Why men are hard to help

[Frances]

2 hours ago, chiguirre said:

This isn't a stereotype, it's a lived experience. @Matryoshka's dd personally witnessed this behavior. My dd had a similar experience at a Latin summer school program (of all the bizarro places!!!) Guys really do this all the time. It was constant in my professional life, but I had hoped it would have died out among Zoomers. Nope, they still do it.

TMI.

@Roadrunner, As for a boy’s physics club at CC, are they not allowed to form a new club? And why would it be for boys only rather than anyone interested in physics? Aren’t most if not all of the clubs formed by students and therefore formed based on student expressed interest? It certainly was that way at every college I’ve been associated with or heard about.

Edited May 22, 2023 by Frances

[Roadrunner]

2 hours ago, chiguirre said:

This isn't a stereotype, it's a lived experience. @Matryoshka's dd personally witnessed this behavior. My dd had a similar experience at a Latin summer school program (of all the bizarro places!!!) Guys really do this all the time. It was constant in my professional life, but I had hoped it would have died out among Zoomers. Nope, they still do it.

Well my children’s lived experience doesn’t support this. I am so done with this. 

[Roadrunner]

38 minutes ago, Frances said:

My lived professional experience of over 30 years also confirms this. And I’m also a mother of only a boy, no daughters. It’s honestly exhausting and eternally frustrating to always have your workplace dominated by one or more over confident males who take up most of the oxygen in the room, regardless of abilities. Not all guys are like this, but I’ve never been in a work setting during my professional life where this was not the case and I’ve spent my entire career in male dominated jobs.

@Roadrunner, As for a boy’s physics club at CC, are they not allowed to form a new club? And why would it be for boys only rather than anyone interested in physics? Aren’t most if not all of the clubs formed by students and therefore formed based on student expressed interest? It certainly was that way at every college I’ve been associated with or heard about.

That’s exactly my point. 🤣it was my attempt at sarcasm over the situation. Of course we should have all inclusive situation. But I also see the point in a super large university or institution to create niche groups, but mostly it just feels that we have forgotten boys. 
 

I had a female boss over the span of 15 years. Trust me when I say air sucking isn’t just a male attribute. But again, we are getting away from the original point. Even if few domineering males are the ones making everything smell around, and even if girls are able to quietly persevere, quieter boys seem to be walking out of those same classrooms it seems. Two of my best friends both have boys sleeping at home working restaurant jobs but their girls are either in college or with degrees. It’s a recurring problem around me those families are educated. 

[Roadrunner]

On 5/21/2023 at 1:31 PM, SanDiegoMom said:

I've listened to all his podcast interviews but haven't read the book yet.  I am going to order it now.

Research was mentioned upthread --  just guessing here but I think the push has for so long to improve female performance and equity, and the flip in outcomes now has been so swift and sudden we weren't really prepared for it.  

One of the things Reeves mentioned (at least I think it was him -- it was quite awhile ago!) was that there is no good model/slogan for encouraging young males.  We have "Girl Power", "The Future is Female", "Girls Rule", "Girl Boss"  etc.  But what do boys have?  There's toxic masculinity, and then we have the biblical/conservative model of male as provider and head of the household.  But what if you are liberal, centrist or atheist? 

 

Regarding careers and using math/computer science as an example.  For years there has been efforts to close the gap in a lot of the sciences.  And I absolutely hope there are no barriers to women anymore in what they choose to pursue.  But if computer science is 80 percent dominated by males because most girls just aren't interested, why do we keep on throwing scholarships and program opportunities to encourage girls in some stem programs and bemoaning the fact that the statistics remain skewed?  The latest research I had seen was that in the most progressive countries (Denmark for example) where the gender gap was smallest, the employment skewed the heaviest towards traditional gender norms.  

