More than 55 per cent of students commencing higher education in 1995 were women. Nonetheless, some of the targets set in equity programs continue to label women as 'disadvantaged' and the government is still seeking to increase numbers of women in 'non-traditional' courses and postgraduate study. Meeting these targets will lead to an even greater gender imbalance unless men replace women in areas of study which are traditionally female. Gender access and participation differences at the micro level may be caused by choice or factors external to universities, rather than by systemic discrimination within the higher education sector.
The Dawkins White Paper', Higher Education A Policy Statement, set the agenda for radical change in higher education. The government's reforms sought to provide the basis for a long term expansion of higher education opportunities and greater equity of access to the system and its benefits'.[1] While the system was opened to a wider student base, the government noted that inefficiencies arose because significant barriers still exist to the full participation of disadvantaged groups in higher education'.[2] The government's commitment to a long term national policy for equity in higher education led to the National Board of Employment, Education and Training (NBEET) preparing the discussion paper A Fair Chance For All. It was in this document that equity aspects of government policy were fleshed out.
A FAIR CHANCE FOR ALL AND THE EQUITY AGENDA
A Fair Chance For All identified those groups which were believed to be disadvantaged in terms of their access to higher education. They were:
It was noted that:
The overall objective for equity in higher education is to ensure that Australians from all groups have the opportunity to participate successfully in higher education. This will be achieved by changing the balance of the student population to reflect more closely the composition of society as a whole.[4]
Interactions between the Commonwealth and educational institutions sought to work towards this goal. However, this overall aim of ensuring equal opportunity to participate has not always been flexibly implemented, nor has it been responsive to research findings about designated equity groups or target enrolments.
WOMEN IN HIGHER EDUCATION
One of higher education's outstanding equity success stories has been the radically improved access of and participation by women in recent years. In a previous article in People and Place,[5] it was shown that the number of women commencing at all levels of higher-education courses in 1994 was 123,279, or 54.7 per cent of total commencements. This paper revealed women's high rates of access to the elite universities, and to elite courses, and indeed, to all courses except the relatively small Higher Degree by Research category. In 1995, this trend has continued. There were 135,433 commencements by female students, constituting 55.3 per cent of all commencing students.
(note: Figure 1 is not reproduced in this on-line version)
It is also interesting to look at the situation over a longer time frame. This became possible following the publication by the former Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) of Higher Education Students Time Series Tables. From the late 1940s until the mid 1960s, female enrolments comprised less than a quarter of the total. By 1995, the situation had changed dramatically. Enrolments by women were now in the majority, with the watershed year being 1987. This was the first year in which there were more women than men enrolled as higher education students. The portent of this majority had occurred two years earlier, in 1985, when the numbers of women commencing higher-education courses first exceeded the numbers of men (50.3 per cent).
Some of the increase in women's enrolments can be accounted for by the scope of the statistics themselves. In effect, female enrolments were understated prior to 1985. First, the higher-education figures recorded from 1949 until 1973 included university enrolments only. In 1974, enrolment data from Advanced Education institutions were included for the first time. The five per cent increase in women's proportion of the total higher-education enrolment between 1973 and 1974 indicates that the female share of students in advanced education was larger than it had been in the universities. This is likely to have been due to the sizable numbers of females enrolled in teacher-education training institutions. Second, from 1985 State-funded basic nursing enrolments were progressively included in the higher-education figures. Previously, these students (the majority of whom were women) had been trained in hospitals.
Enrolments by women are not uni- formly spread across the higher-education spectrum. There remain differences in participation by sex both at the level of the course, and by the field of study. Women have traditionally been under-represented in higher degrees by research', although there has been a strong surge in recent years, which is clearly demonstrated in Table 1.
In 1980, women comprised less than 28 per cent of all enrolments in higher degrees by research'. But, in 1995, their proportion in these courses had increased to 42 per cent. The trend since 1980 has seen women's enrolments in research level courses increasing about one per cent per year, but in 1995 women are outnumbered by over 5,000 in higher degrees by research'. Nevertheless, if the current trend continues, the 50 per cent mark should be reached by very early next century.
At the other postgraduate' level, women have increased their participation to the point where they comprised over 53 per cent of total enrolments (91,479) in 1995. That is there were nearly 6,000 more enrolments by women than men at this level.
