Students of China University of Geosciences are all smiles after their graduation results were declared in June 2007. All of them are from the same dormitory and have decided to pursue higher studies.(Photo: Chinadaily) Photo Gallery>>>

    BEIJING, Jan. 29 -- Why are there so many outstanding girls in colleges and universities these days? This question comes from Chen Xiao who is doing her doctorate in journalism at Peking University. Her question won't appear surprising if one considers the students' gender ratio in the university's school of journalism and communication: four girls for every boy. "Fifteen years ago, when I entered college, the man is to woman ratio in the journalism department was about 1:1."

    Education courses across the world for long had been designed to suit boys/men. So what has brought about this remarkable change in today's society? Experts say women have still not outnumbered men in China's colleges and universities, but the number of female students has increased "at lightning speed".

    Does this mean boys are really falling behind? It would seem so if we take enrollments in some major institutions. Shanghai's Fudan University, for example, admitted 3,871 students in 2006, 52.3 percent of who were girls. It was also the first time more girls than boys had been admitted to the university. The situation in Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University is the same, where girls outnumbered boys last year.

    National figures show more girls than boys got admitted to colleges and universities in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in the past two years. The percentage of girl students rose from 35.4 in 1995 to 45.7 in 2004, according to a State Council report in 2005.

    What's the reason behind this development? The recruitment campaign since September 1999 could be one. Also, Chinese universities began enrolling more students because of the government's drive to make college education accessible to more people in the country. In the campaign's first year itself, enrollments swelled by a whopping 520,000.

    Girls have always been more attracted to the liberal arts, and they used the chance to advantage once it came their way. A China Youth Daily report gives a good idea about girls' eagerness to go in for higher education: Only 21 of the 166 newcomers to Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University last year were boys.

    Does all this make boys feel marginalized? Xiao Xu, a journalism undergraduate of the university says: "The girls always sit in the front rows of the class. They take active part in discussions and ask questions, and we boys dare not raise or answer any. So most of us take the backseat quietly."

    If all this has made you think that girls are interested only in higher education and building a career, you are wrong. A university faculty staff surnamed Wang says: "A majority of the student leaders in my department are girls. Generally, they are more careful and positive than boys, and we would like to give them more important tasks."

    Girls not only dominate the liberal arts departments, their numbers are increasing in some science colleges and institutes too. Medicine, traditionally a man's domain, has also seen girls going from a position of "absolute disadvantage" to a "slender advantage" in Sun Yat-sen University in recent years. And the 2006 figures prove it: 53 of the 100 students enrolled were girls.

    The Environmental Science and Engineering Institute of South China University of Technology in Guangzhou has seen more post-graduate girl students than boys in recent years, says Professor Dang Zhi. Nine of his 16 post-graduate students are girls.

    The increase in the number of girl students in higher education institutions is good for society, says Bu Wei, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Journalism Institute. It will make mothers more worldly wise, benefiting the family and spelling out the importance of education for the generations to come. "There's no need to worry about the rising number of girls in higher learning institutions. The important thing is whether girls are choosing their subjects out of personal interest or just to get a good job."

    If they study the subjects of their choice, their interest will prompt them to excel in their respective fields. But if they choose a subject only to get a decent job, then their urge to conduct research and understand it in depth would be minimal.

    Some girl students do admit to have traded their favorite subjects for ones that can get them a job easily, Bu says. Also, many of those who have chosen to pursue a master's or doctor's degree have done so because they found it harder than boys to find a job after graduation.

    But despite the rapid increase in the number of girl students "the distribution of social resources is still far from equal between the genders", she says. "For example, woman teachers holding a professor's chair in colleges and universities are still rare, and male leaders still far outnumber their female counterparts."

    Beijing Normal University's professor of psychology Xu Yan sees the rise in the number of girl students as a "noteworthy phenomenon". The existing memory-based exam system is more conducive to girls who are "more focused and hard-working". Girls have another distinct advantage; they mature earlier than boys.

    In fact, it takes two more years for boys to mature, says China Youth Research Center deputy director Sun Yunxiao. Boys need four times as much physical activity than girls. But many schools don't have a provision for that. "Schools must provide a balanced development space both for boys and girls," and perhaps a greater mix of male teachers, Sun says.

    The Shanghai municipal government, appears to be following Sun's advice, for it intends to raise the percentage of male teachers in primary schools to 20 by 2010, according to its 11th five-year plan (2006-10). But some primary schools in Shanghai seem to have gone to the other extreme of "specializing" in boys' education by introducing some separate programs, says Young Pioneers in Shanghai counselor Shen Gongling.

    More girls, fewer boys in higher education is not a trait unique to China. It can be seen in many other countries, including the developed world. In the US, for example, the percentage of girls in undergraduate classes rose from 42 in 1970 to 56 in 2005, according to UN figures. That possibly has made US authorities start a special "save the boys" program to encourage them to perform better in schools.

    "Worldwide, many more women than men were enrolled in higher education institutions in 2005 with the average gender parity index (woman:man) being 1.05, a major reversal since 1999 when the ratio was 0.96," says last year's UNESCO Education For All report.

    "In China, the educational gap by sex was very wide for women in the late 1980s but has disappeared or even moved in favor of women in recent years," the report says. UNESCO releases the report every year to assess how far have 164 countries gone in meeting their respective education goals. The aims range from improving early childhood care and education, providing free and compulsory primary education by 2015, equal access to life-long learning (for boys and girls), achieving 50 percent improvement in adult literacy rates, and eliminating gender disparities at all levels by 2015.

    Going by the figures, China seems to have made a quantum jump in the field of education, especially making higher education accessible to women.

(Source: chinadaily.com.cn)