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I wish people wouldn't generalize about the supposed "feminization" of higher education. I don't care if there are more female English majors or art historians or whatever, although I've always noticed, anecdotally, that the smaller number of men in those disciplines seem to get more attention than the women, at least on the graduate level, and prepared for Greater Things. Education and the humanities are still, by and large, a female ghetto.
But have you looked at the fields that really matter to being on top economically and in terms of infrastructure? Engineering? The sciences--both physical and biological? Medicine? What about information technology? Numbers of women are still small in many of those fields. In computer science the number of female students has actually *decreased* in past years. And that's where the big bucks are, too, in terms of funding and salaries.
I don't want to see anybody kept out of those fields. I've heard way too many stories about harrassment, hostility, admissions committees simply rejecting otherwise qualified female students on the basis of their gender, and all kinds of other tales of horror, and I have to shake my head at such self-defeating behavior. If you keep the women out, or don't encourage them to come in, you will lose crucial talent. This would be true for men, as well...if it could be shown to be true--and I am highly skeptical. *All* the best minds, male or female, matter when the country's viability as an economic, scientific, and technological superpower is at stake. Do you people really want to be bested by China? Then stop whining about reverse discrimination.
