I want to take time out from my life story to pick up on a topic already recently discussed by others on this blog, namely the gender imbalance at universities today. When I was an undergraduate in England 50 years ago, the ratio of men to women was two to one. Now, more and more, it approaches the ratio the other way, one to two. I taught for 35 years at a moderately sized university in Southern Ontario, the University of Guelph. (Like virtually all Canadian universities, it is public.) Increasingly I used to worry about the way that things were going and inevitably I got nowhere with the administration. Every year we used to get proud messages from the president saying how well we were doing in recruiting women into engineering; every year I used to write a letter saying “what about the overall figures?”; every year I was regarded as a bit of a nutter. (Mark you, there was something a bit Oedipal about my going after the administration, on which topic more some other time.)
I am motivated to return to this topic because of a recent article in Canada’s leading newspaper, the (Toronto) Globe and Mail. (December 7, 2009: “Who’s in the know: Women surge, men sink in education’s gender gap.”) Guelph is special in that it has one of the very few veterinary schools in Canada. As the article points out, and as I can attest, there has been a huge change in the gender enrollment. When I started at Guelph, the incoming class would be 80 men and a quota (I kid you not) of four women. When I left in 2000, the class was 100, and almost invariably over 90 were women.
I know for a fact that there were specific reasons for this. One, of course, is that the practice of veterinary medicine changed and, physically and socially, became more a profession that a woman could contemplate. No longer was it primarily big-animal, rural practice. If a farmer (more likely these days an agribusiness) cannot cure a cow with a shot of penicillin, the beast is shipped off pronto to the hamburger factory. Veterinary medicine became increasingly small-animal and urban. A would-be vet could come from a Toronto suburb, and then when qualified return and live and work in that same suburb. But most notably the change came because of the television series based on the James Herriot novels “All Creatures Great and Small.” By 1980, every little girl in Canada wanted to be a vet.
As it happens, the whole campus benefited immeasurably from this, because droves of bright and motivated young women would come to Guelph, first to take a biology degree and then to try for the vet school. As it happens, most did not get in — I suspect most did not even apply, because as they matured they realized that biology in itself is very satisfying (especially those applied, job-oriented courses like environmental biology) and that they did not really want to spend their lives shoving a finger up a dog’s bottom. And frankly, as one who uses vets a lot — since we Ruses came down to Tallahassee in 2000, we have had seven dogs, as many cats, five ferrets, a pig, an emu, and god knows how many cold-blooded vertebrates — I really don’t care about the gender of my practitioner. (I do care about the cost. I am rather hoping that once the U.S. Senate has finished with human medicine, it will turn its attention to animal medicine. My rule of thumb is think of a reasonable price for services given, and double it and you won’t be far wrong.)
I do worry about the gender imbalance in higher education. (Frankly, I put much of it down to hormones. Adolescent and post-adolescent boys are not designed to study. They are designed to think about sex, nonstop. As one who takes evolutionary biology seriously, I fully expect boys and young men to be this way. Those of our would-be ancestors who were obsessed with sex, survived and reproduced. Those who weren’t, didn’t. Speaking autobiographically, so long as I was tucked away at an all-boys boarding school, I functioned just fine. As soon as I went away to university, I fell apart. Of course, ready access to cheap booze didn’t help either.)
I also worry more specifically about the gender imbalances in various subjects. Perhaps women are underrepresented in engineering, although why any sane person would want to spend their days in overalls with hands covered in grease altogether beats me. I know that we worry endlessly about women being underrepresented in philosophy. But have you looked at a language department recently? Fifteen years ago, about to set off on sabbatical to France, I took some lessons to brush up. My first class was 45 women and one man — and he was cheating because he was a Francophone looking for a soft opinion. The more advanced courses were little different.
At the risk of getting myself in the same hot water as the former president of Harvard, perhaps it is the case that biologically women are better at languages than men. I know that my daughter Emily can soak up languages like a sponge, whereas I am still stuck on the irregular verbs. But it does seem to me to be a matter of concern. In this modern world, languages matter. Perhaps there is good research on this. All I can say is that I think it is something we should be thinking about and my fairly wide experience of university life is that it is something that we are not generally thinking about. And that is a pity.
