Now Modern Males Are Behind

 Good piece from Irving, I thought I was the only one who noticed this,  excerpt with many links within.   

Why Men and Boys Are Falling Behind

A few weeks ago, Richard Reeves was Ezra Klein’s guest in his NY Times podcast “The Men — and Boys — Are Not Alright.” Reeves is a writer and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he’s been studying inequality, poverty, social mobility, and family policy. His book, — Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It, published in September of 2022, — is based on his research on the growing gender gaps in education and employment.

“We’re used to thinking about gender inequality as a story of insufficient progress for women and girls,” wrote Klein in the podcast’s introduction. “There’s a good reason for that: Men have dominated human societies for centuries, and myriad inequalities — from the gender pay gap to the dearth of female politicians and chief executives — persist to this day.”

“But Reeves’ core argument is that there’s no way to fully understand inequality in America today without understanding the ways that men and boys — particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds — are falling behind. And they’re falling behind in ways that are tough on families, in ways that are tough on marriages, ways that are tough on children. And it gets much, much worse when you go down the income ladder.”

Early in their discussion, Reeves pointed out that for most of history, gender equality was intrinsically synonymous with the cause of women and girls. But, “the facts are there in a bunch of places where boys and men are really struggling now.” This relatively recent change is the reason why it’s taken us so long to gather the evidence, and “muster the courage to address this issue. Updating our view of the world as the evidence changes is very difficult.”

Reeves cited a few concrete examples. First, there’s a big gender gap in high school grade point average (GPA), — a very good predictor of important economic outcomes. The data show that two thirds of students with the top 10% of GPA are girls, while two thirds of the students with the bottom 10% of GPA are boys. In addition, girls are 6% more likely to graduate on time than boys.

 A second data point is school performance in grades three through eight. Reeves cited a study led by Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon that found that “girls are at least 3/4 of a grade level ahead in English and dead even in math. And in the poorer school districts, they’re a grade level ahead in English and about a 1/3 of a grade level ahead in math.” These results may not be surprising because the evidence shows that boys develop later than girls.  ... '   (more with links)