How college gender imbalances impact the social scene…
My commentary running today on the back cover of the Chronicle of Higher Education takes an unvarnished look at what can happen to the campus social scene when the female/male imbalance passes 60% female. That’s the gender imbalance campus admissions officers fear most, the threshold where you can feel a palpable difference on campus. What this means to the campus social scene is guaranteed to make parents of college-bound girls cringe a bit
Moving past 60% at some point triggers what biologists refer to as the operational sex ratio, which in the animal kingdom refers to the changes in mating habits that occur when one sex outnumbers the other. Humans are not immune, including college campuses.
Fyi: By the year 2015, the average graduating class from four-year colleges will be 60%. Trying to maintain healthy relationships between the sexes is one reason so many college admissions officers quietly grant admissions preferences to men (not that they would call them preferences. Rather, they draw large, overlapping circles to explain an admission policy that, in the end, favors men and discriminates against women). See my previous Chronicle commentary on that subject.
To date, this blog has focused mostly on what I see as the drivers behind this trend, boys falling behind in elementary school, never making up the lost ground and going to college at lower rates than girls. Gradually, however, I see the posts shifting more to the social impact of an education gap in the adult world — the search for “marriageable mates.”
(For more on that issue, sift through the “social consequences” and “college years” categories in the right column.)
Tags: admissions preferences, college imbalances, marriageable mate
July 21st, 2008 at 12:01 pm
[...] don’t let your daughters grow-up to be JMU undergraduates…says USAT’s Richard [...]
July 21st, 2008 at 9:49 pm
The military has the opposite problem, thus creating the phenomena of a “TDY 10″.
I propose a new base realignment program by congress relocating all military bases to college towns
rory
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:39 am
[...] today, but for some interesting commentary on the gender gap in college, be sure to check out Richard Whitmire’s blog. Whitmire speculates on the possible social consequences of the growing lopsided gender balance on [...]
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I think most of this is not about “gender” imbalance but SEX imbalance, or imbalance of the sexes. I realize that many people use only the word “gender” these days but the difference among ‘he, she, it’ or what kind of garments different cultures “assign” to the sexes is gender. But the difference between males and females that is due to genetics, i.e. biology, is SEX — not ‘gender”.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
As the parent of girls, and a female growing up in a time when getting into programs, jobs, etc was not weighted in my favor - I don’t want us to lose site of selecting the “best” candidates for schools and employment. Possibly this gender balance issue will create a “stay at home” dad culture, where men become more financially dependent on women and stay home to nurture the children and home. Maybe a world once dominated by white males 50+, will be instead run by women. With the current state of things, maybe this would be an improvement.
August 7th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
hello…
thanks…
August 13th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Follow-Up on College Dating:…
The other day I linked an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the changing social scene at colleges where women dramatically outn……
August 13th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
So now do a blog essay on my experience. I’m married to my MBA wife who has P & L responsibility for a 400 million dollar brand, and our first child arrives. “My baby needs me”, she declares, and she never works another day. You can blend in reports from women who forgo children for career and deeply regret it.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
There was a similar gender imbalance in Germany after WWII and after 2+ million German men had died in combat. Those women only slightly interested in marriage do not get married. Those who were strongly interested did make the effort to find males, typically being less picking than when the ratio is close to 50 50.
Males are less accomplished in education at this time in the USA for two main reasons:
1. Education has become feminized (aka anti male)
2. Many males view college education as not cost effective, viewing a job as a construction worker, fire fighter, or police officer to pay more than what a female with an art history degree will make selling coffee at Starbucks. A vast number of those females who make up 60% of students in college will receive degrees for which there are no jobs (aka art history, English lit, French).
August 13th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
[...] COLLEGE GENDER IMBALANCES impact the social scene. (Via [...]
August 13th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I agree with FS Tate above. I have a daughter just beginning college and I have had some serious discussions with her about major fields of study. She has an older brother and older sister, both lawyers and doing pretty well. She has an older sister with an Anthropology degree which has not contributed much in a vocational or economic way. A few years ago, when the middle daughter was complaining about job prospects for anthropologists, I pointed out that the Army was recruiting that major. That was not a welcome suggestion. The one child who seems to be doing the best, in terms of family, home etc, is a fireman with two years of junior college. If I had another son who was not a high academic achiever, I don’t know what I would advise him. I also think a tuition rebellion by parents is overdue.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Interesting… But does it really matter? It seems as though things will progress if we keep our noses out of it. By this I do not mean that we should not look at causes and effects of this, I simply mean that I don’t think we should necessarily tamper with it just because there is a sex imbalance.