13 Responses to Is Your Vet a Woman?
luther_blissett - December 9, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I think there are a few forces at work here. First off, it is commonly noted that, while boys and girls are equally prone to misbehaving at school, the boys’ brand of misbehaving is taken as a graver offense than the girls’ brand. Boys hit each other with rocks in the playground; girls pass notes and chat in class. The boy is treated like a psychopath in training, the girl as a sweet but ditzy chatterbox. So bad boys are often branded at an early age as all sorts of crazy and evil, while bad girls are more often than not treated as pains-in-the-butt but ultimately harmless. Second, boys and girls are trained to have different interests. A loud and rambunctious girl is still, this late in history, viewed as an anomaly, while a loud and rambunctious boy is a future leader in training. Girls are rewarded for modesty and restraint, boys are rewarded for extroversion and competition. More and more, shy and melancholy boys aren’t treated like sweet, Romantic Hamlets but, like Claudius does, they are treated as potential dangers to the state: school shooters, emotional disturbed emo cutters, etc. Third, I think the vet issue might come down to competition and status. While vets can actually make better money than some doctors, and while vet medicine is — I’ve been told — more challenging than some human medical programs, being a vet is low status. The boy who is willing to work to be a doctor is going to want the Giant Cultural Phallus Swell that comes with being a doctor for humans. (I also think, as girls are trained to act out of compassion while boys are trained to act out of competition, girls are drawn to a medical field that has a great deal of sentiment attached to it — helping doggies and kittens — while boys are drawn to the ego boost of competitive medicine.)A final anecdote: when I was first interested in poetry (circa 1988), I was considered girly at my junior high school. I was sent to the school psychologist for reading *The Stranger*, *Lolita*, and *No Exit* in eighth grade. (Luckily, he was into Lou Reed too, and we just talked about music once a week.) It wasn’t just students who saw the arts as unmanly — it was the teachers and administrators at my school.
4anon - December 9, 2009 at 3:44 pm
“Perhaps women are underrepresented in engineering, although why any sane person would want to spend their days in overalls with hands covered in grease altogether beats me.”Is that what engineers do? Maybe people in the history and philosophy of science don’t get out enough. A trip to a college of engineering might be helpful. According to the Florida A&M University and Florida State University College of Engineering (www.eng.fsu.edu/index.php?page=about_us):”FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researchers address the engineering problems that must be faced in today’s society. Researchers approach unprecedented challenges with creativity and versatility. From the development of lightweight, affordable composite materials for future combat systems, to the quietest jet engine for reducing noise pollution to biomagnetic materials used to detect a heart attack; FAMU and FSU researchers are actively solving engineering problems. Biomedical researchers are using tissue engineering to study persistent bronchial asthma. Electrical engineering researchers and students are studying ways to reduce the bioluminescence of marine phytoplankton to protect Navy SEALs as they enter into covert operations. Civil engineers are working to develop new technologies that limit damage to steel structures during earthquakes and hurricanes. These few examples of research illustrate the diverse experience and talent of the faculty.”Does this sound as if they spend their days in overalls with hands covered in grease?
goxewu - December 9, 2009 at 4:57 pm
In 2007, about 93 percent of the murders in the United States were committed by men. Does this tell you something about tendencies in males?Oh, they were conditioned to commit that huge percentage of them by society.And who, by in large, still runs the society?Oh, those that run the society were conditioned to run it that way by societ. And so on, back to Adam…or, more likely, Cain and Abel.
strider - December 9, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Before Professor Ruse ends up lowering the U.S. opinion of the intellectual level of the British and Canadian professoriate, the powers-that-be might want to tell him that blogging is not just about unloading one’s opinions as if in a bar.Because, really… * “But most notably the change came because of the television series based on the James Herriot novels “All Creatures Great and Small.” By 1980, every little girl in Canada wanted to be a vet.”Yet, Professor Ruse points to the class of 2000 and implies that the trend continues to this day: is that TV series still on in Canada? I’m over 40, I’ve lived in Canada for decades, and I have no idea when that series might have been shown. And the women in the class of 2000 were, what, 6 or 7 years old in 1980…* “Adolescent and post-adolescent boys are not designed to study. They are designed to think about sex, nonstop.”Provocative, surely. But accurate? I wonder what heaps of trouble Professor Ruse would have gotten into if he’d said the same about women. And what does this imply about men who succeed in university? That they’re not real men?* “Perhaps women are underrepresented in engineering, although why any sane person would want to spend their days in overalls with hands covered in grease altogether beats me.” Thankfully, this can be chalked up to the long-held disdain of British university graduates for engineers, which resulted in Great Britain being one of the last advanced countries to introduce university training for engineers.* “biologically women are better at languages than men”Okay, it looks like Professor Ruse is indeed looking for heaps of trouble. There are millions of men in Europe—and in Canada—who are able to speak at least a couple of languages with significant fluency. Some of the world’s best translators and best-known polyglots are men. What are they? Deluded about their sex? If Professor Ruse, as an entitled anglophone male of a certain generation and university rank, finds it hard to learn other languages, I could venture a few other reasons why. For one, learning another language requires humility because one suddenly finds oneself tongue-tied in many circumstances. Maybe not something Professor Ruse is used to.
