When Kristi Andersen began her doctoral education in the early 1970s, many looked at her pursuit as a trifling endeavor.

‘At that point, there was still quite a bit of discrimination against women,’ said Andersen, now a political science professor at Syracuse University. ‘Many graduate programs had quotas and would only accept a few women, and professors frequently talked about how women probably wouldn’t go on to get their degrees, but would drop out to have families.’

But times are changing for women pursuing doctorates. In 2008 to 2009, women earned more doctoral degrees in the United States than men for the first time, according to an analysis of graduate enrollments and degrees from the Council of Graduate Schools. And SU graduate programs followed this trend.

Despite a higher rate of female enrollment in higher education, men have always led in obtaining doctorate degrees in the past, according to the study. Now the tide has changed, and the majority of U.S. college graduates have been women since 1987, according to the Pew Research Center. As of October 2008, they compose 53 percent of U.S. college graduates.

Donald Saleh, vice president for enrollment management at SU, said he was not surprised by these findings. 

‘We have witnessed a shift in higher education over the past several decades,’ he said. ‘For quite a few years, there have been more women than men entering undergraduate programs. In recent years, the ratio has been 56-to-44 or even greater.’

The trend in women receiving doctorates reflects statistics of female enrollment in higher education, Saleh said. Girls are more likely to graduate from high school and more heavily enroll in bachelor’s programs, he said.

The study reported a majority of women did not become doctoral recipients earlier because men dominated career fields like engineering, math and computer science, the fields that typically require doctorates. Only 22 percent of engineering doctorates in 2008 to 2009 was awarded to women and 27 percent for mathematics and computer science. The fields in which women make up a majority are the arts and humanities, health sciences and biological sciences. 

The findings were similar for SU, Saleh said. 

‘At Syracuse, we see more men than women entering Ph.D. programs in the science, math, engineering and technology disciplines,’ he said. ‘In the rest of the university, the number of women in Ph.D. programs exceeds the number of men.’

Crystal Bartolovich, an associate professor at SU with a doctorate in English, obtained her doctoral degree in the 1980s.

‘In English, there have always been somewhat more women than in many other fields, presumably because it was considered a field appropriate to women,’ she said.

Despite being in a field composed mainly of women, Bartolovich said very few females in the early 20th century would have completed doctorates. She said this changed by the late ‘80s, when her incoming doctoral classes were relatively even in gender.

Bartolovich said she is not surprised women surpassed men in doctoral degrees due to modern programs being more accommodating for women caring for families.  She said it is now easier for women to have flexible schedules for teaching at a college or university, making it possible for couples to share child care responsibilities.

Bartolovich said she had an easier time pursing a doctorate at the time than other women because she did not have children.

‘I had no trouble finding a temporary position while I finished my dissertation,’ she said. ‘However, I did not have children, which made it easy for me to move anywhere to take a position and to be, otherwise, very flexible in the time I could devote to research.’

For Andersen, studying political science at the University of Chicago in the 1970s meant relying on fellow female graduate students. She said she was one of few female graduate students studying political science, with about 20 percent of the graduate students being women. 

‘But there was a good cohort of women in my graduate school class,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think finishing a doctorate was any more difficult for me than it was for my male classmates.’

cabidwel@syr.edu

Published on September 28, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Colleen: cbidwill@syr.edu