Skip to main content

男性要加油

The weaker sex

Boys are being outclassed by girls at both school and university, and the gap is widening

“IT’S all to do with their brains and bodies and chemicals,” says Sir Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, a posh English boarding school. “There’s a mentality that it’s not cool for them to perform, that it’s not cool to be smart,” suggests Ivan Yip, principal of the Bronx Leadership Academy in New York. One school charges £25,000 ($38,000) a year and has a scuba-diving club; the other serves subsidised lunches to most of its pupils, a quarter of whom have special needs. Yet both are grappling with the same problem: teenage boys are being left behind by girls.
It is a problem that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago. Until the 1960s boys spent longer and went further in school than girls, and were more likely to graduate from university. Now, across the rich world and in a growing number of poor countries, the balance has tilted the other way. Policymakers who once fretted about girls’ lack of confidence in science now spend their time dangling copies of “Harry Potter” before surly boys. Sweden has commissioned research into its “boy crisis”. Australia has devised a reading programme called “Boys, Blokes, Books & Bytes”. In just a couple of generations, one gender gap has closed, only for another to open up.
The reversal is laid out in a report published on March 5th by the OECD, a Paris-based rich-country think-tank. Boys’ dominance just about endures in maths: at age 15 they are, on average, the equivalent of three months’ schooling ahead of girls. In science the results are fairly even. But in reading, where girls have been ahead for some time, a gulf has appeared. In all 64 countries and economies in the study, girls outperform boys. The average gap is equivalent to an extra year of schooling.
xx > xy?
The OECD deems literacy to be the most important skill that it assesses, since further learning depends on it. Sure enough, teenage boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail to achieve basic proficiency in any of maths, reading and science (see chart 1). Youngsters in this group, with nothing to build on or shine at, are prone to drop out of school altogether.
To see why boys and girls fare so differently in the classroom, first look at what they do outside it. The average 15-year-old girl devotes five-and-a-half hours a week to homework, an hour more than the average boy, who spends more time playing video games and trawling the internet. Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, compared with little more than half of boys. Reading rates are falling everywhere as screens draw eyes from pages, but boys are giving up faster. The OECD found that, among boys who do as much homework as the average girl, the gender gap in reading fell by nearly a quarter.
Once in the classroom, boys long to be out of it. They are twice as likely as girls to report that school is a “waste of time”, and more often turn up late. Just as teachers used to struggle to persuade girls that science is not only for men, the OECD now urges parents and policymakers to steer boys away from a version of masculinity that ignores academic achievement. “There are different pressures on boys,” says Mr Yip. “Unfortunately there’s a tendency where they try to live up to certain expectations in terms of [bad] behaviour.”
Boys’ disdain for school might have been less irrational when there were plenty of jobs for uneducated men. But those days have long gone. It may be that a bit of swagger helps in maths, where confidence plays a part in boys’ lead (though it sometimes extends to delusion: 12% of boys told the OECD that they were familiar with the mathematical concept of “subjunctive scaling”, a red herring that fooled only 7% of girls). But their lack of self-discipline drives teachers crazy.
Perhaps because they can be so insufferable, teenage boys are often marked down. The OECD found that boys did much better in its anonymised tests than in teacher assessments. The gap with girls in reading was a third smaller, and the gap in maths—where boys were already ahead—opened up further. In another finding that suggests a lack of even-handedness among teachers, boys are more likely than girls to be forced to repeat a year, even when they are of equal ability.
What is behind this discrimination? One possibility is that teachers mark up students who are polite, eager and stay out of fights, all attributes that are more common among girls. In some countries, academic points can even be docked for bad behaviour. Another is that women, who make up eight out of ten primary-school teachers and nearly seven in ten lower-secondary teachers, favour their own sex, just as male bosses have been shown to favour male underlings. In a few places sexism is enshrined in law: Singapore still canes boys, while sparing girls the rod.
Some countries provide an environment in which boys can do better. In Latin America the gender gap in reading is relatively small, with boys in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru trailing girls less than they do elsewhere. Awkwardly, however, this nearly always comes with a wider gender gap in maths, in favour of boys. The reverse is true, too: Iceland, Norway and Sweden, which have got girls up to parity with boys in maths, struggle with uncomfortably wide gender gaps in reading. Since 2003, the last occasion when the OECD did a big study, boys in a few countries have caught up in reading and girls in several others have significantly narrowed the gap in maths. No country has managed both.
Onwards and upwards
