US Boys choose to not apply themselves academically, but still outearn girls

[Mischief]

Discuss.

 

[Mischief]

To get the conversation going:

A recent and fairly exhaustive study of the topic: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Women-Growing-Education-American/dp/0871540517/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382186064&sr=1-1&keywords=the+rise+of+women

It boils down to this:

1. Boys tend to not concentrate as much on school during grade school and junior high because doing well in school is not considered to be “masculine.” In families with fathers who earned post secondary degrees, boys tend to not lag behind girls. (The reasons for this should be obvious.)

2. Because studying is a skill that develops over years, by the time students reach high school, girls tend to have an advantage over boys, and this advantage persists through college.

3. The better the school, the smaller the difference between boys and girls (both with respect to the generalized underperformance by boys and the hesitancy of girls to take advanced mathematics and science classes). Likewise, the greater the equality of the sexes in society at large, the less difference in educational achievement between the sexes.

4. Factors that are generally cited, such as a high percentage of female teachers, biological differences between males and females, supposed preference by teachers of girls over boys, are either nonexistent or have a negligible impact.

For those who don’t want to read the book, but want a synopsis, here are some articles summarizing salient points:

The puzzling gender achievement gap and what “they” say.

But why do boys get lower grades than girls, and why have they responded so much more slowly and partially to changes in the job market that have increased the rewards for academic achievement? Researchers agree that it is not because girls are smarter. In fact, while boys score slightly higher in math tests and girls score slightly higher in reading tests, overall the cognitive abilities of boys and girls are very similar. The difference in grades lies in effort and engagement. On average, girls are more likely than boys to report that they like school and that good grades are very important to them. Girls also spend more time studying than boys.
Many observers believe that boys’ lower engagement with school is a result of biological differences between males and females. They say that boys need to engage in rough and tumble play, get their hands dirty, build things, and read books about war, espionage and sports if they are supposed to learn. Boys fail, they claim, because schools do not give boys enough opportunities to do “boy” stuff.
What we say. We do not agree. Our research shows that boys’ underperformance in school has more to do with society’s norms about masculinity than with anatomy, hormones or brain structure. In fact, boys involved in extracurricular cultural activities such as music, art, drama, and foreign languages report higher levels of school engagement and get better grades than other boys. But these cultural activities are often denigrated as un-masculine by pre-adolescent and adolescent boys -- especially those from working- or lower-class backgrounds. Sociologists C.J. Pascoe and Edward Morris relate numerous examples of boys who strive for good grades as being labeled “pussies” or “fags” by their peers.
Commentators who emphasize boys’ special needs usually propose that we make schools more “boy-friendly” by offering single-sex classrooms where “boys can be boys,” by recruiting more male teachers, and by providing more rough and tumble activities. Our research shows that, contrary to what is rapidly becoming “conventional wisdom,” this is precisely the wrong strategy. Most boys and girls learn more in classrooms where girls are present. In classrooms with more girls, both boys and girls score higher on math and reading tests. And several recent studies refute the claim that teacher gender matters for boys’ or girls’ achievement.
Two key findings for the way forward. Our research yields two important findings. First, boys have less understanding than girls about how their future success in college and work is directly linked to their academic effort in middle and high school. In part, this may be due to many Americans still hearkening back to a time when job success for many men was linked more to physical strength and hard manual labor than to getting good grades in school. Young men as well as women will be further motivated to do well in school when our education system provides a clearer link between educational programs and workplace opportunities in our changing labor market.
Second, the most important predictor of boys’ achievement is the extent to which the school culture expects, values, and rewards academic effort. We need schools that set high expectations, treat each student as an individual (as opposed to a gender stereotype), and motivate all students to invest in their education so they can reap the big returns to a college degree that exist in today's labor market.
The win-win news is that the same reforms that help more boys achieve college success help girls as well. For example, schools with strong science curricula not only promote male achievement but increase girls’ plans to major in science and engineering. Schools that promote strong academic climates reduce gender gaps in grades and promote healthy, multi-faceted gender identities for both boys and girls. In education, as in the rest of society, it’s time to discard the zero-sum game of the “gender wars” mentality and start helping males and females to work together for success.

http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/Gender-Sexuality/gender-achievement-gap-publication.html

 

[Envy]

Check your studying privilege.

