AEI’s Mark Perry is upset about a new report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that women, at age 22, are both more likely to be enrolled in college and more likely to have received a bachelor’s degree:
In other words, at age 22, there are 185.5 women holding a bachelor’s degree (or more) for every 100 men who have graduated from college, a ratio approaching two to one. That’s a huge gender disparity in college completion at age 22, but it can be expected that:
1. This huge gender gap will receive almost no media attention, and will be largely ignored by the gender activists.
2. There will be no calls for government studies, or increased government funding to address the “problem,” and nobody will refer to this gender degree gap as a “national crisis,” the way former astronaut Sally Ride described the gender disparity for jobs in engineering, technology, and science (women hold only 25 percent of those jobs).
3. President Obama will not address the gender degree gap by signing an executive order creating the “White House Council on Men and Boys,” like he did last year for women and girls.
4. Neither Obama, Congress, nor the gender activists in academia will address the gender degree gap by invoking Title IX gender-equity law, like they have proposed using for the gender gap in some math and science programs (see here and here).
5. Nobody will blame the gender degree gap on structural barriers from grades K–12 that discourage men from attending or graduating from college, like they do for explaining the gender gap for women in math and science.
In other words, the standard “disparity-proves-discrimination” dogma, followed by calls for government intervention, will not be applied in this case of a huge gender imbalance in college completion by age 22, because the disparity favors women, not men.
How about this: I will respect Perry’s complaint when it’s the year 3010, and women have controlled the social, cultural and economic institutions of the human race for the better part of the millennia, as well as actively taken steps to prevent men from participating in anything other than their narrowly proscribed roles. Then, and only then, will I give credence to the idea that there is anything “unfair” about the fact that boys have to compete on a level playing field with their female counterparts.
Exactly!
Well. While Mr. Perry is being awfully whiny about it (and turning it into another excuse to attack feminism, yawn), the fact of the matter is that this issue really should concern anyone who is interested in gender equality. If nothing else, it should concern us because of the serious negative effect this has on women – simply put, men who are less educated (especially men who are less educated because they were expected to go get a job in construction because by god, my son is going to WORK for a living and not bother with that sissy college shit) are more likely to have bullshit ideas about women, and as such are more likely to objectify women, abuse women, and resent women. If men are falling behind in education, that is of concern to us because all of us live with men, work with men, have male friends and family and lovers and neighbors. To act like this isn’t our problem is naive.
This a problem for people interested in gender equity, and your response is probably not helpful.
A) This is fodder for backlash. If the facts are wrong that should be addressed.
B) If the facts are right lets not get caught in punishing the sons for the sins of the father. The sons and fathers can vote and if University Education appears to under serve young men, the sad truth is University education will get short changed (…and I suspect the military will benefit).
C) In the short term, the disparity may have undesirable effects on campus culture. I am waiting for someone to take on the story on “The New Campus Math” in the NY times, for example.
The key phrase is “interested in gender equity.” I get the sense that the quoted writer is more interested in scoring cheap points against feminists than he is with addressing gender equity. I more than welcome an honest and good-faith attempt to find the roots of the growing disparity between men and women in college attendance and graduation.
For starters I’d like to withdraw item C) as I can see from some other sources that article was a load of crap.
In any case, your response to mine was facile and honestly a bit offensive.
I have two daughters and a son and gender equity is an every day issue in my family.
I have to add you don’t seem interested in working through the substance of the issue and your focus on the messengers, though possibly understandable, doesn’t convey “good-faith” on your part.
Anyway, this is your space, and since apparently I’m not welcome, I’ll move along.
Dude dude! Hold on. I think we might have a misunderstanding here. That wasn’t directed specifically at you! When I said “quoted writer,” I meant the guy in the original post, not you! I apologize for being unclear. Seriously. I welcome comments and visitors and I have no interest in alienating anyone who took the time to leave a comment at my blog.
and of course, “guy who wrote the original post” = Mark Perry, whose name I was too lazy to refer back to when I wrote the first comment.
I’m inclined to wonder whether fewer men finish college because (all other things being equal) they don’t necessarily need to in order to get a job that pays just as well as a job a woman could get after having acquired that degree (given that the wage gap is still alive and well).
I also wonder if many of the men in the study will catch up (or already have caught up) by their mid-to-late-20s, given the oft-cited idea that girls/women mature earlier than boys/men.
And I’m inclined to suspect that race is a pretty sizeable factor in the statistics, too (i.e. is the gender gap is greater among people of color b/c men of color are less likely to see college as an option?).
At any rate, as you say, if this were part of a larger pattern, I’d be more concerned. That’s not to say it’s not worth noting, particularly for the reasons Triste points out, but I’m not ready to start crying “But what about the menz??” just yet — and I think your (Jamelle) suspicion that Perry was just trying to score cheap points off of feminists is spot-on.