 

I think we have gotten off the path on this discussion, but wanted to say this is probably the single most important thing that rings true to me. Boys have no purpose it seems. I tried to replace girl/female with men and got some interesting slogans. "Men Power," "The Future is Male," "Men Rule," "Men Boss." not going to work obviously. 🙂 Yea, there needs to be some real soul searching if we can get this kids functioning.  

[chiguirre]

23 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

I think we have gotten off the path on this discussion, but wanted to say this is probably the single most important thing that rings true to me. Boys have no purpose it seems. 

That is not at all what Reeves' book is about. His whole argument is that we need to encourage boys to go into caring professions (HEAL fields: Health, Education, Administration and Literacy). When I was googling what the L in HEAL stood for I found Reeves' substack. It's free and is a good overview of his suggested solution to the gender imbalance in higher education and professional fields. It's not enough to encourage girls to enter STEM fields, boys have to enter fields that were previously seen as "pink collar" jobs.

https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/men-can-heal

[Rosie_0801]

The couple of men in my life who could be doing better don't want to be helped, particularly by me. Too mum-ish, I guess.

[Roadrunner]

3 minutes ago, chiguirre said:

That is not at all what Reeves' book is about. His whole argument is that we need to encourage boys to go into caring professions (HEAL fields: Health, Education, Administration and Literacy). When I was googling what the L in HEAL stood for I found Reeves' substack. It's free and is a good overview of his suggested solution to the gender imbalance in higher education and professional fields. It's not enough to encourage girls to enter STEM fields, boys have to enter fields that were previously seen as "pink collar" jobs.

https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/men-can-heal

I haven’t read the book and will definitely read it. I am not saying this is what the book is about. What I am saying is his comment about boys having no “slogans so to speak” reads true. This doesn’t have to be the point of the book for me to say I think he hit a nail on something important. 
 

Boys should enter fields they want, not the fields anybody tells them to enter because they are “pink color.” As my little CC anecdotes demonstrates, my kid didn’t feel welcome as a boy in STEM. He shouldn’t have to pick up a profession he doesn’t want just because he needs to fight a gender imbalance. Solution is to encourage individuals no matter their gender to find their passion not find a profession to improve gender balance. 
There is a reason he said in an interview trade schools could help boys. Trade schools are stem as far as I am concerned, sort of like engineering I would say.  

[Not_a_Number]

7 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

I'm not sure it's so much that girls are so much less interested in CompSci, as that there's still a very male-dominated culture there, with a lot of misogyny, and you need really tough skin to handle it.  My dd is in CompSci, and it helps that she's relatively oblivious about things, or doesn't take them personally.  Also good enough to eventually earn respect.  When she was in middle school robotics club (where she was the only girl), she noted that when they were in groups, the boys kept confidently saying wrong things, taking over the keyboard, and ignoring her.  She had to learn to tough it out and hold her ground, which has served her well.  But a lot of girls decide it's not worth it.

Yeah. That was my experience as girl in math. And from what I see with my daughters, it's still how it is. 

 

7 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

And while she did get in to all of the CompSci programs she applied to (she did not apply to tippy-top schools, but some good solid ones), none of them offered her a package that made them remotely affordable, except for one out-of-state public and one in-state public.  She went to the in-state public.  But I'd kept hearing how all these CompSci programs fell all over themselves to recruit girls.  Didn't see it.

I've definitely seen programs recruit girls to math programs. I don't know if DH knows what's going on at the undergrad level, but at the grad level and the professor level, there's heavy pressure. 

I can ask DH about Computer Science as well -- I'm less familiar with that. 

[Kassia]

Dd just graduated with a degree in CS.  There were very few girls in her classes.  I think one time she said she was the only girl in the lecture hall.  She got a full ride with NMF but the school definitely didn't recruit for girls.  Everything was based on high school numbers- GPA and test scores.  

[chiguirre]

32 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

I haven’t read the book and will definitely read it. I am not saying this is what the book is about. What I am saying is his comment about boys having no “slogans so to speak” reads true. This doesn’t have to be the point of the book for me to say I think he hit a nail on something important. 
 

