"[Boys] have a sense of lassitude, a lack of focus," said William Pollack, director of the Centers for Men and Young Men at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School....
"The roles have changed a lot," said Travis Rothway, a 23-year-old junior at American University, a private school where only 36 percent of last year's freshmen were male. "Men have always been the dominant figure, providing for the household, but now women have broken out of their domestic roles in society. I don't think guys' willingness to work and succeed has changed, it's more that the women have stepped up."...
[S]ome experts argue that what is being seen as a boy problem is actually maleness itself, with the noisy, energetic antsiness and high jinks of young boys now redefined as a behavior problem by teachers who do not know how to handle them....
Still, men in the work force have always done better in pay and promotions, in part because they tend to work longer hours, and have fewer career interruptions than women, who bear the children and most of the responsibility for raising them.
This is a problem we'll never see the end of. We're different. It matters. And yet we do care about about equality, both out of principle and because we need it for a happy life once we have seen the essential truth of that principle.
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Even if young women were equal to the male members of their cohort in work productivity, no employer with any sense, who offers benefits, would hire a woman if a man were available for the position. A woman in her 20s and 30s is likely to run up much higher bills for medical services than the man, making her a much less desirable employee. The same could be said for a young married man if the employer offers spousal benefits.
Of course, the employer is discouraged from discriminating openly, though any fines for such discrimination could be considered a reasonable cost of doing business.
The current laws prohibiting discrimination or discriminatory advertising hurt women who would be willing to take the same job as a man for less pay. They especially hurt the woman who is sterile, single or who plans not to have children. Indeed, a young woman who is sterile should freely offer that fact (and document it) at the employment interview, in order to help the employer, who is not allowed to ask, to give in to his inclination to discriminate in her favor.
The modern way out of this conundrum is for the employer to offer only only unbenefitted employment or to offer employment on a W-2 with benefits, at low pay, along with the same job on a 1099 basis with no benefits but double the pay. This allows the sick and potential baby makers to have their benefits while at the same time enabling those who just want to work to earn what they're worth instead of being forced to subsidize illness, marriage and babymaking.
Ann,
We are different; that difference can't be reconciled, only accomodated. Hell of a tough deal to pull off, I might add.
We're (male and female) not different species, but it often seems that way. Regardless, we Y chromosome types, find you double Xers infinitely fascinating.
The founders wisely and imperfectly argued that equality is essentially a political idea. And a pretty good one.
Vive la differance.
Kevin Drum has the answer: vidja games.
At Harvard, 55 percent of the women graduated with honors this spring, compared with barely half the men.
How much of an honor can it really be when over half of the people are getting it?
Jim said:
"A woman in her 20s and 30s is likely to run up much higher bills for medical services than the man, making her a much less desirable employee."
Jim, I have billed in the neighborhood of 2400 hours for my law firm in the past year, while some of my male colleagues have billed much less. I am also having a baby in 6 weeks, meaning I will not be productive for approximately 12 weeks after the birth, but I intend to come back full time after having my child. Does the medical cost of my having a baby really make me a less desirable employee, when I am also more productive? Heck, let's even include my lost productivity while on maternity leave. That might pull me even with my less hard-working male colleagues. However, over the long run, since my lost productivity is temporary, but my ability to continue to bill at the higher rate will presumably return, unless those men step up, I'm a better investment for my employer.
I'm not sure what your comment had to do with the gender gap in college, unless it was to imply that it makes more sense for employers to hire men even if they are less qualified than women, because of the biological necessity of a woman having to bear the children. I'm reasonably sure that my own example above demonstrates that is not the case.
I think old dad has it exactly right- we can only accomodate the differences, and that's a tough job, but I think it is a worthwhile endeavor.
There's some weird double-switching going on in that article.
On the one hand, women are more ambitious and more disciplined and are working so hard and getting good grades.
But there's still that sly punch-line male superiority. No matter how hard the girls work, and how much the boys kick back, they still make more money after college.
It sounds like studying hard has become a goody-goody "girl thing," and that's one reason why cool boys now shun it --rather the way some black kids consider studying hard "a white thing." Rather than feel their masculinity is impugned by girls being better at school, men have just moved on to more anarchic, man-like forms of one-upmanship, like using their physical strength to make money in construction.
Good for them.
"I thought that was hilarious - no more dating men who spend too much time playing video games."
After my sister and now-brother-in-law went on their first date, one of the things that endeared her most to him was that she could beat him in video games.
"I am also having a baby in 6 weeks, meaning I will not be productive for approximately 12 weeks after the birth, but I intend to come back full time after having my child."
Will this be your first baby, Lady Lawyer? I was always surprised at how quickly and totally my sister took to motherhood after she had her first. She went from bigtime career woman to "nobody else will raise my child" in a matter of mere weeks.
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