The reason women go to university

[NicholasTeakozy]

Is to find a man to marry according to Boris Johnson, that well known paragon of virtue and upholder of equality nowhere.

Boris Johnson, well-known as the only person who knows why women do things.

Yes it's called an MRS degree. Classy!

I imagine that women, like men, go to university for a lot of reasons.

Not just one reason per sex. Not just one reason per person. But many reasons for each person.

I also imagine that "meet nice person to date and perhaps more" is one of those many reasons.

He may joke (it was a joke, right?) but there is some statistic about how many people marry someone they met at uni (lots). And from personal experience I can only think of a handful of people who married someone they met after uni.

If I had only realised I was supposed to look for a husband when I was at uni I might have paid more attention to the law student who chased me, rather than go out with the cool singer in a band...

Oooops, maybe I shouldn't go then. I doubt my husband would appreciate my finding another husband. I can imagine life becoming quite cramped and complicated.

Yeah, we fought for the right to go to university. Er, in order to marry the same men we would have married if we hadn't. That makes sense.

Plus how many people do you know who actually married their uni boyfriend? So as well as being sexist bollocks it's statistical bollocks as well.

Silly man. He is surely far too intelligent to believe this. And he seems fairly confident but it sounds like the sort of crap joke men tell to win favour with other men. Maybe he is actually just very insecure?

I met my husband at uni, he earns less than me - does that mean he went to uni to find a wife?

I have two daughters, neither of them have gone to uni. One of them mightdo, the other is adamant she will not. Both of them are in commited relationships and are very happy about that. Which makes me happy. They, and their brother, are reminded often they live their life to please themselves not their parents and grandparents.

So Boris, where do my daughters fit in with your ridiculous views?

I left uni to move back home once I met DP. Since I was only ever went to uni to find a husband it seemed a waste of time to finish the degree!

Gosh.

I am married and doing an MA. Dh may not be impressed. My course is also about 95% female students, so finding a husband could be tricky.

Still, I'm glad he put me straight, silly old me was trying to improve my career pattern.

Bugger.

I'm married and doing a BA. Should I divorce DH now?

Well I did marry my uni boyfriend and he does earn more than me.

Wasn't why I went, though. I went to study the subject I loved and still do love! Dh was a nice bonus.

This is the thing about Boris - we love his buffoonery - but underneath the buffoonery, there's a total twat in waiting.

I already had my man at home, but decided to leave him behind and go to university to get myself one of them fancy educations.
We are still together after 26 years - so I needn't have bothered to get a degree!

I actually know someone who did just this. Having heard her mother say to my then toddler DDs "what do you want to do when you are bigger?Marry a Rich man" I can't say I was surprised that her DD dropped out when none of her fellow students fancied her.

She is the only person I know who did it though. All my freinds who went to universaty did so to further their own careers, mostly in the fields of engineering or accounting, which are going rather well.

Oh, forgot to say I left school at 16 and still managed to bag a husband, wonder what Boris has to say about me then?

Boris is being a sexist twat. But I totally let the side down on this one. I'm afraid the truth is that at the tender age of 18, having gone to an all-girls school and struggled to meet boys with whom I had much connection, I most certainly did have men on my mind when I went to university. I wanted to meet like-minded men I could talk about ideas and poetry with and for whom my intelligence would be an attractive quality rather than something to hide. I was also aware that my parents had met at university and so had many of their friends and I felt ready to embark on my own great love affair. I even cited the 'favourable' (ie shocking and disgraceful) male-female ratio at my Oxbridge college as a reason for selecting it. Of course the reality was that most of the entitled (indeed some of them actually titled) public schoolboys I met were as attractive as a dirty nappy and not a lot of them wanted girls to be intelligent or to talk about ideas anyway. Not only did I not meet a husband there but I endured pretty much the worst romantic drought in my life. Of course I'm still glad I went and, even at 18, I knew deep down that the real opportunity I was so privileged to receive was one of education and the freedom to steer my future in a direction that I wanted. I really can't say now how much of the 'I'm looking for a husband' thing was just a joke for me - but I was lonely and I definitely wanted some action. I was enthused about the whole package: the course, the independence but the social side loomed large for me. Don't we all most crave and value what we most struggle to find? I'm a privileged middle class girl. I never had to fight for education like Malala or the millions of girls in developing countries driven out of education by poverty and societal expectations. I didn't know how lucky I was. But I did struggle with boys who made me feel that being clever was a lot less desirable than being pretty and being fancied. I'm not proud of those attitudes - and they've certainly changed now - but teenagers are allowed to get things wrong, aren't they? I think as higher education today is threatened by cuts in funding to once again become the preserve of the wealthy few, modern youngsters seem to have a much more mature take on the whole thing than I did. Globally women's education is so essential to the betterment of mankind but life decisions aren't all about increasing one's personal wealth (although sadly the debts foisted upon this generation of students teach them that that really is all it's about). We are social animals. I think that hoping to meet people you'll click with - intellectually and socially - isn't a terrible reason to pursue HE. But of course Boris is a knob for generalising about women - clearly I was in the minority - and for belittling their intellectual achievements and capabilities. If a few women in the student library are more interested in the man sitting next to them than the book in front of them, I think one thing is undeniable - this isn't restricted to the females! What about the men going to university to meet a wife?

but the men who married uni friends, they didn't go to university to "find" their wives?

I met DP while doing a PhD.

I do not recommend doing a PhD to find a man.

I do recommend it for getting to use a gender-neutral title on all of your correspondence though :o

Gah!
For me, the worst bit about this kind of comment is that it confirms the (often unconscious) beliefs of many people but is also one of those comments that, when complained about, can easily be dismissed as a joke and the complainer dismissed as over sensitive, humourless etc so it plays into both sexist, anti-female stereotypes and the anti-feminist 'earnest, can't take a bit of fun' stereotype (does that make sense?)

I certainly didn't meet DH at university, it was in a completely different country. When I did my MSc I was already married. There was no way I would have found a husband on that course even though it was 95% male. I intimidated the lot of them with my (apparently) effortless acquisition of all the top grades.

I did meet DH during my last year of university. However I didn't go to university with a plan to find a husband. I can't imagine any woman would.

In a similar vein, I didn't go to university to plan on getting pregnant during my first year, have my then boyfriend do a runner faster than Usain Bolt and end up taking a year out of my studies to have the baby. Things happen though!