The War Against Boys

by Christina Hoff Sommers

  Many people remain uncomfortable with the education and professional advances of girls and women, especially when they threaten to outdistance their male peers. . . . From the incendiary book The War Against Boys . . . to more subtle insinuations such as the New York Times headline, “At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust,” a backlash against the achievement of girls and women emerged.41

  The report flatly rejects the idea that boys as a group are in trouble. In fact, it asserts that young men are faring better today than ever before. Today’s young men, say the authors, are graduating from high school in record numbers. “More men are earning college degrees today in the United States than at any time in history.”42 Men have not fallen behind; it is simply that females “have made more rapid gains.”43 The report does not deny that there are serious inequities in education, but attributes them to race and class—not gender. It calls for a refocused public debate on the deep division among schoolchildren by race and family income. Finally, it emphatically reminds readers of the real world that awaits young men and women once they leave school: “Perhaps the most compelling evidence against the existence of a boys’ crisis is that men continue to outearn women in the workplace.”44

  It is hard to know how to respond to the suggestion that those of us who write about the plight of boys are “uncomfortable with the advances of girls.” The AAUW gives no evidence for it. The same charge was made by two professors, Rosalind Chait Barnett, a senior scientist at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, and Caryl Rivers of Boston University, in their 2011 book, The Truth About Girls and Boys: “The fact that girls are succeeding academically touches a wellspring of psychic fear in some people.” They called the boys’ crisis “manufactured”—part of a “backlash against the women’s movement.”45 Soon after the 2008 release of Where the Girls Are, Linda Hallman told the New York Times that “conservative commentators” were behind the “distracting debate” over allegedly disadvantaged boys.46

  But alarm over the plight of boys comes from parents, educators, writers, research institutes, and commissions from across the political and social spectrum. What we share is a concern for all children, along with an awareness that boys appear to need special help right now. That is not backlash; it is reality and common sense.

  What about the claim that boys are doing better than ever? According to the AAUW report:

  More men are earning college degrees today in the United States than at any time in history. During the past 35 years, the college-educated population has greatly expanded: The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded annually rose 82 percent, from 792,316 in 1969–70 to 1,439,264 in 2004–05.47

  It is true that in absolute terms more boys were graduating from high school and going to college in 2005 than in the previous forty years. But that is because the population of college-age males was much larger in 2005 than in the previous forty years. In 1970, men earned 451,097 BA degrees; by 2009, the number was 685,382—a 52 percent increase. In the same time period, BA degrees conferred to women went from 341,219 to 915,986—a 168 percent increase.48 Good news all around, says the AAUW. But was it? The picture changes when you control for population growth and consider the rate of improvement. Males stalled in the mid-1970s while females rapidly advanced (see Figure 4).

  Figure 4: Percentage of Population Ages 25–34 with 4 Years of College, 1970–2009, by Sex

  Source: US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey 1970–2009.

  The AAUW researchers point out that even if men are not keeping up with women, they are doing better than in the past. As Linda Hallman explained during a PBS online discussion, “[I]n the percentage of boys graduating from high school and college, boys are performing better today than ever before.”49 Technically true, but thoroughly misleading. In 2008, for example, US Census data shows that among women and men ages twenty-five to twenty-nine, 34 percent of women had a bachelor’s degree—compared with 26 percent of men.50 The number of women with college degrees had increased by 14 percent from 1978; the men, by less than 1 percent (0.77 percent, to be precise). If the facts were reversed and young men soared while women stalled, Ms. Hallman and her colleagues would have a different outlook.

  Most of the news stories conveyed the AAUW’s message that there is no serious gender achievement gap in education—the problem is race and social class. As one AAUW author told the Washington Post, “If there is a crisis, it is with African American and Hispanic students and low-income students, girls and boys.”51 But here the AAUW obscures the fact that the gender gap favors girls across all ethnic, racial, and social lines. Young black women are twice as likely to go to college as black men; at some of the prestigious historically black colleges the numbers are truly ominous—Fisk is now 64 percent female; Howard, 67 percent; Clark Atlanta, 72 percent.52

  When economist Andrew Sum and his colleagues at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University examined gender disparities in the Boston Public Schools, they found that for the class of 2007, among blacks, there were 191 females for every 100 males attending a four-year college or university. Among Hispanics the ratio was 175 females for every 100 males. For white students the gap was smaller, but still very large: 153 females to every 100 males.53

  The facts are incontrovertible: young women from poor neighborhoods in Boston, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC, do much better than the young men from those same neighborhoods. There are now dozens of studies with titles like “The Vanishing Latino Male in Higher Education,” “The Latino Male Dropout Crisis,” and “African-American Males in Education: Endangered or Ignored?”54 When the College Board recently studied The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color, its conclusions were dismaying: “There is an educational crisis for young men of color in the United States. . . . Collectively, [our] data shows that more than 51 percent of Hispanic males, 45 percent of African American males, 42 percent of Native American males, and 33 percent of Asian American males ages 15 to 24 will end up unemployed, incarcerated or dead. It has become an epidemic, and one that we must solve by resolving the educational crisis facing young men of color.”55

