Women Owe Almost $400 Billion More in Student Debt Than Men. You Can Blame That on the Patriarchy.
Graduation season is upon us, and it's a time of celebration across the nation. But a new report revealed that seven out of 10 women will leave school this month not just with a diploma: Over 70 percent will also have to pack up student debt as well.
New data released this month by the American Association of University Women finds that women owe around $2,700 more than men do at graduation. Crunch the numbers, and arrive at this stunner of a statistic: Women hold two thirds of the $1.4 trillion in student loans in the United States. That’s $890 billion—still more than the GDP of Austria and Norway combined—and $400 billion more than men.
For at least the last decade, candidates for elected office have touted plans to make higher education more affordable, and progressive politicians have put forth bold policies to address the problem. But few have been explicit about its gender breakdown. Women bear a disproportionate brunt of the national student debt, and that has and continues to cost them billions in lost wealth and missed opportunities.
Of course, some of that burden stems from the fact that more women enroll in American universities than men do. At the undergraduate level, women account for 56 percent of all students. But even that number doesn’t explain the share of debt women owe. As AAUW senior vice president of public policy and research Deborah Vagins notes, just one factor can explain the the stark differential: the wage gap.
We’ve insisted for decades now that women pursue advanced education, the better to secure good salaries and more skilled work. And that’s great, Vagins adds. But after graduation and at the federal level, the nation hasn't done enough to ensure that those women are compensated at the same rates as men. The wage gap kicks in as soon as women enter the job market, which means that, from the start, they have fewer resources to pay back loans, they pay them off more slowly, and they rack up more interest in the process. The effects snowball, Vagins suggests.
"All of this compounds and means they have more debt, they take longer to pay it off, and they struggle more with that debt," she says.
Researchers estimate that women could soon owe over $1 trillion in student debt, a number that lower wages and other costs, like child care, drives upward.
And because we know now that the issue of student debt is tied to pay inequities, it’s no surprise that the report confirms that African American women, who make just 63 cents on the dollar, have it the hardest. For a few reasons, not least of which is that they’ve likely earned less in the jobs they did before school, black women graduate with $30,000 in debt, compared with $22,000 for white women and $19,500 for white men.
Researchers at AAUW estimate that women could soon owe over $1 trillion in student debt, a number that lower wages and other costs, like child care, drives upward. Vagins adds that the chasm between what men and women owe has almost doubled since 2014. Believe it or not, families still save less for daughters than they do for sons. T. Rowe Price found that in 75 percent of households with just sons, parents prioritize college funds over retirement accounts. For parents that have daughters, that number hovers around 60 percent.
Vagins stresses that just as there’s not one root cause for all student debt, there isn’t one quick fix to solve it. Still, AAUW has some ideas. Elected officials can boost support for Pell Grants, so that fewer low-income students have to take out loans to start. And our representatives could act to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, a move that’s a decade overdue.
In an emailed statement to Glamour, Senator Patty Murray, who serves in the chamber’s HELP Committee and has championed better access to more affordable education in the Senate, wrote that she remains “committed to addressing the rising costs of college, the unmanageable student loan debt, and the wage gap,” and added that she appreciated the fact that women have more debt and take more time to pay it off than men do. To that end, the AAUW recommends that universities open subsidized child care facilities on campuses, an acknowledgment that single mothers face costs that most men don’t.
But in the end, according to the AAUW, the best solution to the problem of the gender gap between male and female borrowers are the same ones that would close the wage gap: the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Pay Equity for All Act, state laws that would work with businesses to implement new recruitment standards aimed at hiring candidates, and business practices that retain women once they have children.
“We do not want to send the message that because of debt, women shouldn’t pursue their educational dreams,” Vagins says. “We just think it’s important that our representatives act. This level of debt affects all aspects of women’s lives; we need to be focused on that.”