Boys should enter fields they want, not the fields anybody tells them to enter because they are “pink color.” As my little CC anecdotes demonstrates, my kid didn’t feel welcome as a boy in STEM. He shouldn’t have to pick up a profession he doesn’t want just because he needs to fight a gender imbalance. Solution is to encourage individuals no matter their gender to find their passion not find a profession to improve gender balance. 
There is a reason he said in an interview trade schools could help boys. Trade schools are stem as far as I am concerned, sort of like engineering I would say.  

That's precisely Reeves' point! Many men would be good at nursing, teaching, social work, PT, OT, SLP, etc. but they don't even consider them because they're "women's work". As a society we need to address that psychological barrier to men seeking professions that pay well and are challenging because in the past they were dominated by women. 

[kokotg]

1 minute ago, chiguirre said:

That's precisely Reeves' point! Many men would be good at nursing, teaching, social work, PT, OT, SLP, etc. but they don't even consider them because they're "women's work". As a society we need to address that psychological barrier to men seeking professions that pay well and are challenging because in the past they were dominated by women. 

Most of those aren't well-paid professions, though? I mean, as someone who's married to a teacher, I'd love it if more men went in to professions that are dominated by women because then maybe those professions would start paying better. 

[Kassia]

17 minutes ago, chiguirre said:

That's precisely Reeves' point! Many men would be good at nursing, teaching, social work, PT, OT, SLP, etc. but they don't even consider them because they're "women's work". As a society we need to address that psychological barrier to men seeking professions that pay well and are challenging because in the past they were dominated by women. 

We have a lot of male nurses here and also PTs.  Many teachers too but definitely still more women - especially in elementary.  

I was just talking to DH about it and said that my best nurse and my worst nurse were both men.  Sometimes I think there are more male nurses than female at the hospital nearest us but I doubt that's the case.  

[chiguirre]

13 minutes ago, kokotg said:

Most of those aren't well-paid professions, though? I mean, as someone who's married to a teacher, I'd love it if more men went in to professions that are dominated by women because then maybe those professions would start paying better. 

They're not as well paid as engineering and computer science, but they beat retail and fast food. Most of these fields do pay better than the median US male salary of about $50,000 once you're fully qualified and have some experience.

[Roadrunner]

27 minutes ago, chiguirre said:

That's precisely Reeves' point! Many men would be good at nursing, teaching, social work, PT, OT, SLP, etc. but they don't even consider them because they're "women's work". As a society we need to address that psychological barrier to men seeking professions that pay well and are challenging because in the past they were dominated by women. 

And those who like those careers are entering them. People don’t only make career decisions based on money. My son is majoring in physics not because of money. It’s because of interest. I absolutely disagree that it’s a psychological barrier. I think on average (not individually) men and women have different career preferences. Again not absolutely, but in average. I think that’s why we see an imbalance.

we have a ton of male nurses locally and medical schools I heard in some areas of practice are becoming predominantly female that used to be predominantly male. We also have a ton of male teachers but probably not 50/50. Now that entry isn’t restricted to any gender, you see some of those professions rebalancing some in favor women and others maybe not. 
We don’t need to push males into areas of work they aren’t interested in doing. Let them do what they want. Maybe some will teach, some will dance, but yes, many more in average will probably want to be engineers. 

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Roadrunner said:

I absolutely disagree that it’s a psychological barrier. I think on average (not individually) men and women have different career preferences. Again not absolutely, but in average. I think that’s why we see an imbalance.

I tend to believe both. There's a cultural barrier as well as some differences in innate proclivities. 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Not_a_Number

[kokotg]

21 minutes ago, chiguirre said:

They're not as well paid as engineering and computer science, but they beat retail and fast food. Most of these fields do pay better than the median US male salary of about $50,000 once you're fully qualified and have some experience.

