Sometimes It's Hard to be a Woman

There is an op-ed piece in today’s NYTimes by Jennifer Delahunty Britz, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College. Questions she raises about college admissions and gender connect with the larger discussion we are living out as a society about how to balance our desire for a society in which individuals are judged upon their merits and the realities of the injustice of unequal opportunity.

Below is an excerpt from her essay:

The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.

We have told today's young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today's most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How's that for an unintended consequence of the women's liberation movement?

The elephant that looms large in the middle of the room is the importance of gender balance. Should it trump the qualifications of talented young female applicants? At those colleges that have reached what the experts call a "tipping point," where 60 percent or more of their enrolled students are female, you'll hear a hint of desperation in the voices of admissions officers.

Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender balance matters in ways both large and small on a residential college campus. Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns out, fewer females find your campus attractive.

What are the consequences of young men discovering that even if they do less, they have more options? And what messages are we sending young women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission to the nation's top colleges? These are questions that admissions officers like me grapple with.

The polemicists use simple rants to disguise the complexities of the quest. They attempt to drive us into one camp or another, ignoring consequences that don’t suit their positions. In their argument the simple answer is the only answer: no quotas, better affirmative action. “What are the consequences when young men discover that even if they do less, they have more options.” The very quotas designed to level the playing field and eradicate prior injustices in the end serve to solidify the privileged position of the male. An “affirmative action” form of college admissions is re-establishing male privilege. To throw it out the door and admit solely based upon merit without any regard for gender creates a college environment – heavily female – that is against the desires of the women who best compete.

Many would view all of this and decide it sucks to be a woman. For one, such a comment would be a denunciation of patriarchal privilege ingrained in society. For another, a callous dismissal of the societal loss caused by such privilege. In the end this dismal picture of unintended consequences offers us a glimpse into how across the whole of our society there are questions of deep significance that need to be addressed, but that are not amenable to simple answers. The politics of the sound bite will not suffice to rectify these problems.

Sadly, I don’t believe we have leadership in any of the major political parties that are up to the task. It’s time for thinking and caring people to come together across the spectrum and tell the Frists and Boxers, the Pelusos and Lotts, that since they are unwilling to truly grapple with these issues, but instead appear only interested in scoring political points, it is time they retired to a life of blogging so that people who acknowledge the merit in another’s view, and who do not seek power as an end itself, or to privilege their own peers, but instead desire to discover that which is for the greater good, and to bring it to flower, can take their place as public servants. How to accomplish this I’ll leave for another post.