Tuesday, August 23, 2011

The Culture of Some Colleges May Foster Gender Segregation by Major, Study Finds

The Chronicle of Higher Education
August 22, 2011

By Peter Schmidt
Las Vegas
Certain colleges may have cultures that nudge female students into stereotypically female fields and men into stereotypically male ones, suggests a study whose findings are slated to be presented here on Tuesday at the annual conference of the American Sociological Association.
Colleges that have relatively few women among their tenured faculty members and exceptionally small numbers of men among their undergraduates generally have higher levels of gender segregation by major than do other institutions, the study found. So do colleges with football teams in Division III of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, suggesting that those with athletic programs that emphasize male-dominated sports are less likely to encourage the gender integration of various academic fields, according to a paper summarizing the study's results.

Full Story: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Culture-of-Some-Colleges/128781/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

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