Sure, but most male dominated professions that require a similar level of education pay way more. If I were making a list of professions that pay relatively poorly despite requiring a lot of education, I'd put a lot of those on there (and throw in some others, like librarian). Money-wise, you're much better off with a bachelors in CS than a masters in education. ETA: I haven't read the book, so just trying understand the argument...I just don't get why we'd be comparing jobs that don't require advanced training or education to ones that require at least a college degree and a masters or other advanced degree in many cases. I'm also certainly not arguing against men going into historically woman-dominated fields--there are plenty of reasons aside from money to do so. But I don't think it's a coincidence that those fields almost always pay more poorly than the fields historically dominated by men, adjusted for education level.

Edited May 23, 2023 by kokotg

[Roadrunner]

I think the point is many boys aren’t choosing anything - not teaching and not computer science. They are just living in basements from what I can see. Again, not talking about the top 10% that makes up the male population in top universities. 
You would think if it was about career choice only, they would all be at least attempting to enter college into stem. But many are doing nothing at all. That’s why I think his assertion that there might be a crisis of purpose of some sort is worth examining more closely. In my experience girls are more organized and go getters, boys much more apathetic and passive (not including the few air sucking one I guess). 

[Not_a_Number]

8 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

I think the point is many boys aren’t choosing anything - not teaching and not computer science. They are just living in basements from what I can see. Again, not talking about the top 10% that makes up the male population in top universities. 
You would think if it was about career choice only, they would all be at least attempting to enter college into stem. But many are doing nothing at all. That’s why I think his assertion that there might be a crisis of purpose of some sort is worth examining more closely. In my experience girls are more organized and go getters, boys much more apathetic and passive (not including the few air sucking one I guess). 

I’m sure this is culturally mediated as well. I don’t doubt your observations.

[Frances]

3 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

I think we have gotten off the path on this discussion, but wanted to say this is probably the single most important thing that rings true to me. Boys have no purpose it seems. I tried to replace girl/female with men and got some interesting slogans. "Men Power," "The Future is Male," "Men Rule," "Men Boss." not going to work obviously. 🙂 Yea, there needs to be some real soul searching if we can get this kids functioning.  

I’m sorry but I just can’t agree. Are you raising your son to have no purpose? I highly doubt most parents are doing so. While I think there are real societal structural issues in the US that are harmful to boys, especially the way our school  systems have changed for the worse, I don’t think some slogan is going to make much of a difference.

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, Frances said:

I’m sorry but I just can’t agree. Are you raising your son to have no purpose? I highly doubt most parents are doing so. While I think there are real societal structural issues in the US that are harmful to boys, especially the way our school  systems have changed for the worse, I don’t think some slogan is going to make much of a difference.

I don't think parents are what give people purpose. The thing that gives people purpose is cultural context. 

I'm not in a cultural environment where I see this firsthand -- the boys I know are driven and goal-oriented. But I have no doubt this issue exists across the US. 

[Frances]

1 hour ago, Roadrunner said:

I think the point is many boys aren’t choosing anything - not teaching and not computer science. They are just living in basements from what I can see. Again, not talking about the top 10% that makes up the male population in top universities. 
You would think if it was about career choice only, they would all be at least attempting to enter college into stem. But many are doing nothing at all. That’s why I think his assertion that there might be a crisis of purpose of some sort is worth examining more closely. In my experience girls are more organized and go getters, boys much more apathetic and passive (not including the few air sucking one I guess). 

There are far more boys out there doing just fine than the top 10% that makes up the male population in top universities. I can’t even with that kind of thinking. Personally, I only know of one young adult male living in the basement and even then, he appears to be pursuing a healing career online.

[Frances]

2 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I don't think parents are what give people purpose. The thing that gives people purpose is cultural context. 

I'm not in a cultural environment where I see this firsthand -- the boys I know are driven and goal-oriented. But I have no doubt this issue exists across the US. 

I agree that parents don’t directly give their children purpose, but I do think they are highly influential in providing them with opportunities, examples, discussions, etc that can help a child find a purpose.

