Narrative


Contents

Our Narrative

Visualizations

Conclusions

The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all. 
- Aung San Suu Kyi

Our group’s research centers around the topic of women in higher education. In our project, we demonstrate that women are able to achieve greater rates of educational attainment due to them feeling a greater pressure to succeed throughout their academic careers. However, we also argue that traditional gender inequalities can still be seen in the valuation of bachelor's degrees by analyzing a variety of datasets such as the US Census’s 2021 data on Educational attainment in each state by gender, which contains information on educational attainment at different levels as well as distributions of race and median salary. We deemed the relevance of this dataset because it shows how women directly compare to men in academic achievement as well as how much the income and benefits from those achievements will depend on gender and race.

Women have been historically trailing behind men in the STEM fields and still are due to the interplay of a plethora of socio-economic and cultural factors. For instance, behavioral problems in youth lead to lower rates of educational attainment in men, but marriage rates, fertility rates, and divorce rates affect the overall female participation in education and their lives after graduating. Female-dominated majors and the fields centered around them generate less money. Literature suggests that women have been disadvantaged once they complete education and the disparity within the two genders’ access to crucial factors for professional success such as leadership positions, high income, and equal employment opportunities is more evident in computer science and fields of engineering, which are also the highest paying fields. Information pertaining to the motivations of female students and the effect of patriarchal media and surroundings is not as available as information on the disparities. The dataset we have chosen includes specific information to the table and makes it easier to compare the rates of specific reasons to find where policy changes are most required.

The topic of women in higher education is important to us because we heavily relate as women pursuing higher education. Each one of us, at some point in our education path, has either witnessed or experienced some of the gender inequalities we mention in this project. Furthermore, we know that not only is it very important for women of all races, but it is specifically important for women of color to see how their degrees compare within the larger scheme. Through a basic data analysis, we found that women actually have higher rates of academic success; however, our personal experiences still attest to the feeling that women are behind in education.

National Overview

The bar chart below depicts the national average bachelor's degree attainment for each gender in four age groups. Female averages are represented by the red bars and male averages are represented by the blue bars. The value on the y-axis provides the estimated ratio in respect to the overall population, with 0.10 representing approximately 10% of the entire population. Although it is important to compare the margins of error for each data, it is very likely that the overall ratio remains similar to the true population, thus we did not include such data.

In this chart, female bachelor’s degree attainment was significantly lower than men’s for those who are 64 years or older, but the gap was rapidly reversed for the following generations and women with a bachelor’s degree or higher outnumbered men by ~8.5% for the population group that is 35 to 44 years old. These results indicate that women have higher bachelor’s degree attainment levels than men for those who are 64 years or younger. Americans 64 years and older in 2021 would have been born in or before 1957, thus our data aligns with the switch of the gender gap in bachelor’s attainment around 1960. The stagnation that occurred in the growth of men’s bachelor’s degree attainment in the 1950s lasted through the mid 1960s, likely due to the Vietnam War and the wage decline in college degree jobs. Women’s bachelor’s degree attainment did not stagnate, and continued to grow steadily throughout the second half of the 20th century, leading to the switch in the gender gap (DiPrete and Buchmann, 2013).

The map above shows the female percent estimates of each state for bachelor's degree or higher attainment, ages 25 and over. As you can see, the Northeast seems to have the highest rates of female bachelor's degree attainment. This is represented by the brightest pink sections on the map; we can see clusters of these in the east. Contrary to this, the ones with the least seem to be the Southern states because of the lighter pink spots. These phenomena make sense when looking at the distribution of poverty in the US in 2021. States in the Northeast have some of the lowest poverty rates in the nation, according to the US Census Bureau. Poverty and educational attainment are inextricably linked, especially for bachelor’s degree attainment. The cost of college tuition is out of reach for many that live below the poverty line, or even live in near poverty. However, the link between poverty and educational disadvantage starts in childhood. In 2021, “three in 10 families that received monthly Advance Child Tax Credit (CTC) payments spent them on kids’ school expenses”, symbolizing the expense of education that burdens those with low incomes (Mayol-Garcia and Perez-Lopez, 2021). 

Case Study: Southern States

Now let’s take a closer look at states in the South. From our data we can compare the different rates of bachelor's degree or higher attainment in the Southern region of the United States. Each bar in the chart below represents the estimated percentage of women in that particular state that have obtained a bachelor's degree or higher. 

Southern states have similar rates of bachelor's degree attainment, all being within 20% of each other. Virginia has the highest percent estimate, which should be noted since it is one of the most northern states in this region. It should also be noted that Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama all have very similar percent estimates, seeing as they are all adjacent. The lowest rate belongs to West Virginia, which is quite interesting when compared to its neighbor, Virginia. All the Southern states are below 50%, signifying that the majority of women in the South have not obtained at least a bachelor's degree.

This map was created using Tableau, with data on bachelor's degree or higher attainment in the Southern U.S., both percent female and male. The symbol map style with color gradient was chosen to highlight the differences between states’ attainment levels at first glance, with further information available when each state is hovered over. It functions to give a detailed view of the Southern region of the United States.