goxewu - December 9, 2009 at 10:03 pm
The greater danger is that strider will end up lowering Prof. Ruse’s opinion of the American reader. Prof. Ruse writes what are sometimes called “casuals,” a style of essay in which the touch is light, in which points are subtlety circled and then tellingly touched upon, usually anecdotally, when the moment is right. The trouble with deadeningly literal readers (not all of the species are, thank goodness, Americans) is thinking it’s an either/or choice between academic essays with studies, stats, footnotes and Roman-numeral’d sections, and “unloading one’s opinions as if in a bar.” Prof. Ruse’s musings on the nature of boys and men, nicely introduced by an observation about vetinary students in Guelph, ring more or less true, at least to me. And that’s what good essays do: ring true.But if one is going to criticize such an essay, one should bring better to the table than trying to rebut “biologically women are better at languages than men” with “There are millions of men in Europe–and in Canada–who are able to speak at least a couple of languages with significant fluency. Some of the world’s best translators and best-known polygots are men.” Hello? This is a non-sequiteur that in no way diminishes Prof. Ruse’s speculations that “perhaps it is the case that biologically women are better at languages than men.” (Notice that strider disingenuously omitted the context of Prof. Ruse’s prefacing his speculation with “perhaps it is the case that.”) Not as many female polygots as male polygots? Who knows what factors (income, education, discrimination, etc.) undermines women’s possibly being biologically better at languages.If the “powers-that-be” (Lordy, what an agency to appeal to!) try to tell Prof. Ruse how to blog, I sure hope he tells them to go shag themselves.
lindamcphee - December 10, 2009 at 5:49 am
Casual? Light touch? Hardly. I think the people who have commented on this blog have made much more interesting points than Prof. Ruse. The increase in women veterinarians is a global phenomenon, that probably reflects a shift in women’s aspirations toward professions plus the opening up of lower-status professions in particular to women, We have a long history of this — there was a time when schoolteachers were mainly men, and when secretaries were as well. Meanwhile, Prof. Ruse’s understanding of what engineering includes is woefully inadequate and out of date… which fits the overall level of this essay.
edubrul - December 10, 2009 at 8:26 am
Michael, have you looked at your pharmacist lately? Here’s another post-biology profession that is becoming heavily female. I think economics is a driving force as well. True, if you go to a country vet who deals with large animals, the vet will probably be a he, while the kitty/puppy vet will be a she. But the she-vet and the she-pharmacist can also work limited hours (my pharmacists work 3 twelve hour days), make very substantial salaries, and have more than half of the week to spend as a mom.
nwslater - December 10, 2009 at 9:49 am
By the by, that one man in the French class was looking for a soft option—doubtless he already possessed his own soft opinions.
goxewu - December 10, 2009 at 9:59 am
Re #6:Prof. Ruse, one daresays, is on lindamcphee’s side about women in certain–yea, all the–professions. The ostensibly “lower-status profession” of teacher is becoming less “lower-status,” overall, as the college student population tilts more and more majority-female and less educated men fill enlarge the real “lower-status” professions that require, at most, a high-school diploma. It’s happening in higher education, too, with the professoriat becoming more and more female. In the not-to-distant future, educated women will occupy the majority of positions in many “higher-status” positions as well as formerly “lower status” positions which have become “middle-status” as uneducated men increasingly occupy the real “lower-status” positions.Indeed, a good, long-view case can be made that what’s kept women from equality if not superiority in the “higher-status” positions are two things: repression by physically stronger men, and the debilities of pregnancy, childbirth and infant care. As two and a half centuries of industrialization have gradually removed almost all the advantages of physical strength from most lucrative and prestigious occupations (e.g., a woman can command a Boeing 767 airliner as well as a man, a woman can perform heart surgery as well as a man, and a woman can be Secretary of State as well as a man), women have moved toward partiy in “high-status” positions. Childbirth and childcare remain obstacles, but birth control, corporate and government policies on maternity leave, flexible schedules, the ability to work from home on a computer, have mitigated those.Prof. Ruse’s underlying point is that, given a somewhat level playing field, girls’ perhaps biological superiority in such quieter endeavors as studying in school–while boys are out carousing and playing faux-warrior–will eventually have women, in effect, running the Western world. Not a bad prosepct, in this man’s opinion.The trouble with Prof. Ruse’s rhetorical style is that he’s playing Elgar and “Brainstorm’s” more literal-minded readers can handle no more than Leiber & Stoller.