And there is plenty of work in anthropology — just not with only a BA/BS. And with a BA/BS, anthropology applies itself very effectively to the business world, among other places.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
The party scene was worse: “You’ll walk into a room and there will be three boys and 10 girls. The girls are all competing to see who goes home with the boys. The guys have their pick.”
Feminisms’ chickens…are coming home…to roost!
While you’re posting about boys’ sports being shot down by Title IX, how about if you look into the social ramifications of allowing these people to persecute the Boy Scouts out of many of their traditional locations.
I mean, we all think that’s OK, right?
August 14th, 2008 at 12:00 am
This engineering Ph.D. wonders if the waves of outsourcing of traditionally male college subjects in fields such as finance, engineering and the like may be taking much of the luster off college. You work hard for 4-5 years getting that engineering degree only to find Shri in India will be doing the work for 2/3 less.
Besides, a plumber makes more than a starting engineer (typically) and there are no loans to pay off, no cube farms, immediate pay rather than deferred income, etc. And when we the last time your plumber was outsourced?
August 14th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Let the guys have it good for a change.
I did two engineering degrees, and an MBA.
In engineering, men were about 85% and women 15%. Among those 15%, about 2% were attractive.
The MBA was a relative improvement. It was only 70% men and 20% female, with a slightly large proportion of attractive women.
In these fields, this is not about to change anytime soon.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:02 am
” It was only 70% men and 20% female, with a slightly larger proportion of attractive women.”
I meant 30% female.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Harvard Business School is just 38% female.
Wharton is just 36% female.
This will NOT get up to 50% in the forseeable future.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:12 am
This mindset even exists when female students come in for office hours. They forget that the slutty clothes and overtly sexual behavior to attract men is not appropriate in the office of a graduate student or professor and I have been shocked by the behavior I have seen of my female students.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Medicine is a field that favors women more than Engineering or Business. Yet, Harvard Medical School is still 47% female. That is not a majority at all.
Law, you say?
Yale Law School is 46% female.
I don’t see any of the hard professional disciplines being at 50% female, let alone above 50% female. It ranges from 15% in engineering to 37% in MBAs to 47% in medicine.
I have provided hard data.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Rhonda — you are dreaming if you think a stay-at-home Dad culture will ever happen.
What is going on is that women are pursuing, even past College, a few highly charged, socially dominant, high testosterone and high status men. Who have their pick of women and when they settle down, do so with significantly younger women. Think as a model, Michael Douglas or Warren Beatty.
A woman of exceptional beauty and a pleasing personality, who is significantly younger, can possibly land one of these guys. Legendary ladies men.
Every other guy is competing as well, fairly brutally, for women as dates and mates. They will conform to selection criteria: high status and testosterone. No one will EVER be a stay-at-home Dad because that is completely opposite of women’s selection criteria.
A few (20-30%) men end up effectively mating with most women (80%). This leaves women to either share, essentially, the socially dominant, desirable men, and the rest of the men out in the cold. Shockingly, when women find their looks fading in their thirties, their fertility as well, they don’t have much value on the mate market. Lots of emotional baggage, a learned pattern of dropping relationships, many sexual partners (around 20 IIRC for women in NYC, probably under-reported), higher incidence of STDs. They do find men, but ones who are not of the quality they dated earlier.
Call it the “David Spade Effect.” Back in his twenties, David Spade was probably best known for being tazed by his assistant. Now he dates and dumps beautiful women who ten-fifteen years ago (Teri Hatcher) would not have acknowledged his existence.
The problem goes deeper than gender/sex differences in College attendance — it’s women’s selection. After all, women choose. Mostly, they choose on too many short term criteria. Which guarantees no “stay at home Dad” because that would make men undesirable.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Well said, Whiskey.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:45 am
[...] From Why Boys Fail: My commentary running today on the back cover of the Chronicle of Higher Education takes an [...]
August 14th, 2008 at 12:52 am
Cut back on the maximum enrollment allowed in the humanities and social sciences (which are a joke anyway), and shift resources to math, physics, chemistry, and engineering.
Voila! Problem solved.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:59 am
I don’t agree with that. Women are still entering college at a higher rate, so more would go into traditional male fields like math, physics, chemistry, and engineering out of necessity. However, it would be a good thing anyway, as we need more students (especially American graduate students) in these fields.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:06 am
Tactical Buddist,
So true. I’m still in grad school, but have taught a class as main prof. One of my (truly excellent) students came into office hours with t-shirt that said “Nice Rack” on it. It almost certainly never occurred to her that she was dressed in a “risque” top.