 

[Mischief]

“Young men don’t prepare as well in middle and elementary and high school as do the girls,” he said. “As a consequence, boys are less prepared than the girls are to get through college.”
The shortfall in male performance has multiple causes, but a lower average level of engagement with school is a major component. Boys need to take a lesson from sports, he said, an area where they are more inclined to practice and prepare.
“Boys know that you can’t aspire to be on the varsity basketball team in high school if you don’t commit to developing your basketball skills in middle school,” he said. “They don’t understand the extent to which academics is like basketball.”

http://news.columbia.edu/research/3242

— “Boys don’t understand that school is like sports. You can’t start playing the fall of your senior year in high school and expect to succeed.”
— “It takes years of training to perform well in college.”
— Unlike young women, many young men try to emulate their fathers or grandfathers, who succeeded in blue-collar jobs without college educations. But those jobs don’t exist anymore. “It’s the echo of an older generation.”
— “Girls get gratification day to day from doing well in school. We’re not as good at conveying the need for school to boys.”
— Schools don’t need “boy-specific” policies. Schools simply need to raise the quality of education for both boys and girls.
— Girls still lag in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but less so in the highest-quality schools.
— Likewise, boys are closer to girls in academic performance in the schools with the strongest academics.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-01/new-bls-data-shows-gender-gap-growing-in-college-education

To explain these trends, The Rise of Women charts the performance of boys and girls over the course of their schooling. At each stage in the education process, they consider the gender-specific impact of factors such as families, schools, peers, race and class. Important differences emerge as early as kindergarten, where girls show higher levels of essential learning skills such as persistence and self-control. Girls also derive more intrinsic gratification from performing well on a day-to-day basis, a crucial advantage in the learning process. By contrast, boys must often navigate a conflict between their emerging masculine identity and a strong attachment to school. Families and peers play a crucial role at this juncture. The authors show the gender gap in educational attainment between children in the same families tends to be lower when the father is present and more highly educated. A strong academic climate, both among friends and at home, also tends to erode stereotypes that disconnect academic prowess and a healthy, masculine identity. Similarly, high schools with strong science curricula reduce the power of gender stereotypes concerning science and technology and encourage girls to major in scientific fields.

https://www.russellsage.org/publications/rise-women
Also:
http://www.livescience.com/17429-math-gender-differences-myths.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/ar...lls-the-truth-about-the-rise-of-women/273342/
*With respect to the math issue:

The evidence has piled up for years. In 1990, Hyde and her colleagues published a groundbreaking meta-analysis of 100 studies of math performance. Synthesizing data collected on more than three million participants between 1967 and 1987, researchers found no large, overall differences between boys and girls in math performance. Girls were slightly better at computation in elementary and middle school; in high school only, boys showed a slight edge in problem solving, perhaps because they took more science, which stresses problem solving. Boys and girls understood math concepts equally well and any gender differences narrowed over the years, belying the notion of a fixed or biological differentiating factor.
As for verbal ability, in 1988, Hyde and two colleagues reported that data from 165 studies revealed a female superiority so slight as to be meaningless, despite previous assertions that "girls are better verbally." What's more, the authors found no evidence of substantial gender differences in any component of verbal processing. There were even no changes with age.

http://www.apa.org/research/action/share.aspx

The idea that both genders have equal math abilities is widely accepted among social scientists, Hyde adds, but word has been slow to reach teachers and parents, who can play a negative role by guiding girls away from math-heavy sciences and engineering. "One reason I am still spending time on this is because parents and teachers continue to hold stereotypes that boys are better in math, and that can have a tremendous impact on individual girls who are told to stay away from engineering or the physical sciences because 'Girls can't do the math.'"
Scientists now know that stereotypes affect performance, Hyde adds. "There is lots of evidence that what we call 'stereotype threat' can hold women back in math. If, before a test, you imply that the women should expect to do a little worse than the men, that hurts performance. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Parents and teachers give little implicit messages about how good they expect kids to be at different subjects," Hyde adds, "and that powerfully affects their self-concept of their ability. When you are deciding about a major in physics, this can become a huge factor."
Hyde hopes the new results will slow the trend toward single-sex schools, which are sometimes justified on the basis of differential math skills. It may also affect standardized tests, which gained clout with the passage of No Child Left Behind, and tend to emphasize lower-level math skills such as multiplication, Hyde says. "High-stakes testing really needs to include higher-level problem-solving, which tends to be more important in jobs that require math skills. But because many teachers teach to the test, they will not teach higher reasoning unless the tests start to include it."
The new findings reinforce a recent study that ranked gender dead last among nine factors, including parental education, family income, and school effectiveness, in influencing the math performance of 10-year-olds.