Girls’ educational dominance persists after school. Until a few decades ago men were in a clear majority at university almost everywhere (see chart 2), particularly in advanced courses and in science and engineering. But as higher education has boomed worldwide, women’s enrolment has increased almost twice as fast as men’s. In the OECD women now make up 56% of students enrolled, up from 46% in 1985. By 2025 that may rise to 58%.
Even in the handful of OECD countries where women are in the minority on campus, their numbers are creeping up. Meanwhile several, including America, Britain and parts of Scandinavia, have 50% more women than men on campus. Numbers in many of America’s elite private colleges are more evenly balanced. It is widely believed that their opaque admissions criteria are relaxed for men.
The feminisation of higher education was so gradual that for a long time it passed unremarked. According to Stephan Vincent-Lancrin of the OECD, when in 2008 it published a report pointing out just how far it had gone, people “couldn’t believe it”.
Women who go to university are more likely than their male peers to graduate, and typically get better grades. But men and women tend to study different subjects, with many women choosing courses in education, health, arts and the humanities, whereas men take up computing, engineering and the exact sciences. In mathematics women are drawing level; in the life sciences, social sciences, business and law they have moved ahead.
Social change has done more to encourage women to enter higher education than any deliberate policy. The Pill and a decline in the average number of children, together with later marriage and childbearing, have made it easier for married women to join the workforce. As more women went out to work, discrimination became less sharp. Girls saw the point of study once they were expected to have careers. Rising divorce rates underlined the importance of being able to provide for yourself. These days girls nearly everywhere seem more ambitious than boys, both academically and in their careers. It is hard to believe that in 1900-50 about half of jobs in America were barred to married women.
So are women now on their way to becoming the dominant sex? Hanna Rosin’s book, “The End of Men and the Rise of Women”, published in 2012, argues that in America, at least, women are ahead not only educationally but increasingly also professionally and socially. Policymakers in many countries worry about the prospect of a growing underclass of ill-educated men. That should worry women, too: in the past they have typically married men in their own social group or above. If there are too few of those, many women will have to marry down or not at all.
According to the OECD, the return on investment in a degree is higher for women than for men in many countries, though not all. In America PayScale, a company that crunches incomes data, found that the return on investment in a college degree for women was lower than or at best the same as for men. Although women as a group are now better qualified, they earn about three-quarters as much as men. A big reason is the choice of subject: education, the humanities and social work pay less than engineering or computer science. But academic research shows that women attach less importance than men to the graduate pay premium, suggesting that a high financial return is not the main reason for their further education.
At the highest levels of business and the professions, women remain notably scarce. In a reversal of the pattern at school, the anonymous and therefore gender-blind essays and exams at university protect female students from bias. But in the workplace, says Elisabeth Kelan of Britain’s Cranfield School of Management, “traditional patterns assert themselves in miraculous ways”. Men and women join the medical and legal professions in roughly equal numbers, but 10-15 years later many women have chosen unambitious career paths or dropped out to spend time with their children. Meanwhile men are rising through the ranks as qualifications gained long ago fade in importance and personality, ambition and experience come to matter more.
The last bastion
For a long time it was said that since women had historically been underrepresented in university and work, it would take time to fill the pipeline from which senior appointments were made. But after 40 years of making up the majority of graduates in some countries, that argument is wearing thin. According to Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard, the “last chapter” in the story of women’s rise—equal pay and access to the best jobs—will not come without big structural changes.
In a recent paper in the American Economic Review Ms Goldin found that the difference between the hourly earnings of highly qualified men and their female peers grows hugely in the first 10-15 years of working life, largely because of a big premium in some highly paid jobs on putting in long days and being constantly on call. On the whole men find it easier than women to work in this way. Where such jobs are common, for example in business and the law, the gender pay gap remains wide and even short spells out of the workforce are severely penalised, meaning that motherhood can exact a heavy price. Where pay is roughly proportional to hours worked, as in pharmacy, it is low.
There will always be jobs where flexibility is not an option, says Ms Goldin: those of CEOs, trial lawyers, surgeons, some bankers and senior politicians come to mind. In many others, pay does not need to depend on being available all hours—and well-educated men who want a life outside work would benefit from change, too. But the new gender gap is at the other end of the pay spectrum. And it is not women who are suffering, but unskilled men.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

