sure. so? if anyone has taken my recent comments as a suggestion that I think this current configuration of racial and gender disparities are unchanging, I emphatically *do not* think that.
there was a huge debate here years ago, with Katha Pollit where Doug and, mostly, Ted Byfield got on her case about never, ever portraying things as changing for women, as advancing. As a woman who taught a lot of women's studies courses, as well as sociology, I know that you can't get through to anyone if you present it as doom and gloom. You've got to show them how we've made progress. So, when Katha got on that schtick, I got on her case too. As did Catherine Driscoll. Looks like these exchanges were excised from the archives though. A pity! Ted Byfield flamage is the best of the best -- even when he flamed me!
but back to my so. what does it matter to you if the capitalist future looks a lot more dark and female. i doubt you think it's a bad thing, so what's the problem.
as for your point about middle class white women, it's a similar story. their rates of college and grad school attendance are a reflection of a changed world. If they often went to college in the past for an MRS degree,this is increasingly less the case. when I taught these women when I was an adjunct, they had a greater commitment to college and tended to study harder and take classes more seriously. there were plenty of male and female partiers, though, at the elite colleges. there, these people knew that college had nothing to do with skills and training for jobs, but everything to do with networking and who you know. Like Alan, I used to survey my students every semester. I have about 2000 survey response IIRC.
Anyway, these women had been brought up by their parents to believe that it was important to go to college because that was their path to success in a career. they were taught not to depend on a man and get an mrs. degree like their mothers might have done.
these women are getting advanced degrees because they knew that they needed them to have that extra leg up in their professions -- if they were going to be competitive. When I was in grad school, the women from well-to-do backgrounds often didn't go straight to grad school. They tested the waters, to see what they could get with their sociology degree and found the situation wanting. Hence, they went to grad school believing it would make them more competitive. they are also often recruited and socialized into careers that require advanced degress: teaching is a good example. Last I checked, ten years ago, something like 70% of all women landed in nursing, teaching, and clerical jobs.
the reason why fields usually require advanced degrees is not necessarily a reflection of some technical imperative. rather, it's what Randall Collins and others have called credential inflation: when the competition is stiff, artificial barriers to entrance are put up to weed out the labor pool.
It might be just my subjective impression, probably so, but I notice that during the downtown in tech, a lot more emphasis has been put on needing a college degree for a programming job when, 3 years ago there were a lot fewer jobs ads that put those requirements up. hard to say.