news

Gender Equality, a Thing of the Past ?

The Dutch Labour Party, one of the major political parties in The Netherlands, has proposed that the government impose fines on highly educated women that choose to leave the labour force in order to care for family memebers, reported Expatica on March 22. According to its sponsers, the proposal is an attempt to recover the cost of education to the state becasue ''you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished,'' a party spokesperson said.

''To all the girls I have rejected...,'' Jennifer Dalahunty Britz, a female admissions officer at Ohio's Kenyon College, reminisced as she described what she considered to be a complex and troubling practice: with girls outspacing boys academically and female college applicants outnumbering the males, college admissions officers are rejecting qualified and over-qualified female applicants in favour of males with lesser qualifications.

Today two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they recieve more female than male applicants, and more than 56% of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42% of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men. Admission officers, many of whom work for colleges with female enrollments of over 60%, speak of a ''tipping point'' in which a young womans qualifications lose ground to the valued notions of ''gender balance'' described as the admission officer's elephant in the room.

To read more about this topic visit - www.nytimes.com/2006/03/opinion/125girls.html


How can we allow this ? Send us views at office@girls-without-borders.org

back