These days it's very hard for companies to locate qualified individuals for an ever-increasing number of highly skilled positions. Due to this phenomenon, college-educated women are in a position to break through and ultimately shatter the glass ceiling.
Women now outnumber men when it comes to having a four-year college degree.
This is significant because a growing number of jobs, even those in traditionally blue-collar industries, require advanced technical training or a college degree. By comparison, of those in their 40s, women held 50 percent of bachelor's degrees, and of those in their 60s, women held just 42 percent of the degrees. The importance of a four-year degree has not been lost on the younger generation of women. More and more are attending colleges and universities, considerably outpacing their male counterparts. In 1997, of the record 2.7 million high-school graduates, 1.4 million or 51 percent were female.