http://www.sciencecodex.com/myth_dispelled_difference_between_females_and_males_in_math_skills

 

[Mischief]

And for pay gaps between boys and girls: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013...t-and-smallest-pay-gaps-between-men-and-women

 

[das_nut]

There's a lack of people posting in this thread who were all about the women when they had a chance to derail the other thread.

I wonder why...

Lets see if I can jump-start the discussion:


I suspect that there's four major factors involved.

1. Our educational system is not preparing students properly for career success.

This is probably the sign of a broken educational system.​

2. There's more non-college educated jobs predominately filled by men that pay better than non-college educated jobs predominately filled by women.

A partially self-perpetuating cycle from when the traditional SAHM family was the norm, and most jobs did not require a higher education.​

3. Traditional and ongoing views of men being the ones who should be responsible for bringing in the most money.

A quick google search shows (anecdotally) that many women wouldn't date a man with low income. And, as we all know, the search for a partner drives a lot of people's habits. There's also some social disapproval if a man makes less than his partner.
​

4. Child-rearing being perceived as an area where women are better.

As long as society believes that women have a better ability to raise children then men, there's going to be pressure for women to be the primary caregiver, which takes time away from careers and limits earning potential.
​

 

[Mischief]

I think those are all good points.

Additional ones, just off the cuff:

1. A career driven woman is viewed as who being less than completely feminine. (Just like males who apply themselves academically are viewed as being les than completely masculine.) While we all can do our bit to not perpetuate such stereotypes, ultimately individuals need to come to grasp with this.

2. Women generally have a harder time negotiating better starting salaries and better raises for themselves (starting salaries in and of themselves have an amazing cumulative effect over a lifetime). Again, this has a lot to do with what kind of behavior is considered "feminine".

3. In determining starting salaries, raises and other benefits, employers still have the "he has a family to support" logic with respect to men, no matter if the women in question also have families to support.

4. Likewise, especially with respect to more demanding jobs, employers still have the idea that women are more of a risk, because they might get pregnant/give priority to their families/give more value to life than to work.

5. A spouse at home, taking care of all the day to day details of life, frees someone up to pursue a demanding career. It's very rare that a woman has this.

 

[Mischief]

With respect to American schools, IME, academic achievement is not something that is valued socially for either males or females, starting at some point in middle school. Boys who do well academically are considered less than masculine, and girls who stand out academically are not thought to be attractive to boys. It's socially acceptable for girls to be good students, but not excellent ones. The point at which academic achievement is socially acceptable is somewhat lower for boys than for girls, which explains most if not all of the discrepancy between academic achievement of the sexes.

By the time people make it to grad school, those acceptability levels have been reversed, and it's more socially acceptable for males to be high achievers than it is for females. The effect is even more pronounced in the job market/employment.

ETA: I would add that American society at large does not value intellectual ability. Just look at any number of political campaigns for proof of that. There are few surer ways to tarnish someone politically than to successfully brand him as "intellectual". I suspect that, if you were to look at male/female academic performance I countries/societies which have historically valued intellectual achievement more than American society does, you would find different outcomes in male/female school performance than in the U.S. It's only when/if intellectual ability translates directly into money making ability that it becomes socially desirable in the U.S.

 

[das_nut]

I think those are all good points.

Additional ones, just off the cuff:

[snip]

Agreed. We really need to destroy gender paradigms and let people be individuals most of all. We also need to teach students how employment works, what a career track is, how to negotiate, etc. While this won't be a popular idea among some (I doubt business interests want employees who are more effective at getting higher pay), it gives students who lack the family background an opportunity to learn.

