gatekeeping through licensing, internships, mentorships, etc. And men are persona non grata at those gates. So men are logically choosing not to waste years and money to enter a field they will always be hitting roadblocks.
Men are pursuing jobs where competency is rewarded without evil HR looming. Th…