The question in the the title of this post is inspired by a NY Times article: At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust .
The articles makes very clear that women presently outperform men in scholastics. They remain more motivated throughout their college career, register and succeed in more difficult subjects and garner more academic rewards. Though success in school does not yet quite show up in the corporate world--men still make more than women--it may just be a matter of time before their scholastic triumphs transfer to the workday world. Whatever, your opinion about gender based economic inequality, overwhelming evidence suggests that American women's desire to flourish outweighs that of men.
While this certainly bodes well for women, this reality troubles me in many ways as it should everyone. I know that successful women now complain about the difficulty of finding suitable men to date and marry; because they make more money and are better educated, their choices are limited to men below their social or economic status. One can easily extrapolate the circumstance to where we have a class of highly educated and motivated females running corporations ruling over less educated and motivated men. Yes, a bit of stretch, but certainly a possibility.
So my question to any of you still reading "The White Papers" is: Is it time to help men? Obviously, gender inequality still favors those with penises; our representative government is woefully short of female representatives; women still have more reason to fear men than the opposite. Nonetheless, an unequal society of any kind is worrisome for reasons already stated. Women still bear more responsibilty for child-rearing, but must they also find some way to motivate men to do more?
Personally, I am one of the unmotivated. My father, though he remained married to my mother until his death was a father in name only; he paid the bills (after many arguments) and that was it. My mother overcompensated for his absence and declared me, at a young age, as "The Man of the House". I have struggled with this ever since. I mention this because the end of the article refers to men who isolate themselves to their rooms, neither going to class or socializing until they flunk out. I know that pain. Men generally do not have the support systems women do. The quiet loner is still seen as a romantic hero instead of a flawed underdeveloped human.
It is time to address the emotional needs of males in a different way. But how?
6 comments:
nothing like a post on gender issues to get those crickets chirpin' eh?
this is an interesting note, that may partially (but by no means completely) account for the gender-achievement gap
which men are attending college?
which women?
"The gender differences are not uniform. In the highest-income families, men 24 and under attend college as much as, or slightly more than, their sisters"
"Young men from low-income families, which are disproportionately black and Hispanic, are the most underrepresented on campus, though in middle-income families too, more daughters than sons attend college."
this brings to mind a conversation my mom and I had several times over my academic career in which I excelled at underachieving....
things were "easy" for me, academically speaking, from a very early age, which tended to be a detriment when i got older. when I started college, i had never, in my life HAD TO STUDY for a test.
I went to college, in part, bacause it was always assumed I would. And in picking a school, i took the path of least resistance: i enrolled in my local community college.
In short, things were too easy for me, I coasted, and when faced with having to work hard, I didn't know how to apply myself.
Perhaps many women are working harder in college because they had to work harder to get there in the first place. Their brothers would probably have to work just as hard...
and maybe some of the men who are less motivated are so because they don't have as much riding on whether they get an A or a B - their college record isn't the only thing they have going for them - they're already plugged-in to the network that offers them access to the "great job" and yes, their sisters probably would have the same access...
I ahve more thoughts, but i also have work to do...
I think much of what you say is correct; women are used to working harder because they have been doing so longer. also many men can also fall back on physical labor.
Nonetheless, the question remaisn unanswered: is it time to help men?
the simple question leads to more complicated ones. If men are failing of their own accord, is it fair to women to give men an extra hand up? Even though women are excelling in schools, why has it not translated to the work world?
My answer is that we have to help all equally. Creating an imbalance, whether by design or accident set dangerous precedents and threatens to undo progress already made. I believe the success women have made scholastically represents pent up demand realizing its potential. May be its time to fuel that it men as well. Afterall, we all know that education lead to less crime, better health and more successful offspring.
Of course, wanting to and actually accomplishing this goal are two different things...
I agree, deek that in some ways we have inadvertently created an imbalance...
an example of this can be seen as early as elementary school:
In an attempt to better serve the learning styles of girls, boys are at times being overlooked, or even "punished" (i.e. mis-diagnosed with ADD for exhibiting typical "boy" behaviors)
so yes, a way needs to be found to help men and women equally... I don't have any handy-dandy answers in my back pocket at the moment, as my handy-dandy answer machine is broken....
I think it begins with respect. respect people's differences. I think the positve example we can take from this story is that women when finally received intellectual encouragement they excelled. I am always surprised by how smart regular people I meet from all over are. Many really do understand the complexities of our world, but are never encouraged to express their knowledge. Humans are different from other mammals because of our desire to learn and adapt. If we all encouraged to do so we can only improve the general circumstance.
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