業界對抑制房價手段 的 反映

  不動產聯盟總會林正雄:高房價政府也是推手 應停止重稅 2023-01-16 22:02   經濟日報/  中華民國不動產聯盟總會理事長林正雄今(16)日指出,這波房價高漲主因惡性通膨所致,尤其政府重稅也是推手之一。他呼籲,政府要「解決缺工」、「停止重稅」等,才能促進房市發展健康化。中華民國不動產聯盟總會提供。 中華民國不動產聯盟總會理事長林正雄今(16)日指出,這波 房價 高漲主因惡性 通膨 所致,尤其政府重稅也是推手之一,政府接連打房只會讓台灣經濟出現破口。他呼籲,政府要「解決缺工」、「停止重稅」等才能促進房市發展健康化。 他指出,近年房價高漲係因通貨膨脹,使各項原物料大幅上漲,全國缺工已經不只是民間 營建業 的大問題,連政府的公共工程都面臨人力短缺的難解課題,尤其營建署在2020年發布的營造業經濟調查報告顯示,全國營建業已缺工近12萬人,2022年以來,營建業的缺工的數字更是呈倍數成長。 他表示,營建業缺工問題亦使工資不斷墊高,在工料雙漲情況下,業者只能反映成本,這也是目前房價居高不下的原因;然而營造物價高漲是國際貿易問題,不易緩解,但「缺工」問題,政府可以透過制度適度鬆綁,修正外籍移工引進規定來解決,如此才能根本解決高房價問題,才是各黨能否獲得「執政」的關鍵! 另外,林正雄強調,政府歷次打房政策與金融限縮,以及大環境通膨,使得業者經營成本增加,諸多限制與稅制閉鎖期違反市場自然運作,連帶使消費者選擇減少。經過兩年多來的強力打房,民眾們應該要清醒了,政府以加徵重稅來打房,其實無助平抑房價,反而重重傷害了眾多相關從業人員的生計。 林正雄呼籲,政府要「解決缺工」、「停止重稅」,不要再以重稅打房,尊重市場機制,才是房市健康化的開始。

台灣建築獎 PRIZE OF ARCHITECTURE

  土建築師打敗普立茲克獎大師 橫山書法館奪台灣建築獎 2022-11-03 01:22   聯合報 坐落於桃園大園、由新世代建築師潘天壹設計的橫山書法藝術館,奪得2022台灣建築獎首獎。圖/潘天壹建築師事務所提供 2022台灣 建築 獎昨公布得主。新世代建築師潘天壹設計的橫山書法藝術館奪得首獎。普立茲克獎得主庫哈斯與姚仁喜合作的北藝中心、普立茲克獎得主坂茂與石昭永合作的南美館,則與德光教會、巨大集團全球營運總部並列佳作。本土建築師打敗兩位普立茲克獎得主,評審形容,台灣建築獎得主潘天壹年紀雖輕,作品卻能同時展現「隽永中有淡淡驚喜」的兩種張力,為喧囂的時代帶來安定的力量,奪得今年建築獎首獎。 橫山書法館與埤塘為鄰,潘天壹以篆刻硯石為意象,將五個硯石內斂而分散地放置於埤塘旁,形成流動的書寫地景。評審認為本案利用東方的合院概念,塑造現代園林遊園式觀瞻,將書法的意境用建築表現。整體呈現安靜、平和、穩健,有驚奇但不吵雜,節奏疏密拿捏得宜。 評審團召集人劉培森指出,潘天壹將建築物拆散成尺度小的院落式組織,空間處理切合主題。他把內部空間的氛圍處理得非常好,讓人感到心靈的沉澱,節奏上又出現不同的層次。當訪客從外界進入內部,層次的處理非常精彩,感受水平空間的寧靜之時,看到天花板的結構,又能感受到趣味性。潘天壹年紀輕、卻有相當成熟的表現,「30年前覺得台灣建築水準差國際一大截,30年後覺得有許多年輕建築師慢慢冒出、令人欣喜。」 橫山書法藝術館從設計到完成花費四年。潘天壹透露,四年過程中「經歷很大的逆轉過程」,到現在都還覺得有一些「未完成」,希望透過獎項啟動學習和陪伴。他認為,建築作品並非完工之後便停止,「每個案子都是孩子、屬於這個地方、擁有自己的生命力」。迄今他每個月都會去看橫山書法館,「看地景如何陪伴民眾、繼續它的旅程」,也希望在建築的發展過程中,學習如何回應社會責任。 潘天壹是新世代建築師中,罕見從未出國留學的「土建築師」。問他心中的「台灣建築」是什麼?他形容是「只有在台灣才看得到的台灣建築」,從中可以找到社會、文化與產業脈動的浮現。他認為,台灣的大環境比較少談書法、台灣文化,因為資訊都是「和洋混合」的強勢文化衝擊,在這種衝擊之下,大家習慣浸泡在張力之中,失去對自己文化內在的表述。他認為,如果將台灣建築獎歷屆的建築師連起來,他們都在串連台灣的DNA,「只要串得下去...

