The
Ascent of the Working Woman
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 11, 2018
Amazon’s Kindle Library:
$21.95 (paperback); $9.99 (e-book)
NO LONGER A “GLASS
CEILING,” NOW SIMPLY A MYTHIC WALL
IT IS ALL BURIED IN THE
STATISTICS
THE UNITED STATES OF ANXIETY
Some twenty-two years ago, viewing women through the feminine
prism in an attempt to get inside the gender bias, a chapter of The
Taboo against Being Your Own Best Friend (1996) was dedicated to
male/female statistics:
In 1996, white boys got higher scores in mathematics and science,
while girls got higher scores in reading, writing and reading comprehension;
Boys in eighth grade were 50 percent more likely to be held back a
grade than girls; boys in high school constituted 68 percent of the special
education population;
67 percent of female high school graduates went on to college,
whereas 58 percent of male high school graduates did so.
Regarding graduate school in 1970:
Women received 40 percent of all master’s degrees and were 59 percent
of all master’s degree students in 1996, earning 53 percent of all master’s
degrees;
Women earned only 6 percent of all professional degrees (medicine,
dentistry, law), but by 1991 that figure had risen to 39 percent;
Only 14 percent of all doctoral degrees went to women whereas in
1996 that figure had risen to 39 percent;
The medical degree earned during this period by women jumped from
8 percent to 39 percent, and by 1993 42 percent of first-year medical students
were women;
Only 5 percent of women earned law degrees, but that figure in
1993 was 40 percent;
Women received only 1 percent of dental degrees compared to 32
percent by 1991;
In 1996, women earned the majority of the doctoral degrees awarded
in pharmacy and veterinary medicine.
The summary concludes:
There is, however, a growing gender imbalance in higher education
among minority students. Among black students who earned a
bachelor’s degree in 1990, fully 62 percent were female; among Hispanic
students, 55 percent were female, and among white students, the imbalance was
53 percent to 47 percent favoring women.
FAST FORWARD TO THE 21ST CENTURY
The feminine resurgence is not only economic but cultural as
well. To an amazing degree it mirrors the 11th, 12th and
13th centuries (which will be covered in a future missive
on “The Ascent of the Working Woman”) when the driver was not
masculine but feminine dominance in manner, dress, speech, and decorum despite
the prominence of the Crusades to the Holy Land during this period.
Today, we see much less evidence of the “glass ceiling,” but now
it is the mystical wall that seemingly blocks feminine progress if not
achievement. Statistics bear this out without the necessity of
editorial comment.
As of 2015, the gender gap in favor of boys for mathematical
aptitude across ethnic groups continues to persist. It is reflected
in the Scholastic Aptitude (SAT) test where boys average higher math SAT scores
than girls: 1.65 to 1.00, which has held for more than forty years. Girls,
on other hand, during the same period, have continued to outperform boys on SAT
tests for reading comprehension.
In 1994, 63 percent of female high school graduates and 61 percent
of male high school graduates were enrolled in college. By 2012, the
share of young women enrolled in college increased to 71 percent while 61
percent remained unchanged for the college enrollment of men.
On the other hand, a most recent report confirms that black women
are the most educated group in the United States while being a long way from
economic equity or social parity. Between 2009 - 2010, black women
earned 68 percent of all associate degrees (two-year), as well as 66 percent of
bachelor’s degrees (four year), and 71 percent of master’s degrees and 65 percent
of all doctorates.
Between 1976 and 2012, college students who were black increased
from 10 to 15 percent, while the percentage of white students among U.S.
college students fell from 84 to 60 percent. By both race and
gender, a higher percentage of black women (9.7 percent) are enrolled in
college than any other group, topping Asian women (8.7 percent), white women
(7.1 percent) and white men (6.1 percent).
Most dramatic, where men once went to college far more than women
– 58 percent to 42 percent – the ratio has now been nearly
reversed. Today, women comprise more than 56 percent of all college
students on college campuses nationwide. Some 2.2 million fewer men
than women are enrolled in college today. The new minority in
American society is men.
MEN/WOMEN ARE MARRIED TO
THE MACHINE
THE POSTMODERN DEGREE
FACTORY
As of 2010, the most popular master’s degree for both men and
women is the Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA). Why
this degree has such eminence is open to conjecture. Obviously,
there is some legitimacy for an MBA in the complexity of the corporate business
world, but could this be hiding something, such as providing an anodyne for
career anxiety?
From 1970 to 1980, I was an adjunct professor for several public
and private universities (University of South Florida, Florida Institute of
Technology, St. Petersburg College, St. Leo University, Nova University,
Biscayne University, and Golden Gate University) in which all these
institutions presented the MBA degree to meet the demand. The
motivation of the students was never clear other than to have an added
bargaining chip for promotion. To put it another way, it was rare to
find a student truly interested in management theory and thought to appreciate
the efficacies, deficiencies and embedded problems of corporate
culture.
Women were invariably the best MBA students for insight and
pragmatic analysis of complex situations seldom becoming lost in the
detail. No surprise, as of 2016, women have earned the majority of
doctoral degrees in every year since 2009 including in business
curriculums.
Women started out modestly, first earning the majority of the
associate degrees in 1978, a majority of the master’s degrees in 1981, and a
majority of the bachelor’s degrees in 1982.