I always joke that if a dad with a daughter from the 1950s was transported to the modern college campus, he would probably stroke out on the spot after seeing some of the attire.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:13 am
CD,
I have had girls come to class wearing nothing but pajama tops with no bras. Talk about a distraction. It is an unwritten rule at my university to keep the door open when female students come for office hours because of this type of behavior. I have never received the ‘what can I do for a better grade’ hint from a female student but I have known other grad students that have.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:50 am
Nerdbert: You are right on with your remarks about the out-sourcing of engineering and other technical-scientific fields to India and elsewhere. I do not hold a Ph.D. in engineering, but an MS in biochemistry, and I cannot honestly say that I’d recommend the career to my son or daughter after busting my butt in R&D for both medical schools and pharacmeutical companies who stick the technical people in the basement (honestly, one Fortune 500 pharma co did it exactly that way), i.e the ones whose innovations generate the wealth of the company, while the MBAs and finance guys occupy the corner offices and rake in giant salaries. I am not by any means a brilliant inventor - just a worker bee - but I know a guy who held several patents (same company above) that made the firm tens of not hundreds of millions in profits over a fifteen year period, but he got a small, one-time bonus for the biggest of his inventions. That’s it. Many scientists and engineers are resigned to being under-appreciated, but when those jobs are shipped overseas at the first sign of a chance of cutting costs, it is hard indeed to recommend to anyone to enter these fields. Gonna be an engineer? Fine, be a CE - it’s tougher to out-source a dam or a highway project.
It is good to see that many people are waking up to the sham that most college degrees and much of that experience represent. Sad to say, most four-year degrees are nothing more than an excuse to party, and a means of extending adolescence - certainly in some of the less marketable fields -such as those in the humanities, women’s studies, black/latino studies, etc.
If you plan to attend college, save your money unless you are planning to major in something useful and pratical. That means a business/finance/accounting field, hard sciences or engineering or the professions. Otherwise, IMHO, you are better off investing that 70K or more for tuition in a home downpayment or in another value-added investment. I would also recommend the skilled trades; we do not produce near enough people who can build, repair or make things. Some of these folks make an excellent living to boot. If you insist on attending college, please consider a community college - they are often better than their more expensive, four-year counterparts, and offer a chance to reality-test your plans before committing to them fully. Lastly, I would recommend the military. I know I’d have grown up a lot quicker and better if I’d joined up as an 18-year old. I tried to join much later, but by then it was too late for me (too old). The military has very generous educational benefits, and often will send you to school FT after you have proven your worth to the service. I know a number of healthcare professionals, for example, who have receieved full-ride scholarships for getting advanced degrees ihn anesthesia, medicine, etc. Also, highly skilled professions such as aviation draw many of their best people from the military, whose eqpt and opportunities for training are unavailable elsewhere, except at much greater cost.
Er… I guess I had more to say about this than I thought!
August 14th, 2008 at 1:55 am
In a later post, the author makes fun of the book, “Save the Males” because it takes a cultural approach to the problem. What do you think after reading these comments, Rich? Sounds like a cultural issue to me.
August 14th, 2008 at 2:38 am
From a Daddy of 2:
I am turning off the TV, getting rid of the XBOX, and requiring the kids to read and write about what they read at the library.
What is out there in the MSM and Disney style media is so lop-sided as to be “propaganda for how-to-be-stupid”.
When California is #2 from the bottom in math and science (according to most recent NAEPP scores), after supposedly having the best schools in the nation in the 60’s, then you know the trend is NOT your friend…
What is it the futurists say: As California goes, so goes the nation?
Hope NOT!!!
August 14th, 2008 at 2:47 am
So in other words…
Hey everybody, we’re all gonna get laid!
August 14th, 2008 at 3:11 am
I don’t know about “all”, but as a gentleman of the more mature persuasion, I find it much easier to hook up in the Ann Arbor area, than when I was a student.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:52 am
“pharmaceutical companies who stick the technical people in the basement”
But of course they do! Everyone knows that technical people do not know how to play the corporate game, and thus are unimportant!
On a more on-topic note, as a graduate student working on my PhD in Physics, I have an unfortunate acquaintance with gender imbalance from the other side - I think, perhaps, the department is up to 10% female now, after much effort. What I find most amusing about this, though, is the occasional quite serious suggestion that somehow the gender imbalances of the Engineering and hard sciences departments are the results somehow of some deep-seated institutional bias which discourages women following those fields of study. Worse, I have seen more than one serious suggest that Title IX be applied to the sciences in order to “correct” this imbalance.