 

[Mischief]

Agreed. We really need to destroy gender paradigms and let people be individuals most of all. We also need to teach students how employment works, what a career track is, how to negotiate, etc. While this won't be a popular idea among some (I doubt business interests want employees who are more effective at getting higher pay), it gives students who lack the family background an opportunity to learn.

And I agree with this.

 

[Mischief]

A friend of mine just posted this link on FB. I thought it was timely to this thread: http://madmanknitting.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/i-was-questioned-by-the-police/

 

[Everleigh]

http://www.sciencecodex.com/myth_dispelled_difference_between_females_and_males_in_math_skills

I agree with this.My cousin is an engineer.She's very gifted in math and from what I understand was very encouraged by her mom,teachers and counselors to pursue this field.

 

[Mischief]

I agree with this.My cousin is an engineer.She's very gifted in math and from what I understand was very encouraged by her mom,teachers and counselors to pursue this field.

That's great, especially the encouragement she received.

It's really hard to teach someone/for someone to learn something if they start out with the preconceived notion that they aren't/won't be any good at. It's such a tremendous hurdle to overcome, and seems to be especially difficult in a field like mathematics, from my observations. A widely accepted view, such as the one that holds females aren't good at math, becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Likewise, the concept that boys won't enjoy/aren't good at reading because they supposedly lack the verbal skills of girls and because it's too "passive" of an activity for boys becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

 

[Everleigh]

That's great, especially the encouragement she received.

It's really hard to teach someone/for someone to learn something if they start out with the preconceived notion that they aren't/won't be any good at. It's such a tremendous hurdle to overcome, and seems to be especially difficult in a field like mathematics, from my observations. A widely accepted view, such as the one that holds females aren't good at math, becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Likewise, the concept that boys won't enjoy/aren't good at reading because they supposedly lack the verbal skills of girls and because it's too "passive" of an activity for boys becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

I think she had at first planned to be a teacher but discovered as she took classes and was encouraged that she was amazing at math.Then at college or university decided to go for an engineering degree.At one point she was helping to design and repair bridges.

 

[Mischief]

I think she had at first planned to be a teacher but discovered as she took classes and was encouraged that she was amazing at math.Then at college or university decided to go for an engineering degree.At one point she was helping to design and repair bridges.

That is really wonderful for her. There are few things more rewarding than discovering that one has a talent for something.

 

[das_nut]

A friend of mine just posted this link on FB. I thought it was timely to this thread: http://madmanknitting.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/i-was-questioned-by-the-police/

Funny and sad at the same time.

 

[Everleigh]

I suspect that there's four major factors involved.

1. Our educational system is not preparing students properly for career success.

​

I also tend to agree with this statement.Although my cousin was educated in the public school system I think she was one of the lucky ones to have people around her who were supportive.I don't think girls are taken seriously in public schools as a general rule though.

 

[Mischief]

Funny and sad at the same time.

Yes. His experiences illustrate some of the assumptions people make based on several different stereotypes, all based on a single individual's appearance and actions.

 

[Clueless Git]

While this won't be a popular idea among some (I doubt business interests want employees who are more effective at getting higher pay) ...

Depends what the job is, Das.

People who are more effective at getting what they want off of their employers are more effective at getting what their employers want off of other staff/customers/suppliers etc.

Employees with the skill sets for extracting the most from negotiations are in high demand and tend to be the most highly rewarded.

 

[yakherder]

My girlfriend says it's because I lack executive function :/

I prefer to think of it as restlessness. I know this sounds cliché, but the idea of being in an office for even a significant portion of the day doesn't exactly serve as incentive for me to seek higher education. I like learning languages on my own (college language programs are ridiculously inefficient), and I like being physically active to the point that others might think of it as a form of masochism. As long as those traits are, in combination, somewhat marketable, I'm happy. The only reason I'm even bothering with a degree is because the military is willing to pay for it so I figure I might as well.

At any rate, I think the easiest answer is necessity. The average wage difference between males and females means that higher education provides a slightly increased return in earning potential, on average, for females than for males.