[Frances]

2 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

I haven’t read the book and will definitely read it. I am not saying this is what the book is about. What I am saying is his comment about boys having no “slogans so to speak” reads true. This doesn’t have to be the point of the book for me to say I think he hit a nail on something important. 
 

Boys should enter fields they want, not the fields anybody tells them to enter because they are “pink color.” As my little CC anecdotes demonstrates, my kid didn’t feel welcome as a boy in STEM. He shouldn’t have to pick up a profession he doesn’t want just because he needs to fight a gender imbalance. Solution is to encourage individuals no matter their gender to find their passion not find a profession to improve gender balance. 
There is a reason he said in an interview trade schools could help boys. Trade schools are stem as far as I am concerned, sort of like engineering I would say.  

I would agree that trade schools and high school votech schools can be a great thing for many students, male or female. I think the push many years ago for all students to have a college prep high school education was a very, very bad idea, but especially for boys. I’m so glad my large school district has significantly increased votech resources over the last ten years.

[Frances]

2 hours ago, kokotg said:

Most of those aren't well-paid professions, though? I mean, as someone who's married to a teacher, I'd love it if more men went in to professions that are dominated by women because then maybe those professions would start paying better. 

Most health care professions that require a bachelor’s degree and above are quite well paid. Plus, many can get as much overtime as they desire and it is often possible to work only a few long days or have other desirable schedules. My husband left university teaching for healthcare and doubled his pay while halving his work hours.

[kokotg]

Just now, Frances said:

Most health care professions that require a bachelor’s degree and above are quite well paid. Plus, many can get as much overtime as they desire and it is often possible to work only a few long days or have other desirable schedules. My husband left university teaching for healthcare and doubled his pay while halving his work hours.

yeah, I was thinking of nursing as the exception on that list. My understanding is that things like PT don't pay well, though (although, having had a few PT sessions this year, I can say confidently that SOMEONE is making a lot of money off of it!)

[Clarita]

12 minutes ago, kokotg said:

yeah, I was thinking of nursing as the exception on that list.

Doctors, surgeons, anesthesiologists, oncologists, etc. are also all in healthcare. I think it's more in healthcare there are jobs that pay well and maybe there are also jobs that don't pay as well. Although I do think most of them make a decent salary.  

[Roadrunner]

42 minutes ago, Frances said:

There are far more boys out there doing just fine than the top 10% that makes up the male population in top universities. I can’t even with that kind of thinking. Personally, I only know of one young adult male living in the basement and even then, he appears to be pursuing a healing career online.

Again, don’t  put words into my mouth. I didn’t say only top 10% are doing well, but those “air sucking males” you guys are referring to come from this group.

The fact remains that if girls were at a similar  gender imbalance in colleges now that boys have, everybody would be screaming about it, but somehow I don’t see similar concern for boys. 

[Frances]

1 minute ago, Roadrunner said:

Again, don’t  put words into my mouth. I didn’t say only top 10% are doing well, but those “air sucking males” you guys are referring to come from this group.

The fact remains that if girls were at a similar  gender imbalance in colleges now that boys have, everybody would be screaming about it, but somehow I don’t see similar concern for boys. 

No, they don’t exclusively or necessarily come from top ten universities. That is a very warped view of how things work. Highly successful upper middle class men and women come from a wide range of colleges and universities. And some never even went to college. And I’m speaking as someone who did grad school at a top university.

The fact that we are discussing it here, books and articles are being written about it, etc does show that at least some people are concerned. The pandemic has messed up so many things that perhaps that is obscuring the issue somewhat currently.

[Clarita]

If male dominated professions pay more why aren't more women going into them. Seriously it's why I picked Electrical Engineering vs. Fashion Design. I don't understand the lack of desire to enter the fields.