Much like overzealous application of said Title has lead to the forcible discontinuation of a number of mens athletics programs in a misguided attempt to “balance” things for women, any attempt to apply Title IX to the hard sciences could only be met by denying entry into those fields for qualified men - no amount of support, financial or otherwise, could ever convince enough disinterested females to enroll to make up for the lack of interested candidates (and even if the goals could be met simply by convincing enough females to apply, the department would be doing a disservice to both itself and those students in trying). Indeed, the department here is already doing everything it possibly can to encourage those girls who do show interest to continue. Applying Title IX to Physics departments would do no more good than, say, applying it to Education, which has a similar imbalance in the other direction.
The point of all of this rambling is to highlight the differences of opinion encountered when one talks about the various gender imbalances on campus. Even despite the obvious and continuing lack of interest on the part of women, and despite those departments best efforts to the contrary, the common reaction to the idea that the maths, engineering, and the hard sciences (especially physics) remain “the last bastion of male dominance” is to reply “something must be done!” And yet, when one looks at the rest of campus life and sees the imbalance going the other way, the common reactions (as some of the comments here demonstrate) run from “do nothing, this isn’t a problem and will correct itself anyway” to “the men deserve it.”
In truth, the gender imbalances in both directions stem from the same cause: that boys and girls, on average, have different interests. The sciences have always appealed more to men than to women; certain of the social fields have always appealed more to women than to men. Indeed, once the feminist movement broke the hold of male dominance over the Universities, certain fields became heavily female-dominated almost overnight. The problem, however, is that those fields which did not swing so easily have been view as “holdouts of male power” rather than as what they are - simply those fields in which women have less interest.
Overall, the pendulum has now swung too far; the emphasis on college campuses (and in primary education) has shifted towards those courses which favor girls, and the results are of course predictable.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:01 am
To sum up the above, this entire issue is the unfortunate consequence of the conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of result, along with the overzealous application of measures to correct an imbalance of the latter by reversing an imbalance of the former.
August 14th, 2008 at 6:17 am
The same thing happens when there are too many men in prison. In the population left behind, Girls Go Wild.
Demographics
August 14th, 2008 at 6:26 am
Pete,
Engineers make more money than scientists for the simple reason that they are closer to the money.
If a science project fails no great loss. If an engineering project fails: big losses.
Here is what I tell my kids: do what you love. You will rise farther faster than those only in it for the money.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:22 am
TacticalBuddhist,
Good observation. The unfortunate thing is, these learned behaviors spill over into the professional world. I’m 29 and most of the women around my age come into work looking like they just came in from a hot club. As a typical male I’d normally lean to the “right-on” mentality but for the fact that I have respect for professionalism and that kind of “look” has no place in the office. Oddly counterintuitive for a generation that was raised under the feminist ideology that women shouldn’t be objectified.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Public schools are the province of mostly female teachers. Of the males, a disproportional high percentage of gay males. The schools are also the fields of excessive safety, nanny rules, bureaucracy and sedentary boredom. For developing males, this is not an attractive environment. Further, near half of all males grow up in a single, often emotionally desperate female household, and are very hungry for older male company and a more physical and relative risk. The military, construction even gangs and prison are more attractive.
The present iron triangle of feminism, gay agenda, tax-supported industries of government schools and collages will be as successful as public housing, and government education in general. Naturally, what they need is more funding to ’solve’ this new problem.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:30 am
But that said, M. Simon, I just had a very enlightening discussion with my (quite gainfully employed) husband about how HIS great job had made it possible for me to consider going back to school toward some degree at which I’d never make any significant money. All the things I’d love to do are without financial prospects. I assured him that I wouldn’t do this, because it’s so patently unfair to him (even though the thing he loves really is finance - he’d wanted to go into it since he was a kid, the weirdo), and he admitted he was glad I felt that way, because even though he’s happy that his job has enabled me to be mostly an at-home mom while our kids are little, he’d have a hard time not resenting my going back to school for that master’s in basket-weaving.
Marriage… Worst arrangement in the world, except for all the others, as it’s been said.
So the comment up-thread about how many women college students are going into “disposable” fields, consciously or unconsciously looking forward to the day when they drop out of the workforce thanks to their future man, hits home pretty accurately for me. (I want to note that my undergrad was NOT disposable… but I’ve pretty well completely lost interest in it now. Poor me.)