This map of the Southern U.S. shows at first glance just the percent female estimates for bachelor's degree or higher attainment in each state. Embedded in each highlighted state on the map is the actual percent female estimate and percent male estimate data taken from our dataset. The percent male data was only embedded and not shown in the coloring since it follows the same gradient pattern, just being lower than the female percent estimate in each state. As seen in the map, West Virginia and Virginia have the lowest and highest percentages, respectively. The juxtaposition between these neighboring states is best seen in this gradient form. Virginia presumably has the highest educational attainment rates due to the population of capitol workers that reside just outside of D.C. The map gradient also allows for easier conception of what regions within the South have common bachelor's degree attainment rates, with Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama being the most obvious and notable grouping. This reflects the similar poverty rates of these states, again emphasizing the effect of income on education. The southern states were focused on due to their “historical prejudice against coeducation in the region‘s institutions of higher education” (McCandless, 2009). Despite women having higher levels of educational attainment, they continue to face gender discrimination in higher education. A 2006 study done at a coeducational university in Charleston, SC found that “72.2 % reported hearing students ... [and] 39 % heard faculty or staff making insensitive or negative remarks about women.” (McCandless, 2009). 

Regional Overview

In the chart above we pulled the female and male percent estimates of Bachelor degrees or higher attainment for five states in the different regions of the United States. Each diamond represents the male or female percent estimate for the specific state it falls under.

New York has the highest male and female attainment rates and Michigan has the lowest. In each state women have higher rates of attainment than men, with the male attainment rate in New York being higher than the female attainment rate of any other state. New York was picked to represent the Northeast region of the United States, so in this context the Northeast has the highest overall levels of educational attainment. Michigan was pulled to represent the Midwest region, implying that this region has the lowest overall attainment rates. All of the percent estimates are between 30% and 45%, showing that the majority of the population has not obtained at least a bachelor's degree. 

Political / Race Related

This chart compares the volume of educational attainment for women of each race for the top 5 most democratic and republican states in the form of a tree graph. The Graph on the left represents women in the top 5 most Democratic states, while the graph on the right represents the top 5 most Republican states. Overall, people who only identified as Asian obtained the most bachelor’s degrees, but the ratios between Black, Hispanic/Latino, and others shifted between each chart. Asians seem to obtain a larger percentage of bachelor’s degrees in Republican states, which also suggests that educational attainment is lower for White and Black people compared to the Democratic states.

In the context of our project, these visualizations suggest that Black people have a lower educational attainment rate, especially in Republican states. This could be from the influence of State-level politics, the overall educational environment, and more. Also, this again draws back to the effects of poverty on education, since Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Native Americans are the groups with highest poverty rates, leading to a disadvantage when it comes to accessing quality education. There is a cycle that comes with this, since children benefit from the educational attainment levels of their parents. Thus, the higher levels of educational attainment that Asians and White people achieve are more likely to be perpetuated or even grown upon by their children.

Workplace Related

With women having higher levels of educational attainment across the board, it would be expected for their advantage to be reflected in post grad life. However, this is not true:

We can observe that the median salaries of females or women in all of the states are less than that of males in 2021, which supports our overarching discussion of women being discriminated against in terms of attaining education, employment, and hence decent salaries. Even with an advanced degree, the bridge or gap in income doesn’t seem to be closed. As Sarah Green Carmichael notes in her article for the Harvard Business Review (2017), “Jobs that are unconsciously coded male have more prestige and pay than jobs that are coded female”. The reason for this, as Carmichael goes on to say, is attributed to a number of factors like motherhood, personal choice, lack of negotiation, etc. However, these factors ignore the overwhelming message that stems from the pay gap: women and the work they do are less valuable than men and what they can contribute. 

Conclusions

This project dives into the relationship between women's educational attainment and various socio-economic and cultural factors, revealing how gender & race-related disparities affect us as a whole. Through an analysis of our dataset using graphs, charts, and maps, we found that:

(1) In general, women obtained higher levels of education than men in 2021.

(2) The Northeast has the highest rates of female educational attainment and the lowest poverty levels. 
 
(3) Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Native Americans are groups with the highest poverty rates; Black people have lower educational attainment rates, especially in Republican states.

(4) The median salaries of females or women in all of the states are less than that of males in 2021.

As a group of women in higher education, we went into this research with an expectation of finding women falling behind in terms of educational attainment due to the feeling of being at a disadvantage in comparison to our male peers. This made our findings all that more surprising, and made us question how exactly we can feel this way even with evidence that women are ahead in every state. Our confusion was only further when we discovered that despite higher rates of degree attainment, women earn lower median salaries than men in every state. As we noted in our visualizations, and as said best by Sarah Green Carmicheal, women are simply valued less than men. Lastly, any speculations we make about socio-economic factors may need more research because our dataset does not include that information. But future studies could investigate these factors in depth along with the link between education and women in the workplace, a topic that is closely related to our project.

Ultimately, due to greater societal pressure to succeed through their academic career, women were able to achieve greater rates of educational attainment than men in the United States. However, mean income demonstrates that traditional gender inequalities can still be seen in the valuation of bachelor’s degrees. We want to educate others on how to make education more equal for all races and genders, which means raising male attainment rates as well as empowering women to enter more male dominated fields. We also hope that this project raises awareness to the devaluation of female degrees, especially across different races.