Do we need to provide more academic assistance for male students?

Yes. I think women are operating under poor assumptions. More women are college graduates then men, and more management staff are women then men.

This was also the case in the 1930’s and prior.

Are you saying girls are offered more scholarships than men? Is that by design? Only offered to females? Or, because the women apply for them and earn them?

Labor intensive jobs are more difficult for women. As much as we want to say women can do anything a man can do, it doesn’t change that an average man is stronger than the average woman, and can handle hard labor better than a woman. I had a very physical job, so I am not saying women cannot do physical jobs, but a 40 pound box for me is simply more difficult to lift than for the guy who worked with me, over and over and over again throughout the day. Women are also more likely to be iron dificient, which means we can fatigue faster. Anyway, this can be part of the reason careers that require college degrees, a professional track, are very attractive to women. And, as the article mentions, women in the last 50 years sought financial independence, and college degrees have long since been touted as the way to make more money. I also think men are more likely to be risk takers, and try entrepreneurial endeavors, while women might seek a more decided route of education and corporate life.

But, all of that is generalizations, and both sexes have a variety of reasons for why they pursue education and certain careers and there is tons of crossover.

“We” who? For male students to do what? Federal student aid is blind to sex/gender; private entities can create scholarships for anyone they want to.

I think boys are at a disadvantage to girls, these days. Schools work well for girls, on average. Girls have a major advantage in being able to sit still and concentrate, things teachers love. Boys are much worse at that, on average. They need to run around more. They need to experiment more. They need more hands on stuff. They aren’t as good with books.

Boys need to be taught differently. But in mixed schools. they don’t get that. So the teachers teach to the girls because the girls are easier. The gender of the teacher doesn’t matter. On average, teachers like girls better. They’re just easier, academically.

I don’t know if families are even bothering with boys any more. At my son’s school, an elementary school, the girls already outnumber the boys by sixty to 40 percent. It’s probably just an aberation, but it’s also true overall in the school. I wonder if parents are thinking that they are willing to spend money for their girls, but not so much for their boys. Boys can go to public school, which is free in the US.

In my opinion, the pendulum has already swung too far in favor of girls. They needed in when I was young, but we are still pushing for equality and people don’t recognize it’s already been attained, so the pendulum will swing far past equality. At some point the general public will recognize there is a problem, and then maybe things will change, but for the moment, boys are being forgotten and left out.

I don’t know what the consequences of this trend will be. Maybe boys aren’t really good at academics. Maybe that’s where girls should be. Maybe women should be running the world. Maybe they are more peacable and maybe they understand others better. But I doubt it.

Maybe boys will catch up over time. Maybe the things we are good at will continue to be valuable. I don’t know if girls are pushing boys out of engineering or other scientific fields where boys are traditionally the majority. SO maybe there will be male ghettos in academia. Hard to know. But most women I know don’t even believe this is happening.

@wundayatta I actually agree that the trends in primary school work against boys. Less PE, less physical activity in general, wanting children to “learn” more at younger ages. But, by high school don’t you think the boys have calmed down enough to sit still? Or, do you think their negative experience in primary school sets them up to dislike school in general?

“But most women I know don’t even believe this is happening.”

Most males don’t think it is happening too.

@JLeslie From what research I’ve done, elementary school is the most important. It’s where you learn how to learn. If you get left behind there, you never catch up. So yes, a poor experience in primary school is just the start. It gets worse and worse.

@johnpowell I’d love to see your data on this. You are probably right. Mostly because I doubt if men think about it. But my statement was about women I know, and your statement is about most males—a far larger group of people. Like I said, I’d love to see a little documentation for that statement.

My data is anecdotal just like yours is.

Women now dominate at every degree level

Women over-represented in management

@johnpowell But you spoke of all males, not males you know. That’s not anecdotal. Not by a long shot.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought, wow, that’s what you took away from that link?

@nik Oh I took away that women are often underpaid, but they are over represented in management.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought In middle level management. Still underrepresented in the top level.

