Female Supremacy Articles - Page 23

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Universities still welcome thousands of brilliant young men with ambition, dedication, and drive. However, women now outnumber men in all but a smattering of disciplines, notably mathematics, engineering and computer science. Even there, the male stranglehold is loosening. As a group, young women get better grades than young men and take less time to complete their education. And university administrators say they appear to know exactly what they want.

Today's students are on the hunt for a secure job with all the trimmings. And while most also confess they want a spouse and children, they fully expect a shuffling of household chores in keeping with their professional status, career responsibilities and income. Universities don't break down awards by gender, but if anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, female students are picking up the lion's share of the prizes and scholarships, at least at the undergraduate level.

"The rapidity of the change is astonishing," said Paul Cappon, president of the Canadian Council on Learning. "In 2003, women were 62 percent of university grads. Only a decade ago, the split was still 50/50." "It's a big issue," said Morton Mendelson, McGill's deputy provost for student life and learning. Female undergraduates have outnumbered males at McGill for roughly 20 years, but it's only in the last few the balance shifted to 60/40, with women commanding most of the spaces in professional schools.