The trend of girls outdoing boys in education is a phenomenon
that spans every state, every income bracket, every racial and
ethnic group, and every industrialized western nation. The May
26th issue of Business Week takes an in-depth look at how
girls are becoming the dominate sex and the effects of leaving
a generation of boys behind.From their first days in
school, an average boy is already developmentally two years
behind girls in reading and writing. Yet they are often
expected to learn the same things in the same way in the same
amount of time. Boys who fall behind, are apt to be shipped
off to special ed, where they'll find that more than 70% of
their classmates are also boys. Those who become disruptive in
classrooms are then four times as likely to be diagnosed with
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. That often leads to
Ritalin prescriptions or risk being expelled, sent to special
ed, or having parents accused of negligence.
Once boys hit their freshman year of high school, they're
at greater risk of falling even further behind in grades,
extracurricular activities, and advanced placement. While the
girls are busy working on sweeping the honor roll at
graduation, boys are more likely to be bulking up in a weight
room or otherwise engaged in video games or downloading music.
All the while, boys are 30% more likely to drop out, 85% more
likely to commit murder, and four to six times more likely to
kill themselves, with boy suicides tripling since 1970.
On the higher education front, for 350 years, men
outnumbered women on college campuses. Now, women reign,
earning an average 57% of all BAs and 58% of all master's
degrees in the U.S. alone. There are 133 girls getting BAs for
every 100 guys -- a number that's projected to grow to 142
women per 100 men by 2010, according to the U.S. Education
Dept. If current trends continue, demographers say, there will
be 156 women per 100 men earning degrees by 2020, Business
Week reports.
"Across the country, it seems as if girls have built a kind
of scholastic Roman Empire alongside boys' languishing
Greece," writes Business Week's Working Life Editor Michelle
Conlin. While the education grab by girls is positive news,
one that could make the 21st the first female century, this
story has strong implications for men.
If the creeping pattern of male disengagement and economic
dependency continues, everyone stands to lose. The growing
educational and economic imbalances will likely cause huge
upheavals in the way society functions, altering family
finances, social policies, and work-family practices.
For More information see "The New Gender Gap," available on
newsstands on Monday, May 19, 2003 or read the full story
at
BusinessWeek.com
Source: BusinessWeek
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