educationfrontlines - December 10, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I can certanly confirm Prof. Ruse’s observation that there has been a major shift from large animal veterinarians to dog-cat veterinarians, and likewise a shift toward animals rights attitudes in the later group, which reflects the changing gender composition. But this shift is also occurring in med school applications and in other fields. As I lecture in Asia, I look out on a sea of women students in audiences, primarily biology or physics, and see few men. There is something drastic going on that has hit in just the last decade or so. That is most likely the electronic/digital “revolution” with videotoys that are addictive to boys/men but not girls/women. Data to support this is in a national study: “Pathological Video-game Use Among Youth Ages 8 to 18″ by Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile and published in this last April’s journal “Psychological Science.”To define “pathological behavior” he used criteria similar to those established for gambling, also a behavioral addiction. Both gambling and videogaming begin as entertainment, relaxation, and escape from daily concerns. But for some individuals, it grows into behaviors with negative consequences. Gentile used a scale of 11 self-reported items such as: dominates a person’s life, provides a “high,” requires more and more stimulation to achieve the “high,” experiences withdrawal if deprived, causes conflict with other people or school or work, relapses whenever they try to quit, etc. While no one criteria defined being addicted to videogaming, a person was considered pathological if they reported at least six of the eleven symptoms, a similar method to what is used by psychologists to define gambling addiction. And video-addiction turns out to be heavily male. The average amount of time spent playing videogames was over 13 hours per week for all respondents. About 8 percent of all youngsters were pathological gamers. But boys were much more likely to be pathological gamers (12 percent) compared to girls (3 percent). If he had included respondents reporting only five or four symptoms, the numbers of boys affected would be dramatically higher. There was a strong relationship between extensive gaming and ADHD. Only 9 percent of boys played only once-a-month or less, while 37 percent of girls played at this low rate. And girls were also more likely to see their game use as a problem and try to reduce it, than were boys. Although Gentile did not address it, I believe his research is evidence that videogaming is a major factor in the decrease in boys pursuing academics, as girls now dominate college in developed countries. Approximately one-fourth of the students (primarily boys) played to escape and skipped homework to do so. About one-fifth said they did poorly on tests and homework because of playing. Only half of the students surveyed reported having parental rules that tried to limit either the content of time spent on videogames. I know that China is attempting to keep their students from becoming videogame addicted, and failing. The US appears to not care, and condones researchers who are trying to develop programs to pull girls, who have little current interest, into videogaming. Anyone who has given videogames to both girls and boys will see the different response, likely based on different brain wiring. It is called “gameboy” for a reason. John Richard Schrock
jherrera - December 10, 2009 at 1:04 pm
I cannot for the life of me understand how the old “All Creatures Great and Small”, which still shows in my locan PBS station, could have changed women’s desire to be vets. There has never been a single female vet in this show, and rarely, if any, women farmers in charge of their own livestock or interacting with the vets. This analogy is quite off the mark.
sandler - December 13, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Brain differences are often attributed to different behaviors in males and females. We forget about the plasticity of the brain and behaviors, and the interaction of brain and experience. The stereotypes re males and females are enormous, but there is a lot of research showing how we treat boy and girl babies very differently, even at birth.For example, people generally are unaware that they talk more to girl babies than to boy babies. Then when girls and women are often better at using language, we attribute it “”nature” while ignoring the huge role of “nurture” in all complex behaviors.Bernice R. Sandler, Senior ScholarWomen’s Research and Education Institute
cslaaschair - December 16, 2009 at 5:52 pm
My daughter in law graduated from the UC Davis vet school in 2004 or 2005 – the class was 90% plus female – I couldn’t believe it! It is the same phenomenon witnessed at Guelph, for whatever reason…..I dk what the guys are doing, but they aren’t doing veterinary medicine….Ted AnagnosonProf. Emeritus of Political ScienceCal State Los Angeles