Back in my college days, it was not uncommon for qualified women to be rejected from medical school on the basis that they were a bad investment. Even if they did complete their medical studies, they were expected to eventually depart their practice to raise a family.

Fortunately, that world was swept away by the Women’s Movement, the Vietnam War, and Title IX legislation which prohibits schools from discriminating by sex.

But today’s female victimization rhetoric has blinded us to the educational revolution right before our eyes. Women have made astonishing educational progress, even in certain fields of science. Consider the facts…

In 1994, women obtained more than 40 percent of professional degrees, up from almost none in 1961.

What we don’t hear about is the progress of women in the professions. The most common career target of ambitious women is a law degree. In 1994, women got 43 percent of the law degrees and almost 40 percent of medical degrees. Looking at doctors or lawyers in any community, you still see mostly men. But that’s because most of the people who got their degrees in an earlier era are still practicing.

In other fields, such as veterinary medicine, women garnered 65 percent of the degrees in 1994. Women also got the majority of degrees in professional fields like optometry (55%) and pharmacy (65%).

Women got 40 percent of the doctoral degrees in 1994, more than four times the number they got in the early 1960s.

Women not only get the majority of doctoral degrees in traditional "female" fields like education (62%) and English literature (57%), they are also getting doctorates in the sciences.

But the progress women are making in the sciences is disguised by another social trend---the increasing number of students from other countries, mostly men, who are getting doctorates in science and mathematics at American universities. If you look at American citizens, you see that American women have made major gains.

In the biological sciences, American women in 1994 received over 40 percent of the doctorates that went to American citizens.

We hear a lot about the gender gap in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics. The 105th Congress just established yet another Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology to figure out what to do about it. These commissions are snapping at each other’s heels so fast and furiously that they barely have time to read each other’s reports. The new legislation points out that the National Science Foundation reported on the identical matter in 1996, right on the heels of the National Research Council’s 1995 report on the same subject.

Women haven’t reached the 50 percent mark in every field, but that doesn’t mean they are victims of discrimination. Many women want to be attorneys-in-an-office rather than Dilberts-in-a-cubicle. So what? The issue is whether women now are free to make their own choices. And statistics show they are.

—Judith Kleinfeld

Judith Kleinfeld, professor of psychology at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, is the winner of the Emil Usibelli Award for Distinguished Research and the author of: "The Myth That Schools Shortchange Boys: Social Science in the Service of Deception." The study can be ordered from The Women’s Freedom Network, 4410 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Suite 179, Washington, D.C., 20016. The study is also available on the web: www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html.