August 14th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Hmmmm.
1. Fewer men are going to college because financially it’s simply not worth it for them. Reinforcing this is the massive insourcing of foreign workers and equally massive outsourcing of work. I find it amusing when companies complain they cannot find adequately trained American workers when they treat those very same workers abominably in the first place.
Who wants to go into debt in order to work as an anonymous cubical employee only to be terminated in the next reorg?
2. IMO I’ve long held that public schools should be gender segregated. Girls and boys definitely think and learn completely differently and require different approaches.
3. What I find curious are those long held male institutions being attacked by feminists as being discriminatory and yet Smith College doesn’t allow men.
4. Public education in America will continue to suck until, and unless, a new system is implemented. Personally I’m in favor of tax credits for private/charter schools or the school voucher programs. As long as parents are supplicants rather than customers, the educational system is going to be a mess.
5. If you think things are bad now wait a decade or less. A lot of towns and cities have been ridiculously generous in their negotiations with public unions. Evidently they’ve all gone “GM” in that they figure they won’t be in office when the bill comes due. And as GM has fared trying to get out from under the excessive union obligations so will many towns and cities.
Rapidly rising public school costs, spurred in large part by illegal immigration and destined to be made far worse by any “reform”, coupled with overly generous contracts with public unions and combined with decreasing revenues from dropping property values and an overly taxed population base will result in many towns and even cities facing bankruptcy.
And yes the impact from any sort of “reform” will be huge. I’m a conservative semi-Republican and I was frankly appalled at McCain’s insane stab at “reform”.
The super short summary: fiscally disasterous. If you think the education system is screwed now wait until it tries to absorb and deal with 50-100+ million non-English speaking children.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Stumbled across article by accident. I went to JMU (please refrain from patting me on the back) and the main reason for JMU’s gender imbalance is a preference for female students based on its history as a women-only teacher’s college. This point has not been noted in the article. To be brutally honest, I found the women at JMU no more aggressive than at UVA, Virginia Tech, or William and Mary. Couldn’t the behavior difference be explained simply by the fact that college is generally the first time kids live on their own?
August 14th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Hey Rhonda,
Let me give you a real-life scenario. I have an engineering degree; my wife has an accounting degree. Engineering salaries top out around $80-110K per year depending on degree and geography. Accounting degrees top out much higher. After 18 years of marriage, in which my wife constantly compared me unfavorably with higher earning males in her field, my wife started to make significantly more money than me (about 125%).
Although together we were making more than $200K, I was constantly measured against other “more successful” males. She ended up having an affair with a senior VP (who ended up going back to his wife and kids), getting promoted to VP, and now makes twice what I do. So now we, together, make $300K. And we are getting divorced because, and I quote:
“When I walk into a room, I’m generally one of the prettiest, if not the most beautiful women in the room. And I deserve someone better looking than you.” Of course, by better looking, she means a more attractive bank account.
Meanwhile, 3 teenage children pay the price.
That is your gender equity case.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Someone really needs to post this over at feministing.com and bust out with some popcorn.
August 14th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Okay, so then according your claim, there has been an effective “operational sex ratio” of 100/0 for most of the history of the university itself (since 1088), since women were not allowed to enter. Only for less than about 100 years has there been anything approaching parity or, heaven forbid, superiority for women students. Why don’t universities give that situation a chance before trying to “rectify” it?
I will also point out that your smug claims about women’s “purchasing power” of mates declining with age and their “need” to chase after high income/status males ONLY applies in a situation where men largely monopolize resources. Your situation presupposes that women are dependent on men for food/money/status and that they therefore cling to the (few) men that they believe can provide it, bartering with their own youth and beauty.
You don’t seem to recognize that more women going to college means that women are increasingly able to obtain their own food/money/status, and that they don’t necessarily need a mate at all, especially one with money but without charm or sensitivity.
August 14th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
You may also want to see a study Chris Cornwell and I wrote entitled Sex Ratios and Risky Sexual Behavior. We were interested in the same things you’re describing in this blog post and in your Chronicles piece. Because women outnumber in Black men African-American mating markets, do we see the gender imbalance there leading to greater male-oriented promiscuity? We found that for men who had “tastes” for numerous partners, the gradual disappearance of other men from the community (due to rising male incarceration) led to increase promiscuity among the most promiscuous men in the sample. What it appeared to us to show was that the effect was concentrated among a few men - many of the unattached women were, in other words, being absorbed into concurrent sexual relationships with a relatively few men.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
There is also a movement among black women to start dating white men due to the gender ratio imbalance in the black community. I personally have dated two black women because of this.
