MORE COLLEGE LESS SENSE
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX

Have women come a long way, baby, or are we just coming along? This week, a group of educational policy organizations said they would study the new gender gap in higher education. Women now outnumber men in undergraduate enrollments, and there are some that are concerned that this gap will have long-term socioeconomic implications. The gender balance of power may shift, they say. Women may find it more difficult to find mates with the same education. While the matter of the undergraduate gender gap is of some concern, I am one who does not find it alarming, especially when the other gender gap, that of gender wages, is considered.

Women are the majority of our nation’s undergraduates. We earned 57 percent of last year’s bachelor’s degrees. We are closing enrollment gaps in graduate and business schools, too, as 50 percent of the law school graduates, 45 percent of the medical school graduates, and 30 percent of the business school graduates.

For all the degrees we earn, though, we don’t pull down the same dollars men do. The gender gap in wages still remains. Women earn 76 cents for every dollar men earn. When we are matched degree for degree, credential for credential, we earn less. While the law says equal pay for equal work, the paychecks say something different.

Further, despite the change in educational status, women’s behavior hasn’t especially changed. While some women of Enron are whistle-blowing civic leaders, others have decided that their first step to actualization is to shake their groove thing for Playboy Magazine. At least 10 former and current staff members of Enron will pose for the August issue of Playboy, in a feature entitled “Women of Enron”. Though the August issue won’t hit the stands for a few weeks, the Enron women are already pushing their stuff in the media – scoring media mentions as early as April, and Today show interviews in late June. Their point? Perhaps that college education doesn’t automatically confer someone with good sense. Or, perhaps they want the nation to appreciate their assets.

I had hoped that news that more women were attending college would be accompanied by news that women did not rely so much on their physical assets for remuneration. Forgive my naiveté!. In a patriarchy, a world that is governed by men’s perception of our lives, some see women as little more than a combination of body parts, no matter what their intelligence. It is disturbing that so many women comply with men’s views by offering themselves, in bathing suit photos and more, to the editors of Playboy. According to some news reports “hundreds” of women were willing to pose for the Playboy Magazine feature that ended up choosing about a dozen. Many of these Enron workers were making the dollars, but they are acting as if they don’t have a lot of sense.

But as women poke their way through the glass ceiling, leaving shards of tradition in their wake, we also tend to remind the world that we are as greedy and as venal as our male counterparts. Media mogul Martha Stewart had the world by the string, but she may have cut it off with the greed that allowed the appearance of impropriety in the ImClone stock matter. The Barnard College-educated Stewart may well be innocent of insider trading or other assorted crimes, but the calendar of events that led up to her stock sale are, at best, questionable. Her evasive answers leave an impression that has sent her stock prices plummeting.

It’s not a gender thing. Every newspaper’s business pages look like the police blotter these days. Still, those of us who hoped that diversity meant difference are learning that bringing women to the executive table may not necessarily yield different results. We could expect college graduates to shake their groove thing a generation ago. Then, there weren’t as many executive positions for women, or as many opportunities. If you had to grab attention with a smile and a bunny dip, well more power to you. Now, the women who gain attention that way have choices, and they’ve chosen to lean back on their “feminine wiles”. A generation ago, Martha Stewart was our momma, and nobody was making millions teaching folks how to toss a salad. Today, Martha seems to be tossing more than salad, and her billion dollar empire may come tumbling down because her stock selling timetable somehow resembles that of Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko.

Should we expect more of Martha and the women of Enron? Should more college mean more sense? The process of closing the gender gap is more complicated than we once thought it was. That women out-enroll men in undergraduate education does not suggest equality; just as Martha Stewart’s color-coordinated stomp into the boardroom hardly signals gender equity at the top. For now, women’s progress remains a cliché’. We’ve come a long way, baby, but we’ve still got a long way to go.