Skip to content

The Gender Gap and High School Academics

The UMKC Women’s Center strives to promote gender equity. Recently I stumbled upon this blog by Maya Dusenbury on Feministing that addresses the relation of high school GPA’s to the gender gap in the workforce. I encourage you to take a look and reflect upon this issue over the summer month.

***

Chart of the Day: Women need a perfect GPA to
earn as much as men with a 2.0

“We already know that women need a PhD to earn as much as men with a BA, and now a new report on the relationship between high school grade point average (GPA) and income shows that women need a 4.0 GPA to earn as much as men with a 2.0. Via ThinkProgress:

GPA and future earnings by gender chart

The study also shows that, on average, women have significantly higher GPAs, while men still end up having higher incomes. This is why all the hand-wringing about how women are outperforming men in school is so silly. Yes, we are. But, as Bryce Covert explained recently, in the real world, the so-called “boy crisis” disappears – funny how sexism will do that.

As Jos wrote about the previous study showing how the pay gap persists at every level of educational attainment, these studies show that ”women need to climb higher up the ladder of degrees if they want earnings that are competitive with men.” And they show that much of the gender pay gap can’t be explained by education.”

***