The foundation for further female advances at the postgraduate level has already been established at the under- graduate' level. By 1995, 54.7 per cent of undergraduate students were female. Their numbers here are likely to increase too, since in 1995 56.5 per cent of commencing students were female (up more than one per cent from 1994).
Women and men do not participate evenly in the various fields of study. Men have traditionally taken up a larger proportion of tertiary places in fields such as engineering, science, business, agriculture and architecture. Women have tended to dominate in arts, education and health. Figure 2 demonstrates the way in which the distribution of male and female enrolments has changed over the past decade. In every field of study the female proportion has increased between 1985 and 1995.
(note: Figure 2 is not reproduced in this on-line version)
DISADVANTAGE IN ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION
Despite this turnaround in higher-education enrolment relativities, women continue to be tagged as disadvantaged', and the pressure for state intervention to overcome this alleged disadvantage has continued. Conversely, the shrinking male minority has not been the subject of any equity evaluation or policy response. On the basis of the analysis above, it seems that women's access to and participation in higher education is more than adequate. However appropriate the disadvantaged-tag might have been in the past, it clear that being female is not a handicap in gaining access to higher education.
Specific targets for women's access to higher education, were set out in A Fair Chance For All, as follows:
While women have made great progress in higher education, depending on how these targets are interpreted, it could be argued that at least two of them, and perhaps all three, remain unmet. The first target of 40 per cent of female enrolments has been achieved in Science and Business fields of study, these being the fields most usually defined as non traditional'. However, women remain under-represented in the relatively small fields of Agriculture/Animal Husbandry (38 per cent) and Architecture/Building (35 per cent). For the second target, women's proportion of Engineering enrolments in 1995 stood at 13.4 per cent. This was also short of the 15 per cent enrolment target. If this shortfall were to be overcome, an additional 760 enrolments by women would be necessary. The third target, that the female proportion of postgraduate enrolments match the undergratuate proportion has not been attained but, nonetheless, women predominate in postgraduate courses overall. In 1995, there were 62,421 female postgraduates, or 50.3 per cent of all enrolments, slightly more than the 61,704 males. But meeting this target would require the female proportion to be the same as that of undergraduates, or 54.8 per cent. In our steady state' higher education system, 5,600 male postgraduate students would have to be displaced.
The point here is that setting targets for one part of a binary sub-population, without also looking at the other part, introduces a different form of inequity. An important demographic side effect is overlooked: unless males were to enter those higher education courses in which women are currently over-represented, there would be a net displacement of men from higher education.
The most recent NBEET discussion paper on equity,[7] released in November 1995 sought to assess the progress of the higher education system towards meeting the original equity objectives set in the White Paper of 1988 and ... A Fair Chance For All ...' Despite the preceding evidence, the discussion paper concluded that it seems appropriate to retain the six equity groups as defined [in A Fair Chance For All]...'[8] As far as women are concerned, the discussion paper noted that the focus should be on participation in engineering and some areas of science, and research higher degree enrolments in all fields...'[9] The overall female advancement relative to males is seen as insufficient to dispel the disadvantaged' tag.
Proponents of this view react adversely to the use of analytical material which demonstrates female numerical superiority in higher education. Tanya Castleman, for instance insists that the complex and entrenched dynamics of gender and culture privilege'[10] are working against women in their participation in higher education. Such advocates fail to explain how women could have advanced so rapidly to overtake male student numbers in total at a time of great competition for university places.
Another argument in favour of retention of female equity targets in higher education is that women are under represented in the TAFE institutions. Whereas this is certainly true, it should be noted that recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data indicate that 55 per cent of TAFE graduates were women.[11] Much of the female under-representation in TAFE enrolment statistics comes from women's low participation in apprenticeships. As at May 1995, only about 11,200 of Australia's 114,600 apprentices were female.[12]
Another objection advanced in support of the claim that women may still be disadvantaged in higher education is that the level of completions compared to commencements might provide a more informed picture of female participation and success'.[13] But female superiority is in evidence here too. Over the past several years, women have improved their relative position from 54.3 per cent of all higher education completions in 1988, to 57.2 per cent in 1994.[14]
It may be, as Wells has observed, that in future women might be under- represented in fee-paying postgraduate courses if they have lower access to employer-sponsored financial assistance.[15] Certainly this is an area where more information will help address any problems relating to equality of access.
