Just when I make disparaging remarks about British women overdrinking (and celebrating their domination of all things higher ed) along comes this “Gender Bender” New York Magazine piece on American women drinking more…and more (Drawing courtesy of New York). Actually, as the article points out, it is worse over there. A sample:

 For the bulk of history, women have skewed toward the teetotaler end of the spectrum; not until the middle of the last century did a burgeoning relationship with alcohol coincide with Second Wave feminism and a general impulse to close the gender gap across the board. “As women ‘immigrated’ into the culture that was once unique to men,” says Grucza, “they picked up a lot of the same mores and attitudes and behaviors and ideas about what is socially acceptable that men had previously held. We call this acculturation-people adopt the drinking attitude and behaviors of the dominant culture.” Which explains why researchers have found that women in the demographic closest to being dominant (young, white, middle-class, educated) are leading the charge in terms of increased alcohol consumption. The trend is so pronounced that in Britain, home to the Bridget Joneses of the world, public-health officials launched an ad campaign picturing a grizzled man in drag (or a very mannish woman) with the caption: “If you drink like a man, you might end up looking like one.” But no public-service announcement is likely to turn back this tide, especially among the very young. In the 12-to-17-year-old demographic, there is no gender gap at all. These girls are drinking as early and as often and as much as the boys.

A woman exerting her power by making herself incapacitated does not read as a disjunction. Control-and the decision of when and how to lose it-is the point.

What has this got to do with a blog on boys falling behind in school? Maybe nothing, but I think the more interesting elements of an educated class increasingly dominated by women involves the social aspects, everything from marriage to shifting roles in the workplace. Again, review the “social consequences” part of the library on the right.

Our oldest daughter went to graduate school in London so I’m somewhat familiar with the scene there. Imagine Guyland in the mirror, with the women in charge and every bit as bar-ready as any guy. That’s the kind of spirit captured here in a profile of the “frilly feminists.” Hey, at least they’re not on the streets throwing up in front of bars, which I saw a lot of … or maybe that comes later in the evening events.

In decades past they would have marched out in comfortable shoes to protest about nuclear disarmament or women’s rights. But these days, university girls are fighting for the right to look hot.
Hundreds of them have applied to take part in an inter-campus beauty pageant.

 Wait, you weren’t thinking that was the end of the insight, were you?

‘Young women today have a reputation for binge-drinking and loutish behaviour.
‘And I think that taking part in an event that celebrates not just beauty but intelligence and elegance too, is as necessary to modern women as campaigning for equal rights was when my mum was our age.’
Another, Keelin Gavaghan, 19, an accountancy undergraduate named as Miss London School of Economics, said: ‘I fail to see what is wrong with feeling glamorous for one night. We hardly sold our souls.
‘Nowadays I believe that we are post-feminism. Not so long ago women couldn’t receive Firsts at university just because they were women, but we have come a long way since.’

 Gals, welcome to Guyland….

This op-ed in today’s WPost by Kay Hymowitz, a contributing editor of the conservative City Journal and author of “Marriage and Caste in America,” does a succinct job of piecing together the scholarship on the decline of marriage among African Americans. Newcomers to this issue assume a straight line can be drawn from slavery to fatherless families. That’s not the case, as Daniel Patrick Moyniham famously revealed:

In 1965, a young assistant secretary of labor named Daniel Patrick Moynihan stumbled upon data that showed a rise in the number of black single mothers. As Moynihan wrote in a now-famous report for the Johnson administration, especially troubling was that the growth in illegitimacy, as it was universally called then, coincided with a decline in black male unemployment. Strangely, black men were joining the labor force more, but they were marrying — and fathering — less.

