Although that sentence doesn't refer to it, something to keep in mind: there are the race and class variables lurking in there. IIRC if you're upper-middle class and white (and Asian, I'm guessing), the gender gap disappears.
That doesn't mean that we're not failing our young boys; we certainly are. But it's always useful to break it down by race and class, especially in the States.
A deeper question is why? If our culture is biased against boys, you might expect the gap to appear in all racial and economic classifications. My hypothesis is that we're in the midst of a giant pauperization: technology is eating most real jobs. In recent decades, however, there's still been a relative abundance of salaried jobs that require stability and organizational and interpersonal skills, which women, either by genes or socialization, are better at. So there's a real difference in investment payoff for a woman to go to college than a man, given their existing skill sets [1]. So more women go to college [2].
For now, at least. Give it a decade or two and I'm predicting an even lower proportion of men and women both going to college, particularly those in marginalized communities whose labor wouldn't be improved to the point that capital needs them to to make more real profits.
[1] One way to confirm that would be whether a man with a college degree makes less money than a woman with an equivalent degree. Which I think is the case but want to find a real cite for it.
[2] Another hypothesis: traditional male archetypes are falling by the wayside. Discarding those is a strategy people are using, consciously or no, to try to build up the interpersonal skills of men. I don't know how to test this, however.
A simpler explanation: people who spend their 20s in the military or in prison can't attend college until later in life. These are two large populations that are predominantly male and from lower classes.
>In recent decades, however, there's still been a relative abundance of salaried jobs that require stability and organizational and interpersonal skills, which women, either by genes or socialization, are better at.
Another choice is that there are more attractive opportunities for a non-college educated male than a non-college educated female. Working construction, landscaping, or other dirty physical jobs is a way for a young male to work and make money without the necessity of college.
Some of those jobs pay very well. Technical skill jobs such as plumbers, or blue collar public sector jobs such as police officers, earn 100K or more. And contractors who start their own businesses can become outright rich.
Err... yes? He's saying, don't disregard race & class. Considering all women vs. all men certainly does not eliminate race & class as impactful factors.
OK, I was confused because it seems to make the most sense to me to eliminate race and class as factors. So if you were to take into account race and class, what conclusions could you make considering that overall men are less likely to be college graduates than women? If say upper class white men are equally likely to be graduates compared to upper class white women, then that would mean, for example, lower class black men would be egregiously disadvantaged compared to lower class black women. So your point would be that male privilege only applies to rich white men and that privilege is reversed for poor black people and for that group women are privileged over men?
Let's look at the gender wage gap. Assume someone looks at the statistics that say that overall women earn less than men and says, why aren't race and class considered as factors? Why would someone say that, and what possible conclusions could they reach if they were to slice up the data for those demographics? They could say that some demographics are equal or in favor of women, but overall it would still be in favor of men, so what sort of point could they make there?
So your point would be that male privilege only applies to rich white men and that privilege is reversed for poor black people and for that group women are privileged over men?
Sort of. At least, that's the net result. But it isn't because gender privilige is truly reversed- it is because they are weighted down by things like incarceration, which impacts men more than women, and gang violence, which also impacts men more as more men join gangs!
If incarceration and gang violence impact black men moreso than black women then it sounds like they are disadvantaged because of their gender. It sounds like you're trying to point to their race or class as the source of their problems but it doesn't make sense when you are directly comparing them with people of the same race and class but different gender.
Wouldn't they be disadvantaged by the combination of both? If you have to be both male and black to be impacted by this, it doesn't make any sense to me to say it's only due to gender.
That is, suppose white men and women (for the sake of argument I'm excluding other races) are on a completely level playing field. But, black men are going to college far less than black women, because of incarceration or gang violence and whatever other factors. How can that be purely an issue of gender and not race?
That doesn't mean that we're not failing our young boys; we certainly are. But it's always useful to break it down by race and class, especially in the States.
A deeper question is why? If our culture is biased against boys, you might expect the gap to appear in all racial and economic classifications. My hypothesis is that we're in the midst of a giant pauperization: technology is eating most real jobs. In recent decades, however, there's still been a relative abundance of salaried jobs that require stability and organizational and interpersonal skills, which women, either by genes or socialization, are better at. So there's a real difference in investment payoff for a woman to go to college than a man, given their existing skill sets [1]. So more women go to college [2].
For now, at least. Give it a decade or two and I'm predicting an even lower proportion of men and women both going to college, particularly those in marginalized communities whose labor wouldn't be improved to the point that capital needs them to to make more real profits.
[1] One way to confirm that would be whether a man with a college degree makes less money than a woman with an equivalent degree. Which I think is the case but want to find a real cite for it.
[2] Another hypothesis: traditional male archetypes are falling by the wayside. Discarding those is a strategy people are using, consciously or no, to try to build up the interpersonal skills of men. I don't know how to test this, however.