August 14th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Yet men still do better on college entrance exams.
August 14th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I have to say, I see a lot of Chinese-American and Korean-American women in difficult fields like Engineering, Business, and Medicine.
Asian women exceed white women in education/income, looks, and personality. They also look younger for longer, don’t get fat, and are comfortable in their feminism without the need to be mean militant feminists.
umm…. why would anyone want a white woman again?
August 14th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
“Meanwhile, 3 teenage children pay the price.”
Sad. Of course, you can consider yourself fortunate. Your wife makes much more than you, so you will be one of the rare men who actually does NOT lose money in a divorce. Most men are financially ruined. You won’t be.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
It can’t be stable, this attitude that so many women have, that her husband must be smarter/stronger/richer/have-more-status than she does. Men, after all, have historically been happy to have wives that have lower status than they do if they have other desirable attributes/personality/etc… why can’t women be happy in the same situation?
I saw it a whole lot when my brother was dating/looking. He’d tried a variety of careers and finally settled down to get his contracting license and do construction because he vastly preferred physical out-door work and self-employment. All his other virtues… intelligence, physical fitness, honesty, way with children, and utter fidelity? Did it matter? Heck, no.
No… the truth was that the women he dated who admittedly liked him a whole lot, decided he simply wouldn’t *do.* They would prefer a fellow with that indoor pallor, office-flab, too busy for kids, cheat with his co-worker outlook on life… because that fellow had a degree and ambitions.
Well… they get what they deserve, no doubt.
Oh, sure, there are some guys who figure no woman would stay with them if she could provide for herself, but most guys really don’t care. It’s the women who care.
And for as long as women have this hang-up, the unbalance in colleges and universities is going to be horrible for them… and no fault at all of the men involved.
But sure… if you don’t need a man, find a woman to live with… just make sure she’s got a better job than you do and makes more money. Heh. And doesn’t that sound silly? What woman who would consider a “wife” a possibility, or *even* just as a thought-experiment, would demand of a woman what she feels completely justified in demanding of a man?
SMART women will get over themselves and start to look for men with quality character rather than bank-accounts and career ambitions, even if they build houses, clear drains, or dig ditches.
August 14th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Hey, sounds like fun. When I was in college in the 70s, my core
undergraduate engineering class series of about 50 had 3 gals.
Engineering graduate school was only little better. There were a few gals
who thoroughly enjoyed all the attention. But some of the others I don’t
think liked it. It got them down always fighting the boys off when they
were trying to be good career women and concentrate on their studies.
It also wasn’t a healthy social environment among the boys. I lost one
friend when a fickle girl shifted her attention from him to me. I thought
he’d forgive me when a month later she shifted from me to the next guy,
but he never did.
I remember thinking at the time that we either needed to get rid of the
3 girls, or have 40 more. 47:3 wasn’t a good ratio.
DD
August 15th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Scott wrote:
“After 18 years of marriage, in which my wife constantly compared me unfavorably with higher earning males in her field, my wife started to make significantly more money than me (about 125%).
Although together we were making more than $200K, I was constantly measured against other “more successful” males. She ended up having an affair with a senior VP (who ended up going back to his wife and kids), getting promoted to VP, and now makes twice what I do. So now we, together, make $300K. And we are getting divorced because, and I quote:
“When I walk into a room, I’m generally one of the prettiest, if not the most beautiful women in the room. And I deserve someone better looking than you.” Of course, by better looking, she means a more attractive bank account.
Meanwhile, 3 teenage children pay the price.
That is your gender equity case.”
I am quite sad for your situation, but the MOMENT she made some derogatory comment about your earning prowess, you should have dumped her. OUT THE DOOR. Honorable spouses DO NOT EVER treat one another that way.
Adults almost never substantially change their behavior and it was inevitable that you would have to get get divorced someday, or feel like a beaten dog until the day you die.
Any time one spouse treats the other like that, it’s the biggest red flag there is. Pay attention kids.
And I am a stay-at-home dad with a wonderful professional wife and 22+ years of marriage. Never once a serious argument about anything.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
“Never once a serious argument about anything.”
Do you expect us to believe that? Or are you really among the 1% for which this is true.