The topic was so incendiary that liberals pushed it into a politically correct debate –  forcing the banning of the term “illegitimate” whle ignoring the issue. The liberals prevailed, but at a cost:

… the silent treatment was the wrong medicine. Since 1965, through economic recessions and booms, the black family has unraveled in ways that have little parallel in human cultures. By 1980, black fatherlessness had doubled; 56 percent of black births were to single mothers. In inner-city neighborhoods, the number was closer to 66 percent. By the 1990s, even as the overall fertility of American women, including African Americans, was falling, the majority of black women who did bear children were unmarried. Today, 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. In some neighborhoods, two-parent families have vanished. In parts of Newark and Philadelphia, for example, it is common to find children who are not only growing up without their fathers but don’t know anyone who is living with his or her biological father.

Probably for reasons of brevity, Hymowitz doesn’t mention the big driver behind the fatherless families, the education gap. Today, twice as many black females as males earn college degrees. As sociologists repeatedly confirm, women are less likely than men to “marry down,” a trait that applies to white women as well. All of which leads me back to the “marriageable mate” issue.

With overall college graduation rates favoring women by nearly a 60-40 balance, there’s no chance this is not affecting white women as well. Check out the “social consequences” heading in the library to the right and you can bring yourself up to speed. Significant changes in marriage rates and age are well under way. A connection to the campus gender imbalances? As a reporter, that’s out of my league. For now, I’ll await word from researchers. 

Leaving this issue to the conservatives, as happened after the Moynihan report, would be a mistake. Hymowitz, however, does a nice job here. Her conclusion:

Merely walking down the aisle can’t explain these differences. Rather, the institution of marriage appears to promote ideals of stability, order and fidelity that benefit children and adults alike. Those who pin their hopes for black progress on education tend to forget this. Numerous studies, when controlled for income and race, show that, on average, children growing up with single mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and go to college. And Moynihan’s discovery of a negligible relationship between “economic conditions and social conditions” suggests that even increases in black male employment are not a certain cure.

Through the power of his own example, Obama presents a chance to revive what Lyndon Johnson called “the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights.” Obama’s memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” conveys the economic, emotional and existential toll of growing up fatherless, and he has spoken movingly of his determination to ensure for his own children a different life. Yet tackling this issue won’t be easy. When Obama gave a Father’s Day speech lamenting “fathers . . . missing from too many lives and too many homes,” Jesse Jackson was so incensed that he said he wanted to castrate Obama. Still, painful as the subject is, the alternative is far worse: racial inequality as far as the eye can see.

Girls are better readers, it turns out, because they’re lusting after the emotional life only a vampire can bring them. Ok, that’s not quite a fair summary of this article in the current Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan, who is working on Girl Land, a book about the emotional life of pubescent girls. (Illustration courtesy of the Atlantic.) Somehow, I don’t think we’ll see the boozing and misogyny revealed in Michael Kimmel’s Guyland.

Here’s what Flanagan tells us about the lure reading holds for girls:

The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life-one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs-to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others-are met precisely by the act of reading.

During her junior year of college our youngest daughter opted to go to South Africa for a study abroad program. South Africa is not considered the safest of places to send a young woman, and yet nearly all the study-abroads there turned out to be female. If South Africa skews female, can you imagine the gender imbalances in the “safe” European countries?

Insidehighered does a great job here doing exactly that. Studying abroad, it turns out, has become a female thing to do. What’s most interesting is the puzzlement expressed by college officials. The conventional wisdom explanations — that men are more likely to take on math and science majors that make studying abroad a challenge — don’t hold up.

So what’s the answer? Not clear, but the impact is: At a time when the economy continues to turn in a global direction, guys are losing out on an important educational experience. From the article:

 In recent years, as study abroad has ballooned across the nation, fueled by growth in short-term programs and increasing diversity in participating students’ majors and destinations, a 2-to-1 female-to-male ratio has stayed remarkably stagnant. In 2006-7, the most recent year for which data are available, 65.1 percent of Americans studying abroad were women, and 34.9 percent men. A decade earlier - when the total number of study abroad students was less than half its current total - the breakdown was 64.9 percent female, 35.1 percent male, according to Institute of International Education Open Doors statistics.

