Study abroad participation sees gender disparity
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When international relations junior Sam Kilberg spent 10 weeks studying abroad in China last summer, he said he made lifelong friends and completed his entire third-level Chinese language requirements.
“I had the trip of a lifetime,” Kilberg said.
Seven out of nine participants in Killberg’s program were men, which bucks a national trend that shows females are roughly twice as likely to participate in study abroad programs than males.
“I really don’t know how to put it — I’m really staggered by the statistics, too,” Kilberg said.
National data on the total U.S. student population that studied abroad during the 2009-10 academic year showed a 63.5 percent female to 36.5 percent male gender breakdown, said Cheryl Benner, communications manager for the MSU Office of Study Abroad in an email. That same year, MSU was at 63.7 percent female population in study abroad, she said.
During the 2010-11 academic year, female participation in MSU study abroad programs increased slightly to 63.8 percent, with males at 36.2 percent, out of 2,643 total students, according to the Office of Study Abroad.
Kilberg said women might be more likely to study abroad because they typically are more interested in travel and seeing the world. He also noted it can be easier for guys to find summer jobs — typically manual labor — that keep them occupied during summer when most study abroad programs take place.
Jim Lucas, assistant to the dean for undergraduate studies, has researched study abroad participation at MSU and believes one of the reasons for the disparity is gender roles people identify themselves with. He said men often are trained to prioritize “hard skills” related to academics or their careers such as working and getting internships.
A lot of the messages and discussions surrounding study abroad programs are about “soft skills,” Lucas said.
“(Soft skills are) things like you’ll grow as a person, you’ll make friends, you’ll become more confident,” he said. “A lot of times those messages don’t resonate with men as much.”
Lucas said men also sometimes can view study abroad as a large-scale field trip and be discouraged by the strict structure, whereas women sometimes view it as a safe way to travel.
To increase male study abroad participation, he said schools need to put more effort into recruiting males, such as recruiting within fraternities.
“There’s not a quick fix that’s in one year going to boost the number of men that are going to study abroad,” Lucas said.
When communication junior Kara Porter studied abroad in Scotland before her freshman year, she said the gender breakdown was roughly 70 percent females to 30 percent males. Porter, now a peer adviser in the Office of Study Abroad, said she has no explanation for the low participation by males and added the skills she learned on her trip are universal.
“You learn to be resourceful, you learn to problem solve, and that’s a big thing that employers are looking for that isn’t necessarily taught in a classroom,” she said.
