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A survey of recent gender-based statistics on academic achievement, teachers, scholarships and more

  • Boys are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder three times as often as girls.
  • At universities, the gender split looks a lot like it did in the 1960s - except the roles are reversed. Men are the minority, and women account for about 60 per cent of the undergraduates. While both sexes are enrolling in absolute record numbers, the proportion of women chasing a degree is significantly larger - more than 13 per cent based on 2003 data from Statistics Canada.
  • Statistics Canada reports that while men still make more money than women, women's earnings are growing faster than men's, and that wives are increasingly becoming the primary breadwinners in their families - from 14 per cent in 1997, to 18 per cent last year.
  • For the first time this year, women in the U.S. earned more PhDs than men. In Canada, women earn 55 per cent of master's degrees and 46 per cent of PhDs. Men still dominate programs in engineering, maths, architecture and computer science.
  • Among Canadians aged 25 to 34, some 33 per cent of women had a university degree, compared with 25 per cent of men.
  • Numbers compiled by scholarshipscanada.com, a free database listing 49,000 scholastic prizes offered in the country by colleges, universities, corporations and other private organizations, show 976 scholarships worth $1.1-million are designated for women only - a number five times higher than the 192 prizes earmarked for men. Chris Wilkins, who founded the site 15 years ago, said the scholarships for women total more than $1.1-million and cover everything from engineering programs to voice training. The prizes for men amount to $250,000 and most are sports related.
  • Men, meanwhile, are less likely to complete what they start. A report released last month from the Council of Education Ministers shows men's graduation rates from college programs trails women by 11 per cent and from university-degree programs, it's 18 per cent.
  • The average Canadian with a university degree earns roughly 75 per cent more than a counterpart with only a high school education.
  • In Ontario, just 27 per cent of teachers are male, down from 31 per cent a decade ago. In B.C., 28 per cent of practising teachers are male.
  • On standardized reading tests, only 20. 4 per cent of boys score in the top 25 per cent, compared to 30.1 per cent of girls. Thirty per cent of boys score in the bottom 25 per cent, while only 19 per cent of girls do so.
  • Only 31.9 per cent of boys have overall marks of at least 80 per cent, compared to 46.3 per cent who make the A grade.
  • Nearly one in 10 boys repeat a grade (9.9 per cent) compared to 6.5 per cent of girls.


Sources: Statistics Canada, Council of Education Ministers, Ontario College of Teachers, ScholarshipsCanada.com,

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