US The so-called "boy crisis" isn't real

[Pickle Juice]

The very idea that the performance of girls in school is a problem when they do better than boys reveals a bias in those who worry about it. There's something here that is being left unsaid by those who see it as a problem, which goes something like "if girls do better than boys in the educational system, it must be that the educational system is set up to favor girls because...

1. Boys are naturally superior to girls in every way that counts, so any area of performance that is considered traditionally male dominated, in which girls do better, is being manipulated to give girls an unfair advantage.
or
2. Boys are naturally more intelligent than girls, so it must be the testosterone interfering with their intellect. If it weren't for the powerful and uncontrollable effects of testosterone that the poor boys must struggle with girls would never appear to be better than boys at anything."

As long as girls are considered better than boys at things boys are too superior to have to lower themselves to perform, ie "women's work", all is well. The minute they start encroaching on male territory, it's a problem that needs fixing. At least, it's seen as a problem by people who think boys really are superior to girls, but aren't willing to just come out and admit this is their assumption.

And what if it is likely that comparing any given girl to any given boy might show that girls tend to be more intelligent? Who cares which gender goes to college and gets more advanced degrees, as long as those people are serving needed functions in society? If this were a racial phenomenon instead of a gender one I guess it's pretty obvious what kind of person you'd have to be to complain about it or consider it a problem.

 

[Dedalus]

Ok, so are people suggesting that, in reference to the original topic, which is why girls do better in school than boys, it's the testosterone that makes boys stupid? Because early on I was going to quip that the reason girls do better in school than boys is because we don't have penises that divert 80% of the blood flow to the brain, but I was afraid if I did that people would come in here and call me an *******.

I'm not so sure I would describe it using your exact verbiage - but personally I'm pretty certain I would have done better in school if I could have spent less time thinking about sex. So...you're probably not far off the mark.

 

[Spang]

Feminists do not want you to be maimed or killed in industrial accidents, or toil in coal mines while we do cushy secretarial work and various yarn-themed activities. The fact that women have long been shut out of dangerous industrial jobs (by men, by the way) is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to commit suicide. Any pressures and expectations that lower the quality of life of any gender are part of patriarchy. The fact that depression is characterized as an effeminate weakness, making men less likely to seek treatment, is part of patriarchy.

From A List of "Men's Rights" Issues That Feminism Is Already Working On.

 

[ledboots]

I'm not so sure I would describe it using your exact verbiage - but personally I'm pretty certain I would have done better in school if I could have spent less time thinking about sex. So...you're probably not far off the mark.

I was thinking that 80% of blood flow was a tad optimistic...

 

[mlp]

Actually, 20-something women are outearning men.

Women ages 22 to 30 with no husband and no kids earn a median $27,000 a year, 8% more than comparable men in the top 366 metropolitan areas, according to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data crunched by the New York research firm Reach Advisors and released Wednesday. The women out-earn men in 39 of the 50 biggest cities and match them in another eight. The disparity is greatest in Atlanta, where young, childless single women earn 21% more than male counterparts.

You should be more careful when citing to studies that appear to support your POV, and omit ones that are obviously flawed. OTOH, you couldn't, could you, since that was the only one you could find.

With respect to the "study" you cited:

Who are those full-time working, not-married and childfree 20-somethings in metro areas? I ran that filter over the 2010 ACS data available from IPUMS, and this jumped out:
OK, so for whatever reason, notice that this group includes a disproportionate share of White women and Latino men. That turns out to be pivotal, since these particular Latino men have very low earnings. Check the earnings by race/ethnicity and gender:
So that’s it. The overall $1,000 advantage for women (seen in the bars on the far right) is the result of these particular Latino men’s low earnings. The high earnings of these White women are important, of course, they’re just not higher than White men’s. If you just look at Whites or Blacks there is no advantage for women.

I am all for getting into the problem of Latino men’s (and women’s) low average earnings. But that’s not where this story has been going. More than anything this is just shoddy statistical cherry-picking.

http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/why-women-in-their-20s-earn-more/

Please note that the study you cited is limited to young, childless, single women and men living in certain metro areas. It's as cherry picked as it's possible to get the results being sought. And yet, using the same cherry picked population to look at, it's so easily taken apart.

 

[FortyTwo]

I'm not so sure I would describe it using your exact verbiage - but personally I'm pretty certain I would have done better in school if I could have spent less time thinking about sex. So...you're probably not far off the mark.

Yeah! And that's why we have to accommodate for all the poor boys who can't handle their sexuality! I mean, it's not like girls are having sexual thoughts during puberty too. This is a Very Exclusive Problem for Only Boys.

