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It looks as though I have a new gig this fall, teaching a class on Pacific Northwest tribes and natural resources for Oregon States new agricultural education program at Eastern Oregon. If all goes well after a trip to Corvallis, I will begin a 10-week session with about 45 students at the end of September.

The number of women students in ag programs at Oregon State is on the rise almost half of the students in my class will be women, and a quick check on the Internet says that 90 percent of OSU animal science majors at OSU are women! (Ag programs nationwide are growing, in part because the field has broadened to take in agriculture from farm to table and include related natural resource fields, because there are jobs in agriculture, and also because ag is hip. Think all that slow food business.)

Agriculture is not alone in the gender shift. Women in medicine hit a peak of over 50 percent a few years back, and that hasnt dropped much; ditto law schools. The important stats might be that women comprise well over 50 percent of all college students, and 58 percent of all graduate students! In 2009, for the first time ever, more women earned PhDs than did men.

Its interesting that although more women than men now attend seminaries, they make up only 10 percent of senior pastors in protestant churches. There is apparently something called a stained glass ceiling, although the wags on the Internet assume that women will eventually get a fairer share of the pastorates.

And speaking of ceilings, men are still pretty safe at Fortune 500 companies, where they have 95 percent of the CEO jobs although women have

climbed past 15 percent in board positions and have picked up a high-profile CEO job or two in the past couple of years.

Any way you look at it, there have been major changes since 1972 and Title IX which requires gender equity for boys and girls in every educational program that receives federal funding. Most of us think sports when we think Title IX, but the brief notes above tell a much bigger story.

Those of us on the progressive side of gender equity issues can be pretty pleased with all of above. But what about the incidence of harassment and rape in our more gender-equal military? And what about knockout drinks on college campuses, bold rapes in India, sex tours to Asia, and sex trafficking in Portland?

And what about all those boys and men on the other side of 50 percent in all of above? I have some theories dont I always!

First, it seems to me that as we have increased opportunities for women, we have simultaneously denigrated many traditional male jobs. Everyone has to have computer skills, and industrial arts and trade programs have been reduced in high schools to make room for them. The need for high-tech education and college degrees is hammered at young students along with second grade pre-algebra. And the idea that someone (male or female, but, as I say, many of these occupations have been traditionally male and traditionally respected) might want to be a diesel mechanic, carpenter, logger, electrician, plumber, big rig driver, heavy equipment operator, sign painter, baseball umpire, tree pruner, baker, or candlestick maker is not much considered.

The age of celebrity and big paychecks for business, entertainment, sports, and high-tech superstars seems to have sent more men than women chasing fame and rainbows. And the encouragement of men in the fields of business and finance where they still hold significant school majorities and all of those CEO positions has left more spots in medicine, health, law, and now agriculture, to women.

My guess is that in solving one problem all those post-WWII women chased back to homemaking and baby-making after their big war-time run at industrial jobs weve created quite another. Or maybe another whole set of problems.

Most men do not become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, Los Angeles Dodgers, Twitter inventors, Tommy Hilfigers, or late-night TV hosts. And when they do make corporal or colonel in the Army they might have to answer to a woman sergeant or general! Women are doing quite well, thank you, as doctors and lawyers, movie directors and college professors, and men must now work for them and learn from them. I just dont think male attitudes have had time to catch up with all of these changes.

The good thing about agriculture is that women have always been involved, that a good hand is a good hand, and that the most hard-core cowboy will, if grudgingly, admit it!

Main Street columnist Rich Wandschneider lives in Joseph.