Anyways, back to the main question, it makes me mad, as a white female, that people want to give me money just because I’m a girl. That, to me, is saying, as a girl, I am less capable than a man of achievement. Give me a scholarship because I earned it by merit academically, musically, artistically, or by sports. Give me a scholarship because my family is poor and I’m disadvantaged. Give me a scholarship because I have emotional or physical handicaps, or have gone through some trauma that makes it harder for me to succeed in school. But don’t you dare assume that because I’m a girl I need your help.

I refuse to apply/accept scholarships solely for women.

The question is should we encourage men more, and stop encouraging women. I see no evidence that women need help through college.

If we are talking about high level corporate positions, that is a different discussion, and has nothing to do with college.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought How is, women make up 51.6% of management (women making up slightly more than 50% of the population) “overrepresented”?

Women might earn more degrees than men, but that’s because they have to:

“The study’s other main finding is that a woman generally needs more degrees than a man in order to earn the same amount of money. For example, the average woman must obtain a Ph.D in order to keep pace with the average bachelor’s degree-holding man.

“The women’s story is grand and dismal,” concluded Carnevale. After scanning all 171 majors included in the study, he found not one major where women consistently out-earn men.”

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Why not just encourage people based on their individual circumstance, instead of just on their sex? And you brought up the statistics based on management, not me.

@Aethelflaed, I am looking at the following, repeated on numerous sites:
http://collegetimes.us/10-surprising-statistics-on-women-in-the-workplace/

Women make up 46 percent of the workforce in america, and are over 50% of the management staff. Tell me where I am making an error.

@Philosophile We are discussing women going to college needing help. I don’t think they do as much as men. If you disagree, let me know why. I did bring up statistics, and I don’t know that we were arguing.

@Philosophile, when we live in a world where people are rewarded based on their individual circumstance, blind to their sex, I will agree with you.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought, did you not think the statistics below that were relevant?

Percentage of female Fortune 500 corporate officers: 15.4%
Percentage of female Fortune 500 board seats: 14.8%
Percentage of female Fortune 500 top earners: 6.7%
Percentage of female Fortune 500 CEOs: 2.4%

@nikipedia I understand that it gets ugly in corporate America. But it seems like getting a college degree is skewed towards women, and attaining middle management is easier for women then men.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Some women will need help. Some men will need help. Why judge it based on sex?

@nikipedia You’re right, that will never happen. But generalizing genders isn’t going to solve the problem.

Boys typically have other pressures put upon them that girls don’t. Females are more free to choose what they want to aspire to, while males are still expected to play their macho gender roles out. From my years in school boys who did do well in school usually got picked on. It is obviously not considered ‘cool’ or masculine, even today, for boys to be smart in school.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought You’re getting the numbers right. What I’m still not getting is how women making up half of management is anything other than equal. Or, for that matter, how they have it easier attaining middle management – could one not just as easily speculate based on the numbers that employers are will hire women for middle management once they’re done promoting the men to almost all of the higher-level positions, but will often refuse to let women get beyond middle management?

I think
1) Fortune 500, means exactly what it says on the tin, but people fail to recognize it. The 500 biggest American companies. They are not representative of the economy. The top positions at Fortune 500 companies are the 1% of the 1%. So you tell me it is sexist there? Fine, whatever, but how is that related to the majority of human experience.

2) We are talking about college, and a little bit about how it gets you into middle management.

Women are blowing away men in college. And now they are dominating men in middle management. If this was happening to women, I believe women would be asking why the deck was stacked against them.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought I totally agree that it’s unfair for women to think the deck is stacked against them when they are wholly at a disadvantage. But how is cutting programs for women in favor of men a good thing? If we try to help one group at the cost to the other, we’ll constantly be trying to balance out the teeter-totter.

@Philosophile Um. They are totally at an advantage, but believe themselves at a disadvantage is what I am trying to articulate.

And the question is, should we encourage scholarships for men rather than women as they are falling behind? Yes we should, in my opinion. Unfortunately, they are falling behind for one reason or another, and we should encourage them.

I think men are encouraged to go to college. I never hear the media, President, neighbors telling girls they should get a tertiary education and boys shouldn’t. Verbally it seems to me the message is equal. So, I lean towards @wundayatta‘s explanation of having to figure out boys attitudes towards school. And, also, women taking very seriously they need to enter the work force, compared to 30+ years ago.