  What about those middle- and upper-middle-class white—or young men of color from comfortable backgrounds? Clearly, they are not in the same predicament as boys living near or below the poverty line. But even these males are performing well below their female counterparts. Consider, for example, the female advantage when it comes to honor societies, enrollment in AP classes, and earning A’s.56 Judith Kleinfeld, a professor of psychology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, analyzed the reading skills of white males from college-educated families. Using Department of Education data, she showed that at the end of high school, 23 percent of the white sons of college-educated parents scored “below basic.” For girls from the same background, the figure was 7 percent. “This means,” Ms. Kleinfeld writes, “that one in four boys who have college-educated parents cannot read a newspaper with understanding.”57

  Gender is a constant. Kleinfeld found that 34 percent of Hispanic males with college-educated parents scored “below basic,” compared to 19 percent of Hispanic females. Isn’t it possible—or even likely—that if we found ways to inspire poor black boys to read, those methods might work for Hispanic boys or poor white boys—or even white middle-class boys?

  What Motivates the Women’s Lobby?

  It is not hard to understand why women’s groups have invested so much effort in thwarting the cause of boys. When they look at society as a whole, they see males winning all the prizes. Men still prevail in the highest echelons of power. Look at the number of male CEOs, full professors, political leaders. Or consider the wage gap. As the AAUW says, “the most compelling evidence against the existence of a boys’ crisis is that men continue to outearn women in the workplace.”58 Why worry about boys doing better in school when they appear to be doing so much better in life?

  This is an understandable but seriously mistaken reaction. First of all, most me
n are not at the pinnacle of power. The “spread” phenomenon we see in testing shows up in life. There are far more men than women at the extremes of success and failure. And failure is more common. There may be 480 male CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (20 women), 438 male members of Congress (101 women), and 126,515 full professors (45,571 women). But consider the other side of the ledger. More than one million Americans are classified by the Department of Labor as “discouraged workers.” These are workers who have stopped looking for jobs because they feel they have no prospects or lack the requisite skills and education. Nearly 60 percent are men—636,000 men and 433,000 women. Consider also that that more than 1.5 million (1,500,278) men are in prison. For women the figure is 113,462.59

  Finally, a word about the infamous “wage gap,” which represents one of the most long-standing statistical fallacies in American policy debate. The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week. When mainstream economists consider the wage gap, they find that pay disparities are almost entirely the result of women’s different life preferences—what men and women choose to study in school, where they work, and how they balance their home and career. A thorough 2009 study by the US Department of Labor examined more than fifty peer-reviewed papers on the subject and concluded that the wage gap “may be almost entirely the result of individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”60 In addition to differences in education and training, the review found that women are more likely than men to leave the workforce to take care of children or older parents. There were so many differences in pay-related choices that the researchers were unable to specify even a residual effect that might be the result of discrimination.

  Wage-gap activists at the AAUW and the National Women’s Law Center say no—even when we control for relevant variables, women still earn less. But it always turns out that they have omitted one or two crucial variables. Consider the case of pharmacists. Almost half of all pharmacists are female, yet as a group, they earn only 85 percent of what their male counterparts earn. Why should that be? After all, male and female pharmacists are doing the same job with roughly identical educations. There must be some hidden discrimination at play. But according to the 2009 National Pharmacies Workforce Survey, male pharmacists work on average 2.4 hours more per week, have more job experience, and more of them own their own stores.61 A 2012 New York Times article tells a similar story about women in medicine: “Female doctors are more likely to be pediatricians than higher-paid cardiologists. They are more likely to work part time. And even those working full time put in seven percent fewer hours a week than men. They are also much more likely to take extended leaves, most often to give birth and start a family.”62 There are exceptions, but most workplace pay gaps and glass ceilings vanish when one accounts for these factors. And as economists frequently remind us, if it were really true that an employer could get away with paying Jill less than Jack for the same work, clever entrepreneurs would fire all their male employees, replace them with females, and enjoy a huge market advantage.

  Women’s groups do occasionally acknowledge that the pay gap is largely explained by women’s life choices, as the AAUW does in its 2007 Behind the Pay Gap.63 But this admission is qualified: they insist that women’s choices are not truly free. Women who decide, say, to stay home with children, to become pediatricians rather than cardiologists, or to attend the Fashion Industry High School rather than Aviation High are driven by sexist stereotypes. Says the AAUW, “Women’s personal choices are . . . fraught with inequities.”64 It speaks of women being “pigeonholed” into “pink-collar” jobs in health and education. According to the National Organization for Women, powerful sexist stereotypes “steer” women and men “toward different education, training, career paths,” and family roles.65 But is it really sexist stereotypes and social conditioning that best explain women’s vocational preferences and their special attachment to children? Aren’t most American women free and self-determining human beings? The women’s groups need to show—not dogmatically assert—that women’s choices are not free. And they need to explain why, by contrast, the life choices they promote are the authentic ones—what women truly want, and what will make them happier and more fulfilled. Of course, these are weighty philosophical questions unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. But surely, one thing should be clear: ignoring boys’ educational deficits is not the solution to the wage and power gap. And whatever women’s problems may be, they should not blind us to the growing plight of marginally educated men.