August 16th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
So now that the decrease in the number of men attending college is potentially affecting women (in potential mates, social life, etc.) it will become an issue that needs to be dealt with and corrected. As long at it was just portrayed as a problem for men it was ignored…
August 16th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Jennifer — yes more women advancing their socio-economic status = more single mothers.
Disaster.
One need only look at the Black urban community (90% illegitimate births) or the nationwide figures (70%) to see what an epidemic of single motherhood produces: stupidity enshrined as a goal, and young men competing on pure hyper-masculine aggression. Google “Lauren London thugs” to see how black bloggers have reacted to one actress’s open admission of the preference for hyper masculine men has sparked discussion. Or heck just watch a Rap video.
Or read Theodore Dalrymple’s “Life at the Bottom,” where his white British Patients (Dalrymple is the pen name of a retired UK National Health physician) show the typical single motherhood strong preference for a succession of violent, hyper masculine, abusive men. Even his educated, professional nurses consistently chose hyper masculine abusive men who would abuse them (with impunity) at work.
Here is the reality: women will never get away from men any more than men will get away from women (unless in prison). A large group of unconnected men to women will engage in hyper-masculine behavior, as women reward that consistently since they don’t need OTHER male attributes: emotional support, earning potential, fidelity, etc.
Women have unlimited choice, devoid of any personal short-term consequences. This has resulted in most women (look at the Beauty industry revenues to see the beauty arms race) chasing after a few men for short-term relationships. With children as usual bearing the brunt of it. Children in the main do poorly in single motherhood environments.
Heck, what could POSSIBLY go wrong with a lot of unattached men, sitting around, no connection to women?
August 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I always find it amusing when some women comment that men becoming disempowered because young women are gaining power at a greater rate than young men is somehow a good thing. When, by their own accounts, when the opposite was true it was a really bad thing for women. As if flipping society’s wrongs around and repeating them would accomplish anything different than it did in the past. It’s really sad that the people who should know better, the people who dealt with the brunt of discrimination in the past, haven’t learned a thing from their experience and have become vehicles for repeating the cycle of abuse.
What is the definition of insanity? When you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.
The educational disadvantages boys face at the hands of discriminatory, predominately female, gynocentric educational institutions is a mechanism to insure their disenfranchisement and change the balance of power between the sexes in future generations. It is not coincidental that considerable resources have been used to improve girls’ performance in math and science, and no resources at all have been used to improve boys’ performance in reading and writing, even when comparatively boys do much worse in reading and writing than girls do in math and science. This reality is a product of deliberate design at the hands of educators with a feministic, social engineering agenda.
August 17th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Jennifer, you said
“You don’t seem to recognize that more women going to college means that women are increasingly able to obtain their own food/money/status, and that they don’t necessarily need a mate at all, especially one with money but without charm or sensitivity.”
I’m disappointing that your logic begins and ends with the needs of women. Once again, a woman claiming that flipping around and repeating society’s wrongs is a good thing. I don’t want men dependent on women for their financial well being anymore than I want women dependent on men.
Also, 100 years ago most people, men included were not educated. It’s that associative property, you know, a square is a parallelogram but a parallelogram is not a square type of logic. Well, 100 years ago most educated people were men but most men were not educated. You making a comparison between a time when education was reserved for the property owning financial elite and today when it is required attendance, is demonstrative of your incoherent understanding of the issue.
Suggesting today’s problems should be dismissed because of past wrongs is essentially a means (intentional or not) of perpetuating current wrongs. You live in the past and you steal from the future.
August 17th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
The value of a college education has progressively declined over time, IMO primarily due to bigoted affirmative action policies in the 1960s implemented to get women to work outside the home.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121623686919059307.html?mod=yhoofront
Nowadays, employers are consequently increasingly looking for tools other than college degrees to evaluate students.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858688764535107.html
The only fields in which a degree still means something are the ones in which 1960’s affirmative action has been a relative failure (engineering and the hard sciences).
This situation reminds me of the recent study claiming girls=boys in math. What the authors (Hyde et. al.) mentioned in passing was that the tests used to evaluate the students involved the easiest two levels (level 1 and 2) of questions. The hardest two (levels 3 and 4) were not even tested because, thanks to “no child left behind”, schools have made testing easier so they will not get penalized for not passing out a certain number of students.
If things are made easy enough, numerically more women will ‘graduate’ or ’succeed’ relative to boys. Boys and men, in general, are attracted to competitive, high risk and cutting edge situations, not those which promote mediocrityand demand academic conformity. It follows that the differential in graduation rates indicates that something is very wrong with the educational system.
