 Setbacks at the
Gender Gap:Males Falling Farther Behind in Education By Marshall Loeb
Sunday, February 18, 2006; MARKETWATCH By almost every measure, boys are performing much less well than girls in schools and universities -- often shockingly so. In the United States, women now make up 57% of college students. Among African-Americans, the figure is 60%. Faced with the problem of the mysteriously vanishing male, some college admissions officers have adopted subtle affirmative action programs, selecting applicants with lower grades to pump up the population of young men on campus. If they fail to recruit and retain enough, they fear that women will transfer out to a different university that has more eligible males to offer. Women win most of the academic scholarships, and take twice as many advanced placement courses as men do. Teachers commonly remark that there are more young women than young men in their classes, and the women get better grades. On average, boys and young men are 1.5 years behind girls and young women in reading ability -- and the gap is widening significantly. Men also do particularly poorly in writing. That is one of many reasons why most high school dropouts are young men -- the rate is as high as 80% in some cities. The dropouts tend to earn much less and be sentenced to prison at much higher rates than other young men. The problems begin at an early age. Ken Hilton, an educator who has written extensively on the subject, points out that girls arrive at kindergarten with greater vocabularies than boys, and that the achievement gap doubles between 4th and 8th grades. These disparities are not confined to the United States. A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that low academic performance is more of a problem among young men than young women in 19 of the 27 countries studied. In 21 of the countries, more women than men graduate from university. All
this suggests major migraines ahead for society at large.
"A
dismal future lies ahead for large numbers of boys in this
generation who will not go to college," writes therapist Michael
Gurian, author of the recently published book, "The Minds of Boys."
According
to Gurian, "Statistics show that a young man who doesn't
finish school or go to college will earn less than half what a college
graduate earns. He will be three times more likely to be unemployed and
more likely to be homeless. He'll be more likely to get divorced and
more likely to engage in violence against women and more likely to
engage in crime. He'll be more likely to develop substance abuse
problems and to be a greater burden on the economy since men who don't
attend college pay less in Social Security and other taxes, depend more
on government welfare, are more likely to father children out of
wedlock and more likely not to pay child support."
In
this environment, many men -- of all races -- will choose to live at
home in a sort of perpetual adolescence, earn low incomes, feel
disenfranchised and contribute little to society.
Hilton
cites the chilling example of a frustrated domestic terrorist
when he says, "I worry that we are going to create a generation of Tim
McVeys living on the margins of society, living at home, earning
$20,000 or so and waking up one day finding how screwed they are,
getting angry and wondering who to blame."
It's
hard to determine who or what is to blame.
Some
researchers note that there are structural differences in the
brains of girls and boys, and show evidence that these differences
enhance girls' academic skills. Girls also tend to be more patient,
boys more restless and aggressive. But when boys have strong fathers
who read a lot at home, they tend to do just about as well as girls.
Unless
and until researchers can find out just what is needed -- in
addition to strong fathers -- to level the differences between the
genders, there will be severe troubles. Almost half of the population
--- the male half -- will confront at least some disadvantages in the
labor market. Managers will have a challenge to find trained, skilled,
disciplined workers who can survive in the increasingly competitive the
global marketplace.
The
first step to a solution is to admit that there is a problem. Only
when we concede that there are dangerous divisions between the genders
can we begin to pull up those who are disadvantaged.
Editor's
note: Reporter Peter C. Beller contributed to this article.
Marshall
Loeb, former editor of Fortune, Money, and The Columbia Journalism
Review, writes "Your Dollars" exclusively for MarketWatch.Copyright © MarketWatch, Inc.
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