Situation Report

COLLEGE EDUCATION. In 1970 about the same number of girls (50.5% of the total) graduated from high school as boys, but fewer women than men enrolled in college (41% as compared with 59%). Among the reasons may be parental opposition or lack of interest or money, but another factor is college quotas. Stanford, for example, maintains a 60% male majority, while at Princeton the figure is three men to every woman. Such quotas in themselves ensure that women need higher grades than men to gain admission.

Women also get substantially less scholarship and financial aid--$518 annually on the average for women, $760 for men. And although more women than ever received bachelor's degrees in 1970 (344,465), the percentage of recipients who were female (43%) was actually lower than in 1899 (53%).

GRADUATE SCHOOL After college, the gap widens. Women receive almost the same percentage of the M.A.s that are awarded (40%) as they do of the B.A.s (43%). But when it comes to doctorates conferred, only 13% go to women.

TEACHING. In elementary education, 85% of the schoolteachers are women, but only 21% of the principals. In high schools, the percentage of female principals drops to 3%. And if a woman wishes to become a college president, she is advised to become a nun: almost all of the meager 1% who make it are heads of Catholic institutions. In 1970, women constituted 20% of college and university faculties: 33% of the instructors were women, 20% of the assistant professors, 15% of the associate professors and 9% of the full professors. At Harvard, where women make up about 22% of the students of arts and sciences, there are only six women among the 421 tenured professors on that faculty. Even predominantly women's colleges like Vassar have more full-time men teachers (122) than women (66).

SALARIES. Educational achievement does not lead to equal income. The average annual income of a college-educated woman over 25 is $5,152 less than that of a similarly educated man. If she has a high school education, she will make $3.987 less than a man with the same diploma. Within the education profession itself, pay scales are consistently lower for women. At the University of Minnesota, for example, a study showed that women on the faculty earned an average of 32% less than their male counterparts of the same rank.

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