I also wonder if girls have more ability to sacrifice for a better reward? Like the marshmellow study where the little kids are told they can eat one marshmellow now, or if they wait they can have more. Something like that. The kids who can wait when revisited later in life still had a personality of being able to wait for better things. A four year degree takes patience, persistance, and time. I think a lot of men like to start making money now. I see that in my nephew. I think our culture today encourages instant gratification, and less long term thinking.

We even have a political party, the Republicans, practically discouraging college educations, and women are more likely to be Democrats.

All these little messages and cultural realities might influence the percentages a point or two and they start to add up.

I also wonder how these numbers pan out socioeconomically? At each income level what is the division between boys and girls attending college? For instance are kids from household incomes of less than $50k is college attendance by gender different than from households who earn $150k?

And, I still want to know what scholarships are for women only? Is it really that disporportionate that women have many more scolarships offered to them than men?

I think it is important to look at trends, not just a snapshot of today. We have to look at how rapidly women have been filling the ranks of middle management. What was it ten years ago? What is it likely to be in ten years, given who is earning degrees in college and post-graduate level degrees?

In ten and twenty years, perhaps as many as 75% of middle management ranks will be female. What kind of impact will that have on the upper management gender balance? Surely it will move things more towards equality and eventually more towards a reflection of what is happening in middle management?

Demographically speaking, it has already happened. The overbalance will play out. Just like we know all the baby boomers will be retiring in the next decade or two. We haven’t experienced it yet, but it has happened. We have not yet experienced majority female management, but it has already happened, demographically speaking.

I suppose you could argue that sexism is so pervasive that even if 75% of middle management is female, we will still only select men for upper management positions. Maybe you could say it is a sex trait—men are more aggressive and this aggressiveness will win out even though they are less educated. Men do take more risks, so perhaps the boards of directors will prefer leaders who take more risks.

Personally, I doubt it. Risk taking does not, apparently, end up being so successful a strategy. It busts more than it booms. Interestingly, the person responsible for the recent JP Morgan 3 billion instant loss was a woman. Wonder what kind of impact that will have on the future of female management?

Now maybe we don’t need to be afraid of sex differences in terms of education. Maybe we can find different, but complementary roles for men and women. Maybe men can be paid for brawn and engineering skills (on average) and women can be paid for people skills. Maybe both are equally valuable to society.

Except that the value is generally determined by supply and demand. As women go more and more into management, there may be an oversupply of managers. So it may not help the wage gap. The wage gap may be a function of the market, not gender. It may be a function of supply and demand for various positions.

Do women go for positions where they can make the most? Do they like entrepreneurship as much as men do? Or do they prefer to be part of the employees? Individual stories do not help here. We need data about broad trends. I’m sure every woman on fluther is an entrepreneurial type. That’s wonderful, but it doesn’t help us understand the labor market at large.

Changes are happening before our very eyes. We need to pay attention to the data. We need to ask ourselves what our values are, and see if we can come to a consensus on that. Perhaps it is good that women have all the education. I honestly don’t know. But it is clear that as women make up more and more of middle management, then they will also make up more and more of upper management in the future.

“that people want to give me money just because I’m a girl. That, to me, is saying, as a girl, I am less capable than a man of achievement”

I don’t think that is the reason. I think the reason is more 1) political and 2) economical:

1) Companies, especially companies with government contracts, need to show gender balance. If not, they could be criticized, or worse, stand to lose future business from the government.

2) Also, promoting women (or anyone else) increases the labor pool and cuts labor rates as the supply of labor increases, the price for their services goes down. This is good for business.

@JLeslie, in my experience, scholarships exclusively for women tend to be in areas where women are still underrepresented, like engineering and computer science. I have never seen a scholarship for women in an area where women dominate, like English or history.

@nikipedia I see. Are they privately funded scholarships?

@Charles I don’t think it says that at all. It can mean what @nikipedia points out, that for whatever reason someone wants to encourage enrollment of women into a field of study.

For me less capable is when they do quotas or allow certain genders, races, or ethnicities to get into a curriculum with lower grades.

@JLeslie, yes. The government actually does not provide any scholarships at all, just grants, work-study, and loans.