台灣建築聯盟 參與 威尼斯建築展

  五校組建築聯盟進軍威尼斯 台灣常民智慧變成建築語言 2023-02-20 02:53   聯合報/  東海大學 由國立台灣美術館主辦,東海大學建築系團隊策畫的「地景中未完成的協議-台灣改裝」,將代表台灣參加第18屆威尼斯建築雙年展。記者陳宛茜/攝影 台灣的鐵皮屋常被視為混亂的象徵。然而透過東海等五所大學建築系所學生的田野調查,發現鐵皮屋頂因可吸收熱量,被山區農民當成曬蔬菜的空間,成為生產系統的一環。台灣養殖場、茶園田間常見的網屋,看似簡陋的設計卻能提供遮陽、休閒娛樂等多重功能,台中新社農民甚至用網屋防止巨峰葡萄遭鳥兒啄食。「我們希望把常民智慧變成台灣的建築語彙。」由 東海大學 建築系主任曾瑋帶領的跨校建築 團隊 ,花一年時間田野調查台灣建築,成果將在5月舉行的 威尼斯建築雙年展 台灣館中展出。 由國立台灣美術館主辦,東海大學建築系團隊策畫的「地景中未完成的協議-台灣改裝」,將代表台灣參加第18屆威尼斯建築雙年展,5月20日至11月26日於義大利威尼斯台灣館(普里奇歐尼宮)展出。策展團隊透過在台灣不同高度與緯度的農業地景調查,呈現人們為馴服環境帶來的多元建築風貌。 國美館館長廖仁義指出,歷屆威尼斯建築雙年展台灣館都以建築師為主題,此次則是首次以「教學聯盟」共同參與的方式,由東海大學建築學系師生共同完成展覽,同時也邀請國內知名建築學院:成功大學、淡江大學、逢甲大學、中原大學的建築學系學生參與。他認為,此次台灣館的展示方式,不僅具文化展示的意義,也有建築傳承的教育意義。 曾瑋表示,台灣橫跨六個氣候生態區,面對多變的地理與氣候環境,台灣建築發展出柔軟、即時反應的特性。但台灣建築教育往往套用西方系統與觀念,長期忽略台灣建築本身的特色,甚至將台灣建築汙名化。此次帶五校建築系所學生進行廣泛、全面性的田野調查,希望透過大量田調重新定義台灣建築,並從台灣的教育開始扎根。 台灣最常見的乳牛品種來自荷蘭,但乳牛需要適當的陽光照射才能保持健康。策展團隊田調時發現,高緯度乳牛品種的眼睛無法適應台灣的陽光,台灣牧場廣泛使用聚碳酸酯波紋板,減少進入牛欄的陽光量,創造更友善的養牛空間。鄉村常見、設有腳踏輪的棚屋,擁有輕鋼框架和波紋板的可移動結構。農民在棚屋中放置收音機、冰箱、電風扇、延長線,甚至在鷹架掛上祈求風調雨順和豐收的紅條,宛如另一個家。這些台灣典型建築中蘊藏...