  In 2006, the Portland Press Herald ran an alarming series of reports about the educational deficits of boys in Maine.66 Among its findings: “High school girls outnumber boys by almost a 2:1 ratio in top-10 senior rankings,” and “Men earn about 38 percent of the bachelor’s degrees awarded by Maine’s public universities.” According to the report, boys both rich and poor had fallen seriously behind their sisters. But the director of Women’s Studies at the University of Southern Maine, Susan Feiner, expressed frustration over the sudden concern for boys. “It is kind of ironic that a couple of years into a disparity between male and female attendance in college it becomes ‘Oh my God, we really need to look at this. The world is going to end.”67

  I can sympathize with the professor’s complaint. Where was the indignation when men dominated higher education, decade after decade? Maybe it is time for women and girls to enjoy the advantage. That is an understandable but misguided reaction. It was wrong to ignore women’s educational needs for so long and cause for celebration when we turned our attentions to meeting those needs. But turning the tables and neglecting boys is not the answer. Why not be fair to both?

  In feminist Betty Friedan’s celebrated 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, she said that American women suffered from severe domestic ennui—“the problem that had no name.” Today the problem Friedan described hardly exists. For most American women, especially young women, the problem is not the futility and monotony of domestic life; it is choosing among the many paths open to them. Finding male partners as ambitious and well educated as they are is another challenge. Life for women may be difficult, but the system is no longer rigged against them. The new problem with no name is the economic and social free fall of millions of young men.

  Thomas Mortenson, a policy analyst at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, began to notice negative trends for young men twenty years ago. He was certain that journalists, educators, and political leaders would pick it up and run with it. When that did not happen, he wrote about it himself in a 1995 fact sheet entitled “What’s Wrong with Guys?”68 He noted that the women surpassed men in the rates at which they graduated from college in 1991, acknowledging that the gender gap was “widening.” He asked, “When the labor market offers such rich rewards for the college educated—both men and women—why have only women responded?” Mortenson foresaw the profound negative effects of male underachievement on the American economy and the family. He also noted the high psychological toll it would exact from men themselves. As he told an education reporter, “Most men define themselves by their work and must be productively engaged.”69

  Unfortunately, Mortenson sounded the alarm during a period when the media, the education establishment, and the government were focused on the AAUW-engineered girl crisis. Congress had just passed the Gender Equity in Education Act, the Department of Health and Human Services had launched Girl Power!,70 and Reviving Ophelia was on the bestseller lists.71 No one was paying attention to boys, and the problem that has no name went unnoticed. Mortenson, a mild-mannered, just-the-facts-ma’am Joe Friday from Iowa, was no match for the girl advocates and their buzz machine.

  The Economic Fallout

  In February 2011 a small miracle happened. The Harvard Graduate School of Education, once the epicenter of the silenced- and shortchanged
-girl movement, published a major study that acknowledged the plight of males. It recognized the real problem that has no name. The study, Pathways to Prosperity, points out that a high school diploma was once the passport to the American dream; in 1973, 72 percent of the American workforce had earned only a high school diploma—or less. Nearly two-thirds of them made it into the middle class. “In an economy in which manufacturing was still dominant, it was possible for those with less education but a strong work ethic to earn a middle-class wage.”72 Not any longer. As the report makes clear, since the 1970s, “all of the net job growth in America has been generated by positions that require at least some post-secondary education.”73 The new passport to the American Dream is “education beyond high school.” And today, far more women than men have that passport. As Pathways to Prosperity reports:

  Our system . . . clearly does not work well for many, especially young men. In recent years, a yawning gender gap has opened up in American higher education. Men now account for just 43 percent of enrollment in our nation’s colleges, and earn only 43 percent of bachelor’s degrees. Not surprisingly, women also account for 60 percent of the nation’s graduate students.

  This dramatic chart accompanied the report:

  Figure 5: The Growing Gender Gap in Our Nation’s Colleges: What Are the Implications?

  Women now account for 57% of college students

  Women earn 57% of college degrees Men earn just 43% of college degrees

  Women now account for 60% of graduate students

  Source: Pathways to Prosperity, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2011.

  A few months later, in the summer of 2011, the Brookings Institution published a study that reinforced the message of the Harvard study. Michael Greenstone, a professor of economics at MIT and senior fellow at Brookings, along with Adam Looney, another Brookings senior fellow, released a report on the fate of marginally educated men in today’s workplace. It confirmed Mortenson’s predictions—and more. To give one dramatic example, for men ages twenty-five to sixty-four with no high school diploma, median annual earnings have declined 66 percent since 1969. Say the authors, “Men with just a high school diploma did only marginally better. Their wages declined by 47 percent” (Figure 6). Not only have men with minimal educational credentials suffered severe setbacks in wages—a large number have vanished from the full-time workforce.