@nikipedia That’s what I figured.

I think private scholarships can have whatever parameters the person providing the funds wants to stipuate. So, I guess I am fine with girls getting more scholarships if that is what is actually happening.

If one takes into consideration the number of athletic scholarships offered to males, I find it difficult to believe there are more scholarships available to females than males.

And has the learning level of boys gone down or is the shift the result of girls finally being told it is okay to be smart. They no longer are told to shut up, sit still and look pretty. Have teaching methods changed to cater only to girls?

And why was there nary a concern when boys outshone the girls? Why is it only a worry now that girls are finally realizing their potential?

There was a lot of concern when girls were being discriminated against. There was a whole movement about it. Now that boys are in trouble, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are one or two people who are concerned about that, too. But don’t get your knickers in a twist. There really aren’t many people who seem concerned about boys. It’s gonna take a pretty big disaster before any concern is shown.

@wundayatta I overall agree with your statement. Although, two of my closest friends have boys, and they certainly complained about unrealistic expectations for boys in primary school. I remember hearing about a book that was written, maybe 10 years ago on the topic. I think there is a movement going on, especially because boys are being drugged up with ADD medication that is now having a backlash by parents and some professionals.

@wundayatta – my knickers aren’t getting in a twist, but thanks for your concern. What I want to know is have teaching methods changed so that they now favor girls? What is different except that girls are now performing better?

Less recess for one thing. There are much greater expectations that the kids will sit still for longer. See @JLeslie‘s comment. ADD happens more often in boys. But we can drug them up with Ritalin and make them able to sit still longer. Therefore there is a temptation to do that instead of giving boys a chance to blow off steam.

Also, girls accept book learning better than boys do. Boys are more likely to require experimental evidence. The book means less to them. What they see with their own eyes and touch with their own hands is more meaningful, on average. But in this day and age, there is less time and resources for that kind of learning. Give them a textbook and be done with it. Girls can handle that a little better than boys can.

But let me tell you, it is so bad in public schools where I live, that even at the best public school in the city, they can take one of the best students they have (my daughter), and turn her off. She is used to schools that do take you on field trips and teach you science by allowing you to do experiments yourself. She loved science in her old school (where my son still goes). But her new school teaches from the textbook almost to the exclusion of all else. She is totally miserable and her grades have fallen a bit. So this textbook business isn’t really good for girls, either. But they do better at it than boys do.

@wundayatta You saying “when girls were being discriminated against” like it’s in the past, like girls aren’t still being told that girls aren’t good at math or science…
Do you have any evidence that girls accept book learning more than boys do? Or that gender is the best lens for that?

This study of Canadian children in 2009 discusses the huge gap between boys and girls and their reading achievement. Girls, it says, do like reading much more than boys. They suggest exposing boys to more reading, earlier, and a wider range of subjects. I have to laugh because they tried that with my son and it didn’t work. He hates reading. HATES it.

Which is very dismaying to me since I like it so much and always did, even if I was the second to last person in my second grade class to learn. But I think that these days, once you fall behind, that’s it. No catching up. And psychologically, it’s very bad, because once you decide you are bad at something, you can easily just avoid it.

We’ll see. He was asking me why math and science were easy and reading was so hard. Did I have that experience? Yes. Why did I go into my field then? Because I wanted to do something hard, I told him. I don’t know if he’ll be inspired to take the challenge of reading or not. I kind of think not. Not yet, anyway.

I think gender is a very important lens for studying how our children learn. I think there are distinct differences. It appears there aren’t many differences on math and science these days. I don’t know what girls are being told, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting their assessments in middle school. My daughter did very well in science in middle school. But she doesn’t like science, now, perhaps because the teachers in high school or the teaching methods suck. I don’t know what the girls are being told about their talents, but I don’t believe it is nearly the problem it once was. Although I am still concerned.

Reading is a very different story and boys are in deep shit. But this is new stuff, so people probably won’t pay attention to it for decades and the problem will be much worse by then.

@wundayatta, I can promise you these things are receiving a great deal of attention in the scientific community.

Girls being good at science in middle school is wonderful, but it is deeply troubling that girls are outpacing boys at every stage except getting high-level jobs and earning money at them.