Having worked in the industry I know there are some barriers to advancement. These fields tend to be at the very least full-time gigs with very little part-time opportunities (since women tend to be the care-givers in a family they opt out as I have by choice). There were a few instances of misogyny that I've had to deal with in college and  at work but it was not much worse than everyday life. A side-bar is that I did feel it was a little more difficult to make girl friends because sometimes women back away after I tell them my major or profession, or make me out to be some hero or ground breaking person when honestly I think a lot of the hard ground breaking work was already done.

 

[Roadrunner]

11 minutes ago, Frances said:

No, they don’t exclusively or necessarily come from top ten universities. That is a very warped view of how things work. Highly successful upper middle class men and women come from a wide range of colleges and universities. And some never even went to college. And I’m speaking as someone who did grad school at a top university.

The fact that we are discussing it here, books and articles are being written about it, etc does show that at least some people are concerned. The pandemic has messed up so many things that perhaps that is obscuring the issue somewhat currently.

What on earth are you talking about? Are you reading what I said? Where did I say they came from top 10% of universities? Huh?

[Roadrunner]

13 minutes ago, Clarita said:

If male dominated professions pay more why aren't more women going into them. Seriously it's why I picked Electrical Engineering vs. Fashion Design. I don't understand the lack of desire to enter the fields.

Having worked in the industry I know there are some barriers to advancement. These fields tend to be at the very least full-time gigs with very little part-time opportunities (since women tend to be the care-givers in a family they opt out as I have by choice). There were a few instances of misogyny that I've had to deal with in college and  at work but it was not much worse than everyday life. A side-bar is that I did feel it was a little more difficult to make girl friends because sometimes women back away after I tell them my major or profession, or make me out to be some hero or ground breaking person when honestly I think a lot of the hard ground breaking work was already done.

 

No amount of money would get me to do that. 🤣sounds unbelievably boring. One of my boys shares that sentiment, so see, our discussion only works when you look at aggregates. 😉

 

I found all sorts of people at the top - toxic and wonderful,  it I didn’t think female managers were any better than male. What I do think though is that certain type of sociopathic personalities do much better at climbing to the top and I wonder if those qualities manifest more in men than women. 

[Clarita]

Just now, Roadrunner said:

No amount of money would get me to do that. 🤣sounds unbelievably boring. One of my boys shares that sentiment, so see, our discussion only works when you look at aggregates. 😉

Of course I'm only talking aggregates, because you'd have to be paying me enough that I would never have to work again after 1 year to teach a classroom or be in HR. (I know I homeschool but that's my own 2 children which is very different than a classroom of children who are not my own.)

[Roadrunner]

1 minute ago, Clarita said:

Of course I'm only talking aggregates, because you'd have to be paying me enough that I would never have to work again after 1 year to teach a classroom or be in HR. (I know I homeschool but that's my own 2 children which is very different than a classroom of children who are not my own.)

Meanwhile I just took on an 8 year old to rotor for free. Somebody must stop me. 🤣🤦🏻‍♀️

[Frances]

2 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

I think the point is many boys aren’t choosing anything - not teaching and not computer science. They are just living in basements from what I can see. Again, not talking about the top 10% that makes up the male population in top universities. 

57 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

Again, don’t  put words into my mouth. I didn’t say only top 10% are doing well, but those “air sucking males” you guys are referring to come from this group.

 

 

[kokotg]

1 hour ago, Clarita said:

Doctors, surgeons, anesthesiologists, oncologists, etc. are also all in healthcare. I think it's more in healthcare there are jobs that pay well and maybe there are also jobs that don't pay as well. Although I do think most of them make a decent salary.  

right--I meant the list chiguirre gave of well-paid traditionally female professions that men should consider. Doctors aren't in that category. 

[Roadrunner]

43 minutes ago, Frances said:

 

Yes, not what I was saying at all. People started to talk about all sorts of things in this thread from acceptance into stem for boys to toxic male bosses. After a string of discussions on if girls are  favored into stem or not, I tried to bring the discussion back to those who aren’t going to school, not the 10% fighting for elite admission to some universities, which is where most conversations end up on this board. 
And my second comment was to say that those toxic bosses are most likely among the top percentage of the most successful group of their gender. 