As inflation is a common aspect of modern economic society, the
bachelor’s degree has proven the equivalent of a high school diploma in
1950. In 2015, apparently realizing this, fully 26 percent of
college graduates were back in school pursuing master and doctorate degrees,
mainly because of the pay gap between a BA and an MA degree.
Since all students, male and female, are likely married to the
machine, the factory mentality and mindset has become endemic to the
age. Good sense and rational appraisal of how cost effective an
advance degree may be is seldom likely to be considered. The mantra
is: the bachelor’s degree is meaningless if not worthless; therefore I
must have an advanced degree.
Against this rationale, the tuition for a master’s degree at a
public institution can be in excess of $30,000 a year, while at a private
institution it can soar above $40,000 per year. Compare this with
the average debt of $35,000 per college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in
2015.
Then just how valuable is a master or doctorate
degree? Graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and
mathematics command salaries from $68,000 to $117,000 whereas degrees of other
disciplines (as will be soon shown) can be quite modest in comparison. Student
loans can and often do plague the college graduate for years into their working
life. But new and surprising opportunities are evolving due in part
to critical shortages in some professions.
New to the list is the physician assistant. This
master’s degree can earn $87,000 as median pay at the entry level as of
2016. In the United States, largely because of the physician
shortage, physician assistants are nationally certified and state licensed to
practice medicine under the supervision of a physician.
Graduate degrees in various areas of education, healthcare and
accounting can be far more modest in terms of possible income with an annual
salary of $48,700. What is ironic is that professionals in such
disciplines are most likely to be satisfied with their work despite the low
paycheck.
BEST GRADUATE DEGREES FOR
JOBS
Master’s in Biostatistics: medium salary, $105,000
Master’s in Statistics: $113,700
Ph.D., Computer Science: medium salary, $147,400
Ph.D., Economics: medium salary, $125,800
Master’s in Applied Mathematics: medium salary, $124,900
Master’s in Computer Science: medium salary, $125,700
Ph.D., Pharmacy: medium salary, $126,000
Ph.D., Mathematics: $106,600
Ph.D., Physics: $137,800
Master’s Degree, Software Engineering: medium salary, $118,900
Ph.D., Physical Chemistry: medium salary, $134,800
Master’s, Information Systems: medium salary, $116,100
Master’s, Physician Assistant Studies: medium salary, $103,600
MBA, Management Information Systems: medium salary, $117,800
Ph.D., Political Science: medium salary, $116,700
WORST GRADUATE DEGREES FOR
JOBS
Master’s, Fine Arts (MFA): medium salary, $46,600
Master’s, Early Childhood Education: $48,700
Master’s, Divinity: $48,700
Master’s, Elementary Education: $54,700
Master’s, Reading & Literacy: $58,200
Master’s, Theology, $57,800
Master’s, Special Education: $59,200
Master’s, Graphic Design, $72,700
Master’s of Library and Information Science: $61,200
Master of Arts in Teaching: $60,100
Master’s, Curriculum and Instruction: $60,600
Master’s, Teaching English as a Second Language: $55,000
Master’s, Pastoral Ministry: $60,800
Master of Architecture: $81,100
Master’s, English Literature: $69,500
THEN THERE IS THE PERSISTENT
MYTHICAL WALL
Some sixty years ago when I was young, economic security,
prestige, community respect and unquestioned authority was the prerogative of
the family physician. He didn’t worry about law suits, or being
disparaged by his clientele or worry about them second guessing
him. He was trusted as if a god to know and do what was best for
everyone in his care without consideration of race, ethnicity or economic
circumstances.
That mystique, although severely tarnished, has survived to this
day. It finds many women, as shown here, both black and white,
making huge sacrifices to become physicians. The only problem is
that being white instead of black tacks an extra $60,000 a year on the
physician’s paycheck if he is a man.
Medical doctors who are male earn 8 percent more than their female
colleagues, which translates into $20,000 or more for the male physician doing
the same work as the equally qualified female physician. The wage
gap is so wide that women physicians teaching in medical schools as full
professors make about the same as associate male professors.
This mythical wall was created more than one hundred years ago
when there were few if any female doctors. The medical profession
led by the American Medical Association created its brand as
assiduously as NFL owners created theirs. The AMA now defends that
brand, believing itself indispensable if not the infallible authority on
medical practice.
Indeed, the AMA promotes the correct dialogue with female doctors,
and claims to advocate equally the interests of female medical practitioners,
but the gap between male and female doctors, and now the surging presence of
black female physicians has continued to widen rather than shrink over the last
several decades.
For white female physicians this is not as pronounced a
discrepancy as it is for black women physicians, but it does illustrate the
fact that these highly qualified women of both races are pushing against a wall
that although mythical remains a psychological and economic barrier that still
holds these women in ascension from realizing their full potential and
promise. It is as if the mystique that dominated my youth sixty
years ago hangs on in its irrelevancy to this day.
The glass ceiling is gone, but this mythic barrier persists and it
does so because medical patients today have apparently the same mindset as
patience fifty to one hundred years ago, and that is, believing that the white
male doctor is omniscient when he is a disappearing phenomenon. The
Ascent of the Working Woman is in control of our creative tomorrow,
establishing her essence without fanfare but with due diligence as this book
attempts to illustrate.