 

[mlp]

And I still say the wage gap has to do with (historically) chosen professions. I chose the accounting career, my wife a secretary career. Accountants get paid more than secretaries . There's the gap. The national average doesn't adjust for profession, education, years of experience or level (e.g. staff vs. mgr).

I've quoted a number of studies in this thread that show that there is a pay gap even when you remove factors such as profession, marital status, number of children, etc. Here it is set out again:

To understand workplace fairness, economists analyze how much of the overall gender pay gap—women still earn 78 cents on the $1 of what men earn—can be explained by the characteristics of workers and the jobs they hold and how much cannot be explained by anything except the person's gender. In other words, they compare workers of the same educational attainment holding the same kinds of jobs—male college-educated electrical engineers and female college-educated electrical engineers. The American Association of University Women tackled the pay gap question this way and found that for college-educated women, the gap emerges as soon as they graduate. Their research shows that a woman earns 5 percent less the first year out of school than a man who goes to the same college, gets the same grades, has the same major, takes the same kind of job with similar workplace flexibility perks, and has the same personal characteristics, such as marital status, race, and number of children. Ten years later, even if she keeps working on par with the men around her—that is, continues to have the same level of on-the-job experience—the AAUW found that she'll earn 12 percent less.[/QUOTE]

http://www.slate.com/articles/doubl...women_earning_more_than_their_boyfriends.html (And that's from an article that takes the Reach numbers on face value.)

 

[das_nut]

Please note that the study you cited is limited to young, childless, single women and men living in certain metro areas. It's as cherry picked as it's possible to get the results being sought. And yet, using the same cherry picked population to look at, it's so easily taken apart.

Your attempting debunking of that article is invalid, since you compare only full-time workers in that age range to all workers.

Hence that's why your results don't agree with the study I referred to.

 

[mlp]

Your attempting debunking of that article is invalid, since you compare only full-time workers in that age range to all workers.

Hence that's why your results don't agree with the study I referred to.

The Reach study also compared full-time workers, not "all" workers.

 

[Dedalus]

Yeah! And that's why we have to accommodate for all the poor boys who can't handle their sexuality! I mean, it's not like girls are having sexual thoughts during puberty too. This is a Very Exclusive Problem for Only Boys.

Who said it was a problem?

 

[das_nut]

The Reach study also compared full-time workers, not "all" workers.

Then that's an interesting problem. From your numbers, the break down for race for each gender is:

Men:

55.2% White
23.7% Latino
11.7% Black

Women:

59.4% White
15.9% Latino
14.5% Black.

That leaves 9.4% "other" for men, and 10.2% "other" for women. *shrugs* Close enough. We'll assume the "other" percentage doesn't make any income, since you didn't provide the statistics.

White men make 35k, white women make 35k. (These are suspiciously round numbers, by the way).
Latino men make 24k, Latino women make 25k.
Black men make 30k, black women make 28k.

What's the result?

35 * .552 + 24 * .237 + 30 * .117 = 28.5k / men.
35 * .594 + 25 * .159 + 28k * .145 = 28.8k / women.

Interesting. You immediately blamed the Latino difference in income as the cause of the disparity, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The difference is due primarily to whites women being disproportionately holding down full time jobs. The "other" category may also play a big role, since women in this group are earning 8% more then men, which leaves over a grand still unaccounted for. Or we're looking at numbers from two different sources, which is also likely.

If the racial differences were equalized for both genders, we'd still see an income disparity for this group (the "other" category), I'd suspect. But as it stands, its white women that are disproportionately causing that group to outearn men.

 

[mlp]

Then that's an interesting problem. From your numbers, the break down for race for each gender is:

Men:

55.2% White
23.7% Latino
11.7% Black

Women:

59.4% White
15.9% Latino
14.5% Black.

That leaves 9.4% "other" for men, and 10.2% "other" for women. *shrugs* Close enough. We'll assume the "other" percentage doesn't make any income, since you didn't provide the statistics.

White men make 35k, white women make 35k. (These are suspiciously round numbers, by the way).
Latino men make 24k, Latino women make 25k.
Black men make 30k, black women make 28k.

What's the result?

35 * .552 + 24 * .237 + 30 * .117 = 28.5k / men.
35 * .594 + 25 * .159 + 28k * .145 = 28.8k / women.

Interesting. You immediately blamed the Latino difference in income as the cause of the disparity, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The difference is due primarily to whites women being disproportionately holding down full time jobs. The "other" category may also play a big role, since women in this group are earning 8% more then men, which leaves over a grand still unaccounted for. Or we're looking at numbers from two different sources, which is also likely.