“I wouldn’t put it up there among the top issues or problems in the field, but I think it’s a puzzlement, to use an old term, and it’s sort of a persistent consideration, a persistent sort of annoying feeling that there’s something not right about it,” said William Hoffa, an independent practitioner in study abroad, retired from Amherst College, who wrote a history of study abroad and is now editing a second volume.

“Initially the problem was perceived to be curricular, meaning the curriculum of study abroad was likely to be in the humanities, social sciences, with a strong language dimension. To the degree that women were more likely to study in those areas, and the curriculum of study abroad was in those areas, it meant men that were studying more in science and business and technologies didn’t have the curriculum overseas,” said Hoffa. He continued, however, that while there’s likely still a bias toward the humanities and social sciences in study abroad, “The curriculum of study abroad is actually pretty much across the spectrum these days.”

Please, let’s allow Ruth Marcus’s column in the WPost today  to serve as the last word on whether Summers uttered sexist comments that led to his ouster at Harvard’s president. What he said was politically clumsy, but accurate. And while the point the made was interesting, it has little to do with the boy troubles. Answering why men dominate the ultra elite of theoretical mathematicians has little to do with what’s playing out in the real world, where men aren’t faring well in earning college degrees.

The conclusion from the Marcus column:

Summers was boneheaded to say what he said, in the way that he said it and considering the job that he held. But he probably had a legitimate point — and the continuing uproar says more about the triumph of political correctness than about Summers’s supposed sexism.

In Newport News, the Men of Brilliance — an all-boys science team at a minority high school — compete on NASA science challenges while their counterparts, an all-girls team called STARS (Scientifically Talented Ambitious Revolutionary Sisterhood) do the same. It’s all here in a Page 1 story that ran yesterday by Cathy Grimes.

Interesting observation by the science teacher overseeing the project:

“It’s no secret that males, especially socioeconomically disadvantaged males, are at the bottom of the ladder,” Ouellette said. “The girls aren’t. We’ve pounded it into the girls that they are smart about science and math, but what did we do in the process? We ignored the males. This is a way to improve the situation.”

Here’s more from the article:

Who’s better at science? Heritage High clubs also teach responsibility and leadership
The boys of MOB and the girls of STARS seek to learn and make friends by making the subject fun.
By CATHY GRIMES

December 1, 2008

NEWPORT NEWS

It’s a battle of the sexes as two Heritage High School clubs in Newport News compete with their own and NASA challenge experiments.

- The Men of Brilliance gathered on a recent Wednesday to tackle their latest challenge: coming up with plant habitats for a NASA lunar expedition.

The young men crowded around desks, wielding glue guns and threading rubber tubing through plastic bins, checking calculations and plans as they worked.

“It doesn’t have to look pretty. It just has to work,” instructed science teacher Don Ouellette, the group’s adviser.

Two halls away, the Scientifically Talented Ambitious Revolutionary Sisterhood also worked on NASA plant habitats, peering closely at clear round spheres holding small sprouts kept moist with water run from intravenous bags hanging overhead.

The two Heritage High School science clubs are in head-to-head competition with their NASA challenge experiments. They’re also trying to outdo each other with entries for a coming science fair.

Members of the fledgling girls-only STARS predict that they’ll mop up.

The message back from Men of Brilliance: Bring it on.

Four years ago, neither club existed. Men of Brilliance - MOB - was created first, born of concern for male students who were falling behind in their math and science classes, Ouellette said.

“The goal was to take a mix of kids we thought could benefit from a science club,” he said.

At the time, Ouellette was a second-year teacher who turned to education after a career in the Coast Guard. He and administrators wanted to focus on leadership, as well as science, in the boys-only club.

“We looked at the school programs and realized we didn’t have a lot of minority males participating in them,” Heritage administrator Dewey Ray say.

