"Increasingly today, young men are the second sex in education...The gender equity movement deploys an unusual logic: gaps favoring men, those are evidence of invidious discrimination. They demand massive attention, including national legislation. Gaps favoring women, no matter how large, no matter how momentous or devastating to men's progress, those go unmentioned, unaddressed."
- Christina Hoff Sommers
A friend of mine recently told me he is in the early stages of writing a book that focuses on men. I mentioned a few books and resources I had come across in the past couple years that might be helpful. He had never heard of them, so I figured I would pass them along here as well, with some thoughts.
According to Pew, “U.S. women are outpacing men in college completion, including in every major racial and ethnic group”.
Among the smaller percentage of men who do earn college degrees, men with college degrees now have the same unemployment rate as men without college degrees. If you are a man, your college degree does not give you a hiring advantage. Not so for women.
In a recent debate at MIT over whether there is a gender gap in STEM fields, Cory Clark and Christina Hoff Sommers revealed that, according to several recent studies, hiring committees and practices favor female applicants over male applicants, inside and outside academia. In STEM fields, women earn the majority of degrees in biology and chemistry. Among psychology majors, women dominate by over 80%. Among medical students, 55% are women. Among veterinary students, over 80% are women.
And women are also earning more master’s and doctoral degrees than men.
In Britain,
Since the pandemic alone, the number of males aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) has increased by a staggering 40% compared to just 7% for females. For those young men who are in work, the much-vaunted gender pay gap has been reversed. Young men are now out-earned by their female peers, including among the university educated. - The Centre for Social Justice
“Young men are more likely to end up in prison or jail in the US than they are to graduate from college if they’re raised in any non-intact family setup.” — Brad Wilcox
“Suicide rates among men under 30 have risen by 40 percent since 2010 and are four times higher than among young women. Male suicide accounts for as many deaths as breast cancer…They are more likely to be lonely and are more vulnerable to addiction…At worst, men are seen not as having problems but as being the problem.” - Richard Reeves
In fields and sectors where there are more men, on average the percentage differences can be explained by the differences between men and women in their overall interests (on average, women are more drawn to social fields), dispositions (women tend to be more agreeable), and biology (women get pregnant and often breastfeed, men do not). Academia doesn’t like to talk about those differences, but that’s mostly due to ideological capture. (See Dr. Cory Clark’s work in psychology for more; interview with her here.) In the small number of fields (math, physics, engineering, computer science) that do not exhibit perfect male-female 50/50 parity, there is no reason to think that the primary reason for the lack of parity is some systemic and effective bias against women.
For many readers coming across this information for the first time, it probably matches your lived experience, while probably conflicting with cultural messaging you have been fed most of your life. We are told there is an unethical gender pay gap, where women earn less than men for the same jobs. While that is definitely true in some individual cases, it isn't true at all generally. While it is true that only about 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, I think anyone looking at the matter holistically understands that is only one metric, and it isn't even clear what it is supposed to measure. If we ask the question,
Are men flourishing?
it seems like the metrics above answer that question clearly:
Are more men graduating from college? No.
Are more men getting advanced degrees? No.
Are more men getting jobs out of college? No.
Are more men psychologically and mentally healthy? No.
Are the vast majority of Fortune 500 CEOs men? Yes.
If you want to dive more deeply, I'll mention a few books below as a start (with affiliate links), and next week I'll say a bit more, including more reading recommendations.
1. Christina Hoff Sommers (former philosopher), The War Against Boys
2. Richard Reeves, Of Boys and Men
Until next time.
Jared
This Week's Free Philosophy Resource:
Title: Why do organizations take political stances? A review of reasons and risks
Author: Cory J. Clark, Calvin Isch, Azim Shariff
Reading Level: Undergraduate
This is more in the field of social psychology, but falls squarely in the domain of ethics as well, and I include it so you get a sense of Clark's work.
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