as boris will say .. 'good point'.
but is peer pressure too much on girls to be better looking (compared to boys).. also I read somewhere girls take more humanities and less science/tech/maths class in co-ed than single school(nobody likes geeky girl I guess).
There is far too much pressure on young girls especially to somehow maintain their looks to a minimum standard or be a total outcast. And the reason why I say outcast is that because unlike in Pakistan, here, any woman or young woman that doesn't thrive in a social atmosphere is seemingly deviant if it's of her choice, or a failure if it's not intentional.
Please go to a campus or two while you're here, meet some people, my few bets, set in stone as to what you will see:
Unless you're at Oxbridge, or elitist universities, most women you will come across will greet you with an uncomfortable smile, will have personalities about as deep as puddles, ask them their interests/hobbies and they will start and end at socialising: hanging with friends, partying, so on, every ounce of it will be social. They will have little to no grasp of humour and none of their own, they will have nothing unique about them in terms of their individual, their conduct will be 95% similar to all other women around them.
Thus, with this upbringing, the need for success in social situations causes these young women to often be unambitious beyond some very short sighted matters, spend enormous amounts of energy, resources and emotion trying to be a barbie doll.
Now, some women are undoubtedly different, some have their heads in books, others couldn't care less about following the crowd, these women are easy to spot but few in places like average UK uni campuses.
Also, yes, women do tend to chose humanities courses, this is nothing to do with grades. But it does have to do a lot with that bloated 'gender pay gap' story.
need to get hands on that article to see what they "discovered"
Then again I am not sure if it had anything to do with strict convent discipline 
