Yes, Patriarchy Is Dead; the Feminists Prove It

[lumberjack_jeff]

44. When women were underrepresented in college is was most certainly a crisis.

From Inside Higher Ed

Similarly, the AAUW cites test scores on the ACT and SAT to contest the idea of a crisis in the education of males. "Over all, test scores on the SAT and ACT exams challenge the notion of a boys’ crisis. Boys continue to hold an advantage, albeit small, on these undergraduate admissions tests. While the number of girls taking these exams has risen, so too has the number of boys."
Whenever the AAUW releases reports, there is a quick response from women's groups that question its assumptions. The Independent Women's Forum, for example, immediately questioned the analysis.
But so did some education experts.
Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, didn't question the specific numbers in the report or the idea that both male and female students can succeed at the same time. "Women have made huge progress in education over the last six decades," he said. "The success of women is a great story -- it shows what we can do when we set our minds to task."
But he said that in 1970, when he started his career in higher education policy analysis, there were 1.5 million more men than women in higher education and "I recall vividly that women complained that this was a crisis. Now there are 2.7 million more women than men in higher education and the feminists assert that this is not a crisis. What am I missing here?"
He noted the hugely disproportionate rates of suicide among men who are 25 to 34, and of incarceration, and asked how this could be anything but a crisis.
"The hypocrisy of the feminists -- AAUW being a major part of this -- astounds me," Mortenson said. "The fact is male lives are falling apart at the growing margins of male welfare, and the utter failure of the education system to address male needs on male terms is indeed a crisis. We have shown what the education system can do for women when we set our minds to it."

As measured by the SAT test, boys learn more in school, yet they get worse grades, are more frequently disciplined, are more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability and are more likely to drop out or commit suicide. The fact that 80% of primary school teachers are women, and are working with a curriculum designed to maximize girls chances of success is a contributing factor.

If this phenomenon were simply an odd cultural artifact of some chronic social bias, it wouldn't be so troublesome. In fact it's a consequence of conscious public policy.