If the racial differences were equalized for both genders, we'd still see an income disparity for this group (the "other" category), I'd suspect. But as it stands, its white women that are disproportionately causing that group to outearn men.

Sweetie, if you actually read the article, you wouldn't have to post all of that, because the article actually addresses it.

Unfortunately, it's turning into a complete waste of time to try to have a discussion - between misreading/lack of reading (and subsequent failure to admit the same) and disingenuous cherrypicking - you're either not interested in having an actual discussion, or you're not capable of it.

I do find it fascinating that when a young woman loses earning power because she has children, that's a "choice" she's made, but when a young man loses earning power because he doesn't get a college or post graduate degree, that's a "boy crisis."

I'm done.

 

[Pickle Juice]

I'm not so sure I would describe it using your exact verbiage - but personally I'm pretty certain I would have done better in school if I could have spent less time thinking about sex. So...you're probably not far off the mark.

I was thinking that 80% of blood flow was a tad optimistic...

It's the story of my life. I work so hard at being ridiculously hyperbolic, and some people still manage to take me seriously.

 

[das_nut]

Sweetie, if you actually read the article, you wouldn't have to post all of that, because the article actually addresses it.

Unfortunately, it's turning into a complete waste of time to try to have a discussion - between misreading/lack of reading (and subsequent failure to admit the same) and disingenuous cherrypicking - you're either not interested in having an actual discussion, or you're not capable of it.

I do find it fascinating that when a young woman loses earning power because she has children, that's a "choice" she's made, but when a young man loses earning power because he doesn't get a college or post graduate degree, that's a "boy crisis."

I'm done.

As a preamble, when you call me "sweetie", you wouldn't happen to be following a trolling guide posted in another thread, would you?

Now, on to the actual discussion: When women "choose" to stay home for children, it's a logical consequence of a society that credits maternal care over paternal care. If you want to change that, you need to make the financial and cultural consequences to be the same for both genders.

I advocate for that.

It amazes me still that arguing for the strict abolition of gender roles, and for considering any disparities regarding race/gender/etc to be harmful to society, regardless of what race/gender/etc is involved, is considered so controversial.

 

[mlp]

As a preamble, when you call me "sweetie", you wouldn't happen to be following a trolling guide posted in another thread, would you?

It's how I sometimes address my animals, or someone of whom I am very fond. Rarely, I use it in a condescending way.
.
I'll let you guess at my intentions here

 

[Clueless Git]

It amazes me still that arguing for the strict abolition of gender roles, and for considering any disparities regarding race/gender/etc to be harmful to society, regardless of what race/gender/etc is involved, is considered so controversial.

Amazing only if the strict abolition of race/gender/etc roles (equality) is the real agenda.

If the real agenda is simply to switch the boot (or 'cherry picked' parts thereof) to another foot then it becomes perfectly logical.

Anything that belies a switch the boot agenda to the current wearer of the boot is simply insanity.

Bit akin to the difference twix asking some one to throw a gun in the river, so no one can use it, or to hand it to you so you can shoot them with it.

 

[Clueless Git]

Who said it was a problem?

I think the problem is that it should be a problem for boys but, when the chips are counted, it turns out that it isn't.

 

[das_nut]

Amazing only if the strict abolition of race/gender/etc roles (equality) is the real agenda.

Consider it enlightened self-interest, if you need to. Our society does worse if we restrict peoples' actions on grounds of gender, race, religion, etc.

 

[FortyTwo]

It amazes me still that arguing for the strict abolition of gender roles, and for considering any disparities regarding race/gender/etc to be harmful to society, regardless of what race/gender/etc is involved, is considered so controversial.

Well, you know, if you uphold this, you could actually strive to do it instead of just making the same sexist arguments over and over, nitpicking statistics, and then ending every post with a special happy all-inclusive aphorism about how it's not one gender or the other, it's society and we all need to strive to be equal and abolish the gender roles which are very bad for all of us.

 

[das_nut]

Well, you know, if you uphold this, you could actually strive to do it instead of just making the same sexist arguments over and over, nitpicking statistics, and then ending every post with a special happy all-inclusive aphorism about how it's not one gender or the other, it's society and we all need to strive to be equal and abolish the gender roles which are very bad for all of us.

What "same sexist arguments" am I making in this thread?

As for "nitpicking statistics", you seem to have had no problem with the OP's original post, where she compares a subset of boys from privileged backgrounds against all girls, and then concludes there isn't a problem.