OT: Any other parents worried about young men struggling?
Noticed my son's honor section at school was overwhelmingly girls. Poked around on google and learned gender achievement gap is a modern phenom - gen Y and Z girls take tougher advanced courses, higher GPAs, majority of top 10% of their graduating class, complete undergrad on time (boys taking 5 and 6 years, if they finish), 60/40 girls to boys earning bachelors, masters, professional degrees, and young women are dominating a lot of industries.
Gen y and z boys seem to glorify immaturity and slacking, e.g. Barstool. Video game addiction has gone mainstream, even popular boys are obsessed, e.g. Fortnite. Don't read for leisure. Lots of apathy, disengagement, aren't as focused on academics and career – don't seem to be adapting to the demands to succeed in modern hyper-competitive economy.
What is going on?
February 28th, 2018 at 11:43 AM ^
Your effort to find something to be outraged over is pretty staggering.
I have been an active part of the tech field for over 20 years and have been involved in hiring decisions for a large part of that time. Anyone who thinks the opportunities for men are somehow being damaged by a push to get women invovled in science is outright delusional.
My field is so unbelievably male domained that I can actually count the number of women I've directly worked with over the course of my career. The idea that I should feel threatened by a movement to encourage more women to get into engineering pretty much makes me laugh.
If the girls are getting higher GPAs in STEM education now, then the boys should work harder. Grow a sack, and stop whining about how the girls are too tough to compete with.
And for the record, yes I have children in elementary school.
February 28th, 2018 at 5:32 PM ^
all of the 'women in STEM' initiatives (including t-shirts, etc) are to counter balance the inherent gener bias against women in STEM. it's an opposing torque to balance the see saw (physics teachers FTW) that was originally completely misbanlanced to favor males.
the same needs to happen in nursing and indeed is (except perhaps the tee shirts). Men get specific s'ships to nursing schools to encourage more men to enter that field. b/c we need more nurses over all and clearly women only won't be able to meet that demand.
February 28th, 2018 at 10:10 PM ^
Here's what an anti-female bias in STEM would look like: no bathrooms for women in the labs, textbooks assuming male pronouns, many famous people in the field belittling women or sexually harassing women or subtly advocating male dominance, youth outreach movements aimed at boys more than girls, conferences and committees devoted to keeping women out.
Instead, there are lactation rooms in labs with prominent signage and directions, textbooks that go far out of their way to emphasize women's roles in science, famous people tripping over themsevles to signal who wants women the most (in STEM), youth outreach movements that target girls so much that they marginalize boys, and an endless series of professional development activities devoted to recruiting, retaining, and advancing women.
I mean come on. Do you think all the professors, all the teachers, all the textbook companies, all the Googlers, are doing this as some sort of false-flag operation? That they are spending hours and fortunes to _say_ they want women in STEM, but really that's all a clever ruse, and they actually want the exact opposite of what they're saying?
There is no anti-female bias in STEM.
There's nothing but individual decisions. There is no such thing as a group mind or a hive mind or a Borg collective.
And yeah, that's an antiquated viewpoint. Only a minority, and in STEM an even smaller minority, think that. And even they dare not say it. If you brought up an idea like that at Google, you would literally be fired (see last fall's case).
There is no anti-female bias in STEM.
You and others keep bringing up the 6:1 ratio as if that's some sort of evidence of bias. That's a logical error. Uneven outcomes do not imply an unfair process. Just because a basketball team wins 63 of its 82 games doesn't mean the system was rigged toward that team.
Re: "pendulum has swung too far"
Google's YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with male applicants:
February 27th, 2018 at 11:14 AM ^
February 27th, 2018 at 11:44 AM ^
I am the father of two girls, one 15 and the other 11. They couldn't be any more different. The oldest is straight A's (just got her first B+ in Honors Chem--oh, the horror) and she is more feminine, yet she plays lacrosse. Learning comes easy for her yet she also puts in the hard work and hours. The other is definitely a tomboy who loves sports, takes it to the boys on the field and court, yet isn't as good of a student because she is lazy in school. She though will likely make the good money since she is an incredible salesperson at age 11 who questions authority, which I think is a bit healthy.
I'm kind of glad the tables have turned. I went all the way through Scouts, went to a rigorous all boys prep school with lots of athletics (was extremely well prepared for Michigan), and did 4 years in a frat at U of M. Hyper male environments. And I'm heavily involved in politics as a three time elected official. But I look at my daughters and their relationships with friends and spirit of cooperation and feel I missed out on some of this growing up.
I think we need more women in leadership roles to change our ways of thinking in this country, if for no other reason that many other countries have a higher percentage of women in politics and corporate leadership, etc. Not that I think that women will necessarily do a better job, but we should give it a shot, and let everyone see that women can screw the world up just as easily as men do.
February 27th, 2018 at 12:53 PM ^
Video games, like so many other things, are fine in moderation. Obsessions with video games are a problem, and it certainly doesn't hurt to talk to your kids about the extremely violent nature of many games.
When I was a kid, the scapegoat was D&D. Now the scapegoat is video games. There is ALWAYS a scapegoat. I don't disagree that a kid spending all of his time playing violent video games is probably not good, but I reject the idea that the availability of video games is the cause of the decline of an entire gender. Hell, when I was a kid, a ton of the boys in high school just sat at the gravel pit getting drunk on the weekend. Was that somehow better than playing video games? Every generation will find some way to f*** up until they hopefully mature. And boys tend to mature later.
February 27th, 2018 at 3:48 PM ^
February 27th, 2018 at 3:48 PM ^
Google's YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with male applicants:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/youtube-hiring-positions-excluded-white-010300962.html