CHOICE AND HIGHER EDUCATION COURSES
Choice is an important variable in the range of decisions of future higher-education students. The variables which need to be controlled for in the analysis of university entrance may have less to do with gender than they do with subject-discipline background and scoring systems used to rank applicants for tertiary entry. The relative under- representation of female school students in technical and applied studies, physical sciences and advanced mathematics[16] must diminish women's access to some higher-education courses but, to take the most extreme example, this factor alone cannot explain away the low female participation in undergraduate engineering. Female participation in other formerly non traditional' fields has increased markedly. For instance, female representation in Business/ Administration/ Economics had reached 48.7 per cent by 1995, up from 47.5 per cent in 1994 and from under 30 per cent in 1980. Women's decisions to move into this formerly male-predominant domain relate to other factors, such as future job prospects. In Science, female participation had increased to 44.5 per cent of all students commencing bachelor degrees by 1995. In 1994, the figure had been 43.2 per cent and in 1980 about 35 per cent. Female predominance in these fields also seems likely within a very few years.
The limitations on access associated with a lack of prerequisite subjects at the point of entry to higher education should be addressed either by increasing female particiption in these subjects at school, or by redefining the subject prerequisites of higher-education programs. Tertiary entrance scores of one type or another will then determine which school-leaver students enter higher education. In the wider context, it was noted by Johnston et al. that ...any attempts to broaden girls' post-school options must begin with the cultural perspectives of young women themselves and with their concerns about their futures'[17].
At the point of entry to higher degrees by research, it is true that fewer women chose to go on. But the principal deter- minants here are entry criteria and choice. Between 1994 and 1995, the proportion of female students commencing higher degrees by research increased from over 41 per cent to nearly 44 per cent. The reasons why fewer women choose to move into research than men can be drawn from a list which includes employment and family reasons. It is not at all clear that they relate to equity issues requiring inter- vention by the educational institution.
Dictionary definitions of equity' invariably include some reference to the concept of fairness. Since women occupy well over half of the all available places it is difficult to see where women's disadvantage in terms of access to higher education lies. It should be noted that women are also over represented in the other designated disadvantaged' groups. There are women students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) background (62 per cent of the total in 1995), female students with disabilities (no statistics available from data used for this paper), non-English-speaking-background students (52 per cent women), as well as rural students (58 per cent women), isolated students (60 per cent women) and low socio economic status (SES) female students (56 per cent). Several pieces of research have pointed to the overriding importance of low socio-economic status as a barrier to higher education.[18] It is interesting to note that women predominate in higher-education enrolments at all levels of socio-economic status, but that they particularly dominate amongst the minority of students who gain access to higher education from low socio-economic status households. In 1995, 56 per cent of students coming from such households were female (see Table 2). Sex, it seems, is not of itself an indicator of disadvantage in terms of access to higher education.
CONCLUSION
Any methodology built around targets requires an acceptance of the measurement of actual outcomes against these targets. A group may be defined as disadvantaged' because it has a representation in universities which is lower than appropriate for its age group or for any other statistic based on socially-defined cohorts. But logic suggests that it should shed that disadvantage' tag once it has attained appropriate representation. In the case of female representation in higher education, there has been a tendency toward shifting the focus to tighter targets, so that women can always be shown to be under-represented. For example, by 1994 women had reached a 43 per cent representation in the Science field of study (exceeding the 40 per cent target mooted in A Fair Chance For All). Yet we are told by Castleman that there are still some areas within science which have less than 40 per cent female [enrolments]'.[19] Surely this indicates little other than, in some other areas within science, women must constitute more than their 43 per cent average!
Retaining the notion of disadvantage for women in their access to higher education, when it is measurably inappropriate, diverts the attention from those gender equity issues which still need to be pursued. Gender inclusiveness of courses, the appropriateness language in textbooks and in classrooms, and studies into why women apply in unrepresentative numbers for postgraduate awards, would all go towards improving direct and indirect access to courses at all levels. Also, study into equity aspects of fee-paying courses, transition rates from undergraduate to postgraduate work and ways to increase the incidence of research in highly-feminised areas such as nursing and visual/performing arts could provide much more relevant equity-based outcomes.
References
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