"It’s because boys are socialized to perform masculinity, which means avoiding emulating women or seeing them as leaders."
^I never thought about boys being reluctant to treat women as leaders. But when I think back to obnoxious boys in the classrooms of my youth, that's definitely a common thread that I never saw before. Sure it was sort of a lack of respect like the adults said, but it was DEFINITELY not respecting women as leaders. What an insight, holy moly.
TY! It's hard to measure directly, but it does seem like the only thing masculinity is everywhere and always is "not femininity."
And it also seems like "leadership is masculine" is kind of foundational to what gender means in a highly sexist, highly hierarchical culture. Which means, necessarily, that on average "women aren't leaders."
This would certainly help explain why girls do much better without female role models or with fewer female role models but boys really disintegrate if they don't have successful adult *men* around them.
My mom had a friend when I was growing up who taught in several settings, and she felt the more religious settings she taught in were worse for exactly this reason. The boys had been specifically socialized to believe that women were less-than and not to be emulated or respected.
Not surprising at all, but I hadn't thought about it. Thank you.
I definitely noticed that the religious families I knew growing up were much more likely to openly and overtly favor the male kids over the female kids.
And in the churches I grew up in, we were taught very explicitly that women were not supposed to lead.
Some men in the replies were capable of accepting the reality that college admissions preferences must benefit men because their applications are weaker on average. However, they claimed, that’s only because K-12 is biased against boys.
Sounds like victimhood, entitlement mentality, identity-Olympics, and the thousand other insults they hurl at equity advocates.
In just a very micro sense as a 15th year teacher of grades 1,2 and 3…women like boys more than girls.
I really think this is amazing how much this sort of open secret is treated like it’s not true. Most women teachers would rather have an annoying boy than girl than be dealing with girl drama.
To the extent that we are biased it’s happening literally against the stated preferences of their teachers.
Yes this is such a hogwash thing that gets repeated over and over, it's really annoying. Boys have always done worse at school and had worse grades than girls, that was literally true 100 years ago and has been cross culturally since schooling began. After puberty the top boys tend to do better on math tests, but for everything else, most especially reading/writing, girls trounce them both at the top and in the median/average, this is nothing new. It's just one of those things everyone somehow forgot the past few decades and now want to blame things that have nothing to do with it. Partly it's bc so much more focus is on academics now, whereas 60 years ago the vast majority weren't headed to college anyway, so this didn't really matter.
This is so interesting bc we have a bit of opposite gender gap issue in Japan and scholastic success of anything, is somewhat male coded in Japan.
Like, Todai/University of Tokyo (my Alma mater) is now 80% male 20% female and when I was there it was allegedly 88% male and 12% female - and in fact esp outside of Tokyo/Osaka, women are often discouraged from trying out for “higher status” colleges.
And I guess another thing is single gender high schools are still very much common and many of them tend to offer more homemaker coded education (class for cooking, sewing etc) even at “top” girls only schools. (Some exceptions like, Ohin in Tokyo exist and they do as well as most “top” boys schools).
I personally feel I got benefited from this - essentially it allowed me to be a test taking machine more easily with less social stigma.
This trend, this idea of gender equality has been emphasized for the last 50 years. Long . Mothers the first teachers bought in. The results the end game is apparent and some feel has been a negative for males and society possibly so. All males are not warriors, some females are. Things have a tendency to work to a level that society likes. Males at some point drift toward typical male behavior some drift toward their moms. In general this has been a negative for women.
"It’s because boys are socialized to perform masculinity, which means avoiding emulating women or seeing them as leaders."
^I never thought about boys being reluctant to treat women as leaders. But when I think back to obnoxious boys in the classrooms of my youth, that's definitely a common thread that I never saw before. Sure it was sort of a lack of respect like the adults said, but it was DEFINITELY not respecting women as leaders. What an insight, holy moly.
TY! It's hard to measure directly, but it does seem like the only thing masculinity is everywhere and always is "not femininity."
And it also seems like "leadership is masculine" is kind of foundational to what gender means in a highly sexist, highly hierarchical culture. Which means, necessarily, that on average "women aren't leaders."
This would certainly help explain why girls do much better without female role models or with fewer female role models but boys really disintegrate if they don't have successful adult *men* around them.
My mom had a friend when I was growing up who taught in several settings, and she felt the more religious settings she taught in were worse for exactly this reason. The boys had been specifically socialized to believe that women were less-than and not to be emulated or respected.
Not surprising at all, but I hadn't thought about it. Thank you.
I definitely noticed that the religious families I knew growing up were much more likely to openly and overtly favor the male kids over the female kids.
And in the churches I grew up in, we were taught very explicitly that women were not supposed to lead.
Some men in the replies were capable of accepting the reality that college admissions preferences must benefit men because their applications are weaker on average. However, they claimed, that’s only because K-12 is biased against boys.
Sounds like victimhood, entitlement mentality, identity-Olympics, and the thousand other insults they hurl at equity advocates.
Yep!
In just a very micro sense as a 15th year teacher of grades 1,2 and 3…women like boys more than girls.
I really think this is amazing how much this sort of open secret is treated like it’s not true. Most women teachers would rather have an annoying boy than girl than be dealing with girl drama.
To the extent that we are biased it’s happening literally against the stated preferences of their teachers.
Thank you! That's always been my suspicion, and what one would expect from an understanding of gender. Appreciate you confirming it.
Yes this is such a hogwash thing that gets repeated over and over, it's really annoying. Boys have always done worse at school and had worse grades than girls, that was literally true 100 years ago and has been cross culturally since schooling began. After puberty the top boys tend to do better on math tests, but for everything else, most especially reading/writing, girls trounce them both at the top and in the median/average, this is nothing new. It's just one of those things everyone somehow forgot the past few decades and now want to blame things that have nothing to do with it. Partly it's bc so much more focus is on academics now, whereas 60 years ago the vast majority weren't headed to college anyway, so this didn't really matter.
It was true 1000 years ago. Do you think the average boy ever went to school? Hell no. (The average girl didn't either, but for different reasons.)
This is so interesting bc we have a bit of opposite gender gap issue in Japan and scholastic success of anything, is somewhat male coded in Japan.
Like, Todai/University of Tokyo (my Alma mater) is now 80% male 20% female and when I was there it was allegedly 88% male and 12% female - and in fact esp outside of Tokyo/Osaka, women are often discouraged from trying out for “higher status” colleges.
And I guess another thing is single gender high schools are still very much common and many of them tend to offer more homemaker coded education (class for cooking, sewing etc) even at “top” girls only schools. (Some exceptions like, Ohin in Tokyo exist and they do as well as most “top” boys schools).
I personally feel I got benefited from this - essentially it allowed me to be a test taking machine more easily with less social stigma.
I had no idea. Thank you.
I think this confirms my priors.
1. Masculinity's only constant throughout space and time is "not feminine."
2. Boys will do anything, even study, to perform whatever their culture tells them is masculinity.
This trend, this idea of gender equality has been emphasized for the last 50 years. Long . Mothers the first teachers bought in. The results the end game is apparent and some feel has been a negative for males and society possibly so. All males are not warriors, some females are. Things have a tendency to work to a level that society likes. Males at some point drift toward typical male behavior some drift toward their moms. In general this has been a negative for women.