We need to get the feminists (who are responsible for this whole mess) out of the educational system ASAP. Then we can work on getting them out of the other spheres they have infested.
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December 6th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Trained to be Good little Soldiers and Princesses
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN0334472920070803
Females are leaving the domestic role for information age skills and income. The nineteenth century belief Females should be protected has created much protection and support for Females from day one. Since Females are not required by society to be strong, it is considered proper to not only protect them but to also lavish much mental, emotional, social, academic, support, knowledge, and skills from day one. This creates lower average stress and lots of supported skills that enable girls to really do well in the information age. Girls are also given love, honor, respect, and support simply for being girls. This makes learning and development of skills and competing for jobs somewhat easier for they are given the essentials of self-worth simply for being girls. All of this makes girls “very well prepared” to compete in the information age. This support and protection continues even into adulthood. Today this allows not only much economic advantage but also maintains the same protected freedoms of expression to give verbal, silent abuse, and hollow kindness to Males when they have some advantage (look at how the media allows this).
Males who are generally anti-feminists and also Females (who tend to reflect for some reason their protected world upon Males) really do not understand how differential treatment from day one is providing Females with such an advantage that is creating the Growing international Male Crisis, but those Males though lacking understanding do feel the effects of that differential treatment.
Males are given love, honor, support, respect, care, etc. only on the condition of sufficient achievement, money, power, etc. This is what makes Males very competitive; they are competing for feelings of self-worth as reflected upon them by society if they have sufficiency of those things. When they are doing anything they are being weighed and given only the amount of love, honor, respect, and support commensurate with those achievements. Those Males who do not have sufficiency are not only given less of those good things, they are given more aggression by society. This creates a lot more pressure on Males to either succeed in academics, which is good; and if they cannot, then they will search out a more protected and supported area in which they will have some feeling of love, honor, and respect from their peer group.
Since our society is still following even in the information age, the belief Males should be strong, it still allows much aggression upon Males to make them tough. It also holds that Males should not be given mental/emotional/social/academic love, kindness, care and support for fear of coddling the Male from day one. This is so the Male can become a good little soldier to defend family and country. The problem with this is that it creates high average stress that impedes learning and creates along it more tension that leads more activity in Males and attention to mental/emotional development. This is why girls appear to mature faster, for Males are not given the same supports. This higher average stress and lack of support accumulate to create a large deficit in learning for Males.
Now in the information age, Males are now competing with Females who have been well supported from day one and Males are beginning fall behind big time, especially from women in their 20’s and early 30’s.
Men are not only losing jobs, they are losing out on feelings of self-worth or love, honor, and respect from society. It is plainly spelled out in the media that when Males appear weak, it is okay to give them more verbal aggression, more abuse, and more neglect. Since Men have brainwashed to believe they are better (perhaps deserving of more harsh treatment and neglect) they are now finding out that in real life such treatment is somehow helping women to succeed above them. Given the horrible myth of fixed intelligences taught in our society or simply working harder, many men are falsely believing they are less intelligent and/or not working hard enough. Given this false information, they truly feel threatened by those women who are succeeding and they are not. Society itself and its media is now working against the Male to place Male’s into perceived positions of being more suitable for menial labor and for Females to be placed into more white collar, management positions.
On Dr. Phil today a man was very violent toward his wife. She is now very afraid of him. His wife loved him and wanted to help him. It was brought out that man had fallen down on ability to support his wife and family. Even though that man was supported by his wife, the societal belief he should be strong was consuming him. You see even though he had lots of support from his wife, society in general not only does not provide love, honor, respect, and care, the essentials of feelings of self-worth, it rejects that man for not having sufficient achievement, status, image, money, etc.
Thus, that man like many other men today are losing their feelings of self-worth that women receive simply for being women. His wife could not understand his dilemma. because like many other women, she was reflecting her love, honor, respect, and protection in society upon him, not realizing his world was very different and much more unforgiving for signs of weakness. You see society’s primary antidote for perceived weaknesses in Males is to provide more aggression and neglect to make him strong, and not to support him when he is down. So, although his wife supports him with love, society will take him down for being weak. After years of brainwashing, he and others like him believe it to be true and deserving of punishment. This is why so many Males have a short life and so many more Male suicides. Yes, Males do feel threatened by feminists for they feel the scales are tilted very much against them.
Complete learning theory to all on request by e-mail at mayfieldga@bellsouth.net
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:31 am
well said, finally a good report on this stuff
October 18th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Amazing stuff and on top the comments are outstanding. Really like what William states above.