Too many different thoughts on this thread.
 

 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Roadrunner

[Roadrunner]

31 minutes ago, kokotg said:

right--I meant the list chiguirre gave of well-paid traditionally female professions that men should consider. Doctors aren't in that category. 

Medicine is fascinating though. I found this online:

”In 1980-1981, only 24.9% of graduates were female; in 2018-2019, 47.9% of graduates were female.” I read now more med students are female than male.

I mean if toxic males are the reason holding females in some fields, why not in medicine? I am actually not surprised at all that we are slowly taking over the medical field. 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Roadrunner

[Shoeless]

1 hour ago, Frances said:

I would agree that trade schools and high school votech schools can be a great thing for many students, male or female. I think the push many years ago for all students to have a college prep high school education was a very, very bad idea, but especially for boys. I’m so glad my large school district has significantly increased votech resources over the last ten years.

 

I agree with this 100%. Shop classes and vo-tech were removed from my district. There used to be a few different diploma paths depending on your post-high school goals. That's all gone. Now it's "college prep" for everyone, unless the student has a disability that makes college unrealistic.  

Maybe there'd be fewer episodes of fighting and violence in school if boys had a healthy outlet for stress.  

I got very, very lucky and found a local guy that teaches blacksmithing for teens. I have no idea if my son will want to become a blacksmith or a farrier, but he's getting something from these classes that I can't offer at home.  I can't even put my finger on what that something is! I just know that when I picked him up, I saw a totally different kid who moved with confidence.  He didn't get that in chess club, (and he liked chess club). He doesn't get that from art class, (and he LOVES his art class). 

[Frances]

47 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

Yes, not what I was saying at all. People started to talk about all sorts of things in this thread from acceptance into stem for boys to toxic male bosses. After a string of discussions on if girls are  favored into stem or not, I tried to bring the discussion back to those who aren’t going to school, not the 10% fighting for elite admission to some universities, which is where most conversations end up on this board. 
And my second comment was to say that those toxic bosses are most likely among the top percentage of the most successful group of their gender. 

Too many different thoughts on this thread.
 

 

I agree about too many different thoughts on the thread. 
 

And just for clarity, my comments about over confident dominate males during my professional life was not about bosses or managers, toxic or otherwise.

[Frances]

47 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

Medicine is fascinating though. I found this online:

”In 1980-1981, only 24.9% of graduates were female; in 2018-2019, 47.9% of graduates were female.” I read now more med students are female than male.

I mean if toxic males are the reason holding females in some fields, why not in medicine? I am actually not surprised at all that we are slowly taking over the medical field. 

I’m not surprised either, as women have more traditionally been drawn to helping professions. So it makes complete sense that they would first gain parity or even dominance in those types of fields.

[Meriwether]

My oldest is at a school with a lot of engineering students. She is not in engineering, but she was in the tutoring program (as a tutor) and found out that girls in STEM do not have to pay for tutoring. Boys do.

[Arcadia]

1 hour and 25 minutes long

 

[regentrude]

10 hours ago, Meriwether said:

My oldest is at a school with a lot of engineering students. She is not in engineering, but she was in the tutoring program (as a tutor) and found out that girls in STEM do not have to pay for tutoring. Boys do.

The school charges the students for tutoring??? That cannot be right.

