The educational divide

As of 15 January of this year, 221,523 females had applied for full-time university undergraduate courses, as against 173,784 males. We do not yet know how many of these have been accepted on the courses, but for the purposes of this blog I want to assume that the male-female ratio will remain the same. The trend of recent years is certainly a growing gulf between the number of male and female applicants.

What does this mean? It means the future is feminine:

• On the assumption that graduates earn more than non-graduates, the divide between the rich and the poor, between the well off and the less well off, could in future reflect a sex divide.
• If intellectual compatibility and equality is necessary for a happy marriage, then women could be short of suitable partners to marry. Similarly, if people in general marry from the same social class as themselves, then the sex-cum-class divide described above will further restrict the choice of marriage partners. Settling down mellows people; with all those unmarried and unattached men, there will be a lot unchecked testosterone around, which could quite easily channel into other areas, like crime, alcohol, drugs and even terrorism.
• More women will come to occupy positions of influence. Will that mean that what have traditionally been regarded as feminine values- such as receptiveness, warmth, understanding, collegiality, cooperation, ‘motherliness’- become the dominant values in society? If so, the problem above about unchecked testosterone can be avoided.
• I wonder what will happen to the birth rate and population level. Will more and more women come to delay or postpone starting families, as they progress with their careers?