Maybe women are about to have an explosion into the high level job scene? It was only about 30 years ago women really started to heavily going into business degrees, engineering, or at least that is how I perceive it, I don’t actually have any data on it. Most CEO’s are probably 50 years old plus, let’s say VP level is usually around 40 years old, so the graduate students of 30 years ago and less are just maybe starting to move into the high level positions, which would include a lot of women. It’s not just a factor of education and years on the job, I realize that, there is a good ol’ boy process inntheir too. But, those old fuddy duddies are retiring here and there.

@wundayatta Interesting. But that exact study also seems to promote a rather essentialist view of things, and insists on measures that appeal to boys as boys. Not, there should be more diversity for everyone in the classroom, but comic books and sci-fi are for boys (and not for girls), which serves to reinforce the notion that men should dominate STEM and humanities is a hand-out for women.

So different schools for males and females. Separate but equal. Yes that worked so well with blacks I am sure it would work for everyone.

It still amazes me that when I was in school boys and girls all managed to learn with the same methods. I don’t remember how long the recesses were. If anyone didn’t sit still and behave, they got into trouble with the teacher and parents. Now if a kid doesn’t learn, it is the teacher’s fault, the school’s fault, society’s fault, etc. etc. etc. Maybe if kids were simply taught to respect teachers as authority figures and punished if they didn’t, the problem wouldn’t exist?

I would have liked reading comic books in school but are you saying the girls won’t get them, sounds typical.

@Aethelflaed When I read it, I thought it was just pointing out that reading material that usually interests boys is not available. The girls could read it too I would think? Actually there is concern in the US about students not going into STEM studies in general, female amd male. My guess is, and I am stereotyping, most people in elementary education are not science oriented, nor sci-fi people. In @wundayatta‘s link I am a “boy.” Another interesting fact, my dad finally learned to read in 3rd grade reading comic books on his own. He hated school in the beginning years of grade school, hated his teachers. He got lucky that his school system had some advanced programs so he could move along quickly once in jr. high that kept him more interested.

@rooeytoo I actually like the idea of the genders separated in school. Most women who went to all girls schools had very favorable experiences.

@JLeslie – I went to all girls school and college. I would never send a child to a sexually segregated school. The work place and the world is not segregated so I think one should learn to associate, not segregate. School is a time for learning, so learn. And as I said, I have never seen separate but equal actually be equal. Isn’t there constant complaining about the lesser educational opportunities offered to poor people. Since females are still 2nd class citizens in so many situations, why would anyone believe that the separate but equal dream would work in this instance?

@rooeytoo I am only talking about being able to have the choice of gender separated schools, not that it should be mandated. My SIL felt like you, she felt she was at a disadvantage interacting with men since she went to an all girls schools all the way through primary and secondary school. Then she had kids, one boy, one girl, going through the public school system, pretty good schools in a good area, and she has rethought her stance on the topic after seeing the interaction between the girls and the boys. I tend to think people who did not experience co-ed high school can be naive about what goes on. I am not saying you specifically are being naive, I only mean it as a generalization.

Most women who go to all girls school say it never occured to them to take a back seat to men when they are in the room, and that sticks with them in adulthood. And, they never feel like a subject is male or female. In coed classrooms now it probably doesn’t feel like certain classes are more male than female, but in the past they did, especially in some parts of my country. A boy might be less likely to take art if he is the only boy in the class, or a girl less likely to take advanced math if the class is dominated by boys.

In a county in Georgia the public schools about 10 years ago switched to separating the sexes as an expirement, not sure how it worked out. They did it because studies show the children do better in that environment. They also were very concerned about teenage pregnancy aside from learning. I assume one problem with those types of studies is gender separate schools tend to be private, so I don’t know how good those studies are at looking at similar schools and students, or if they were comparing to public schools.

I think there are plusses and minuses in both. I stick to what I always say about education, it depends on the kid. Some do better with a lot of structure, some with less, some at public school, some at private, some home schooled, some at gender separate schools, some at boarding schools. I don’t strongly favor any of them.

College seems extreme to me. I would not want to go to an all girls college.

Language courses in high school are a problem for many boys. Boys-only classes could be an option, like girls-only classes for science and math.