A new study by the National Center for Education Statistics show that women are increasingly achieving equality with men in terms of their proportions in professional and graduate programs and in traditionally male-dominated undergraduate majors, in addition to already being overrepresented in getting Bachelor’s degrees:

Women earn the majority of bachelor’s degrees in business, biological sciences, social sciences and history. The same is true for traditional strongholds such as education and psychology. In undergraduate and graduate disciplines where women trail men, they are gaining ground, earning larger numbers of degrees in math, physical sciences and agriculture. . . .

Women now account for about half the enrollment in professional programs such as law, medicine and optometry. That is up from 22 percent a generation ago. . . . In business, by far the most popular degree field among undergraduates, women earn slightly more than half of all bachelor degrees; it was one-third in 1980. . . .

[However,] women who work full time earn about 76 percent as much as men, according to the Institute of Women’s Policy Research. Women are underrepresented in full-time faculty jobs, particularly in fields such as physical sciences, engineering and math.

So clearly, much progress has been made in terms of equalizing educational outcomes between men and women. At the same time, in order to achieve true equality, the final step is equal representation across all academic disciplines and occupations (i.e., tenure-track and tenured faculty), with an eye toward as many economic industries as possible, ultimately.

On the other hand, should we be worried about males and their educational outcomes? Yes -- educational opportunities and outcomes should be equal across all sectors of our society, whether they pertain to gender, race/ethnicity, social class, or whatever.