[Roadrunner]

	amherst		williams		swarthmore		JHU		GA Tech		MIT		Cal Tech
men	6,475		6,870		6,047		17,214		33,820		21,672		9,059
women	8,389		7,974		8,660		22,301		16,790		11,568		3,967
total	14,864		14,844		14,707		39,515		50,610		33,240		13,026
admitted men	467		607		489		1,256		4,847		665		260
admitted women	612		653		530		1,716		3,825		700		250
total	1,079		1,260		1,019		2,972		8,672		1,365		510
men %	7.2%		8.8%		8.1%		7.3%		14.3%		3.1%		2.9%
women %	7.3%		8.2%		6.1%		7.7%		22.8%		6.1%		6.3%

[Roadrunner]

So I wanted to skim over a bit on acceptance rates of men and women. Just picked several top LACs and since I can't find STEM acceptance rate within universities, I picked tech schools to see if women were favored in admission. Men do love STEM. 🙂 And yes, the gap in LAC applications is certainly there, but outcome seems to be very school dependent. I would think as you go down rankings, more likely you will find preference for men. But I am just speculating. I don't know if tech schools could be used as proxy to what goes on into engineering department admissions or not. Maybe, maybe not, but it's the best I could do. 

Basically number of men and women who applied, the number who were admitted, and acceptance percentage. It would be fun to have larger data, but I am too lazy. 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Roadrunner

[Meriwether]

6 hours ago, regentrude said:

The school charges the students for tutoring??? That cannot be right.

Yes, they do. 

[regentrude]

11 minutes ago, Meriwether said:

Yes, they do. 

I believe you, but that is wrong. The college should offer tutoring for free - for students of all genders.

[kokotg]

6 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

	amherst		williams		swarthmore		JHU		GA Tech		MIT		Cal Tech
men	6,475		6,870		6,047		17,214		33,820		21,672		9,059
women	8,389		7,974		8,660		22,301		16,790		11,568		3,967
total	14,864		14,844		14,707		39,515		50,610		33,240		13,026
admitted men	467		607		489		1,256		4,847		665		260
admitted women	612		653		530		1,716		3,825		700		250
total	1,079		1,260		1,019		2,972		8,672		1,365		510
men %	7.2%		8.8%		8.1%		7.3%		14.3%		3.1%		2.9%
women %	7.3%		8.2%		6.1%		7.7%		22.8%		6.1%		6.3%

There are far fewer schools that are just STEM based, though. And it's not just SLACs colleges where men have an advantage, it's universities like Harvard, Vanderbilt, etc. etc. etc., too. My son actually had a spreadsheet that included a column about where he'd have the biggest advantage applying as a male. We weren't even surprised when he got into Vassar after a slew of waitlists at similar schools, because...boy. Schools do it because gender balance makes them more desirable to potential students (i.e. boys at MIT generally don't want to go to a school with way more men than women, and women at Vassar don't want to go to a school with way more women than men. By and large). 

[Roadrunner]

10 minutes ago, kokotg said:

There are far fewer schools that are just STEM based, though. And it's not just SLACs colleges where men have an advantage, it's universities like Harvard, Vanderbilt, etc. etc. etc., too. My son actually had a spreadsheet that included a column about where he'd have the biggest advantage applying as a male. We weren't even surprised when he got into Vassar after a slew of waitlists at similar schools, because...boy. Schools do it because gender balance makes them more desirable to potential students (i.e. boys at MIT generally don't want to go to a school with way more men than women, and women at Vassar don't want to go to a school with way more women than men. By and large). 

As I explained, it was a fun sample on two extremes. Not meant to be representative. In fact it was meant to show schools that should have the most disparity. Yes, as I said,  Vassar would fall under LAC. So you are agreeing with me. 

[kokotg]

Just now, Roadrunner said:

As I explained, it was a fun sample on two extremes. Not meant to be representative. In fact it was meant to show schools that should have the most disparity. Yes, as I said,  Vassar would fall under LAC. So you are agreeing with me. 

I'm saying it's not just small LACs, though (all your examples were SLACs). Vassar's the famous example, but top 20 universities favor men in admission, too. It's pretty much just STEM/engineering schools that don't, and there aren't nearly as many of them. So boys have the advantage in admission at MOST selective colleges. I guess I'm saying it's not some sign of a deep bias against boys, it's a sign that colleges like gender balance.