A failure to meet rising literacy demands in the early grades is at the root of the boy troubles, and now it appears the recession threatens privately-funded efforts to help out. Undoubtedly, this story in the NY Daily News mirrors what is happening in the rest of the country. (Photo courtesy of Daily News):

 Skyrocketing unemployment has city high school dropouts scrambling to get diplomas - only to find massive waiting lists for classes and cuts to vital literacy programs.

About 28% of city residents who are 25 years and older don’t have high school diplomas, Census data show, and they are among the most vulnerable victims of the economic meltdown.

“We’re all collectively holding our breath, hoping that we can make it through the fiscal year,” said Elyse Barbell, executive director of the Literacy Assistance Center.

Literacy Partners, which serves 2,000 students annually, is expecting its usual half-million dollars in foundation money to drop by half.

The group lost a third of its endowment in the stock market crash. It has closed three of its centers, which serve mostly students who are reading at about a fifth-grade level.

Actually, there’s no answer to that one, but there is some interesting news about new opportunities for girls in single-sex classes. Here’s an article from England’s Telegraph about girls and science, quoting the new schools head there (photo courtesy of the Telegraph):

Sarah McCarthy-Fry said girls could be put off by boys in the classroom and separating them for lessons could be the answer.
In her first interview since replacing Lord Adonis in the Prime Minister’s recent reshuffle, she said: “Girls do much better in science in single-sex classes. They sometimes feel intimidated in mixed-sex classes with the boys hogging the limelight and putting their hands up to answer all the questions.”
Her call comes just a week after Vicky Tuck, the president of the Girls’ School Association and principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, predicted a return to separate-sex schooling after four decades of numbers dwindling from 2,500 single-sex secondary schools in the 1960s to just 400 today.
Mrs Tuck said more people were aware girls learnt differently from boys due to “neurological differences” in the developments of their brains.
Mrs McCarthy-Fry added that she believed both science and engineering could be presented to girls as an option in a more “girl-friendly” manner.
“If you talk to girls about what they want to do, many say they want to go into caring professions - like nursing,” she told the Independent. “But you could present science and engineering in a way girls could relate better to in careers advice.

And now this Nov. 14 announcement from The Brighter Choice Foundation in Albany, N.Y.:

The Albany City School District held a public hearing last night on the pending charter application to establish the Albany Leadership Charter High School for Girls, the first public girls-only high school, slated to open in August 2010. The school will initially serve a total of 125 students in the 9th and 10th grades, and expand to 9-12.

 Six people testified at the hearing, with five testifying in favor (including several parents) and one person opposed. The sole opponent, an older gentleman, railed incoherently about out-of-state forces setting up charters in New York.

Interesting story  from the Arizona Republic about Hawaiian inmates in Arizona prisons making a long distance reading connection with their children:

Hawaiian inmates reading to their kids
Dads at Eloy prison recording books on CDs that are sent home for families to enjoy
by Lindsey Gemme - Nov. 25, 2008 12:00 AM
Casa Grande Dispatch
CASA GRANDE - It’s never too late to try being the best parent one can be, even from a prison cell an ocean from home.

More than 100 Hawaiian prisoners housed in Eloy are learning to do just that, through books, thanks to a program of the Hawaii-based Read-to-Me International organization.

For Garret Borges, his incarceration at the strictly Hawaiian Corrections Corp. of America prison Saguaro Correctional Facility in Eloy has been hard on him and his family.
His daughters, one 6 and 4-year-old twins, haven’t seen their father in the flesh in almost four years. Letters can only do so much, and a 20-minute phone call to Hawaii costs about $5.

But Borges and about 130 other Hawaiian prisoners with children have a new way to keep a relationship with their kids despite being apart, by reading books.

Thanks to a $1.25 million Promoting Responsible Fatherhood federal grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, Saguaro has been able to give incarcerated parents a program called Fathers Bridging the Miles, part of the Read-to-Me International organization.

It has given hundreds of Hawaiian inmates a chance to choose two books a month to send to each of their children ages 2 to 10 years. Inmates use a digital recorder so their children can pop in the CD and read along with their physically absent father.