Do Women Work Harder Than Men on College Campuses?

Many students at Western Michigan University's College of Arts and Sciences agree with national study statistics which in recent years have shown that men study less than women, socialize more often and get worse grades.

"I guess if you're going to make really broad generalizations than it probably makes sense," Aislinn Frantz, 18, a creative writing major at WMU, said. "Guys seem like they procrastinate more, like they have more things to distract them."

Frantz said her study habits tend to evolve from a personal sense of competition. "I think ever since girls have started getting more professional degrees and going onward they feel like they need to show society or whatever that they can do it," she said.

Torian Johnson, a music major and junior at WMU, thinks better study habits are a product of women being more able to take care of themselves than men, especially men new to college who are not used to multitasking things like bills and classes.

"Women just kind of know how to take care of business a little bit more than guys do," she said. "Women kind of know how to take care of themselves, whereas guys are kind of expecting mommy to take care of themselves.

"I think (women) just know how to prioritize better."

Brian Lasecki, a 26-year-old English major, said that for the most part women probably do study more than men, although there are always exceptions to the rule.

"You're looking at statistics, and they can always be skewed one way or another," he said, adding that in his English program he has found that women are naturally better writers. "But that's not always the case."

Jacob Bush, 20, a junior psychology major, said he often spends hours a week at Waldo Library on campus, though he said his roommates would certainly fit the profile of men who study less than women.

"With the people I know, probably. No offense to anybody, but yeah," he said. "I've never seen any guy study, really."

Bush, who lives in a WMU dorm, said it's not that men are lazy. "They don't study and yet they still get good grades," he said. "I don't know how that works."

Bush added that it may be the men he knows don't worry as much about their grades as women do because they spend so much time drinking.

Brittany Neuser, an 18-year-old freshman music-therapy major, said in her group of friends, the men and women study about equal amounts of time. She said she believes study habits are less a factor of gender than of keeping priorities straight.

"It's not just men," she said. "Anyone that's really social, it's probably going to detract from their studies."

Neuser said that as a music-therapy major, you get what you give when it comes to your studies, because so much of your grade is based on practice. If you don't study, you really can't do what it is you need to do.

"Everything varies on such an individual basis," she said. "In my case, I might end up going for my master's simply because that's what my degree calls for."

Lasecki, the English major, believes the statistics show a more disturbing reality than a simple disparity of effort between sexes when it comes to taking studies seriously. "There are cultural things that are going on that are suppressing women," he said, adding that women are more studious because they have to work harder than men to get to the same level.

"It's a society which is, I hate to say this, but it's still based on men ruling pretty much everything. So, you get to that point and you gotta figure you'd have an easier time relating to the people that are higher up. So it seems easier to (men), they don't have to work quite as hard," Lasecki said.

Then of course, there are those like Lasecki's brother, a guy who Lasecki said spent lots of time playing video games, graduated high school with a GPA around 2.0 and now makes about $70,000 a year working a tech job because he knows a lot about computers.

It makes a person wonder if it even matters whether or not women are getting more bachelor's degrees than men if someone can get a $70,000 a year job without getting the grades.

"I think it's kind of disappointing that you don't need degrees to get the better jobs necessarily," Frantz said. However, she added, she is a creative writing major, "and we're not going to get jobs" anyway.