We live in a time where women have significantly greater and much more important rights than they ever have in our history. Though we are not yet where we want to be and still have a long journey ahead of us, we must acknowledge the major changes that women have fought for and created for us today. One of these changes being that it is much more socially acceptable for women to attend a university and give themselves the opportunity to receive a higher education. This is a much more recent social change for women, and in fact is creating a big wave of baby boomer women who are now going to school for the first time since graduating high school decades ago. The conversation posted and article last September called “Baby Boomer Women Make Up for Lost Study Time and Head Back to University.” In this article, they describe this social change as an upward trend. Between 2012 and 2015 there has been a rate of nearly 2 times more baby boomer women attending university every single year. Woman of this age are coming closer and closer each year to having the same number of baby boomer women as there are baby boomer men with college educations.
A woman who was interviewed for this article says she was one of 63 women who were above the age of 60 who managed to finish their post graduate studies at a university in Australia. If there are 63 baby boomer women who have successfully finished their post graduate research then I can only imagine how many other baby boomer women went to a 2 or 4 year university to receive their AA or their BA. Another reason women of older ages are ow having such a strong interest and choosing to invest all these years and dollars into a higher education is for mental health reasons. It is proven that the more active your brain is the greater the chances are for you to avoid dementia or Alzheimer’s, in your later years of life. So, what better way to help your brain, and be able to make use of a degree. At 55 women still have enough time to gain their degree and work in their field for several years. This is an amazing opportunity that should have been available for women from the beginning. There is no going back to change what has happened and these women are making the most of the cards they’ve been dealt by proving that they always have been capable of getting a degree and working in a “mans job”. (word count 439)
Maddy's Sociology Blog 