Women College Students Continue to Outnumber Male Peers

November 7, 2013

Editor: Sun Xi

Women College Students Continue to Outnumber Male Peers

Women undergraduates and masters students in China have outnumbered their male peers for four and three consecutive years respectively, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Education.

According to the data, there were about 23.91 million undergraduate and junior college students in Chinese universities in 2012, of which women accounted for 51.35 percent, outnumbering men by 647,800.

The number of women masters students in Chinese universities was 1.43 million, which was 40,000 more than their men peers.

Professor Liu Zhengwei from Zhejiang University in east China's Zhejiang Province says this is a sign of social progress. "The situation might be caused by women students feeling a greater sense of urgency than men, motivating them to work harder," he said.

In 1998, male college students in China outnumbered women students by 797,000. But in 2009, female students outnumbered male students for the first time, with a 200,000 numerical advantage.

Liu says that the situation is the same in many other Asian countries, as well as in the U.S., where the male-female ratio in higher education has been steadily moving in favor of females ever since the 1970s. Total enrollment figures show that females outnumbered their male counterparts for the first time in the late 1970s, and they have steadily increased their numerical advantage ever since. The superiority first came in public universities, but soon private universities saw female enrollment surpass male enrollment.

In addition, Chinese girls are outperforming boys in school. According to research by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, boys in Shanghai scored lower than girls on average in each subject, from third grade to third year in middle school.

The paper also said the number of female students entering college in 2010 was 330,000 higher than male students. And both first places in arts and science on the college entrance exam in 2012 were won by female students, among nine provinces and areas, including south China's Guangdong Province, east China's Jiangsu Province, northeast China's Liaoning Province and north China's Tianjin Municipality.

Method of education is to be blamed for the results, said Sun Yunxiao, vice-chairperson of the China Youth & Children Research Association.

The content we teach and how we evaluate learning are the opposite of what boys are good at, Sun said.

"A lot of curriculums require students to memorize and recite, something which boys tend to be bad at," said Kang Jian, former headmaster of the Affiliated High School of Peking University.

(Source: news.163.com/Translated and edited by womenofchina.cn)

Please understand that womenofchina.cn,a non-profit, information-communication website, cannot reach every writer before using articles and images. For copyright issues, please contact us by emailing: website@womenofchina.cn. The articles published and opinions expressed on this website represent the opinions of writers and are not necessarily shared by womenofchina.cn. 