I don’t know. Call me a skeptic, but I’m having a hard time believing that blacks and Hispanics are to blame for this problem (too). Surely white people aren’t silly enough to think that they can’t be dysfunctional too? And surely all this hoopla wouldn’t be made (the internet is chockful of articles like the ones I posted above) if this was just another case of The Minorities Messing the Stats Up.
Like you, I’m also coming from first-hand experience. I’m a student AND an instructor, and I know that most of my classmates and students are female. And I’m not talking about namby-pamby liberal arts majors. These are future biologists, medical doctors, and scientists. And I attend a school that’s literally the most diverse university in the entire US, so forgive me if I don’t see this as a race issue.
A hissy fit would be if I WAS USING ALL CAPS, EXCLAMATION MARKS!!! AND USING FUCKING-SHIT-DAMMIT LANGUAGE!!
But I’m not, so please don’t try to denigrate what I’m saying by saying I’m throwing a self-righteous hissy fit. It makes me think that you aren’t really listening to what I have to say.
I’m not talking about this. I’m talking about two teachers submitting their resumes and the male teacher being hired because of the idea that more men should be in the classroom. I don’t work in public schools, but I don’t think hiring decisions are based on auditions and mock-runs in a classroom. So how would someone hiring teachers know that a teacher “reaches” male students without, I dunno, sorta assuming that?
My father used to hire teachers for a school system in Georgia, and he TOLD me that male teachers are often given preferential treatment because of their rarity. He admits that he was probably given preferential treatment when he started off as a teacher because he is not only male, but also black. Men in education are also fast-tracked into leadership positions much more frequently than females. AA-for-men already exists in schools. Generations of people have benefitted from this policy. And I don’t think it is a bad thing.
[sub]I checked this post for indications that I’m throwing a hissy fit and didn’t find any. I’m crossing my fingers nonetheless.[/sub]
I don’t know about being “stigmatized,” but in my experience, boys are systematically discouraged from performing well academically. The media and our male role models teach us from a very young age that being good at sports and getting laid are the only important things that men should strive towards. Meanwhile, the mostly female primary school teachers focus their efforts on the female students. The combination of these two factors set up any academic achieving male student for ridicule.
So it doesn’t surprise me that males don’t do as well academically on the average; we’ve been taught that men aren’t supposed to care about school, and that doing well makes you less of a man somehow.
I don’t have any cites as this is based on my personal experiences growing up. It would be interesting to see if any studies have been done along these lines and what their conclusions were.
As for who holds power positions, this is really more of a class issue. None of my male relatives are Senators or CEOs of multinational corporations or anything like that. Being male is not a guarantee of success.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s clear people are wondering if other traditionally disadvantaged groups are suffering more than whites - not suggesting stupid minorities are dragging white boys down. ANYway:
The following stats come from my school:
At the same time (Census 2000), the US population broke down as follows:
White 75.1%
Black or African American 12.3%
American Indian and Alaska Native 0.9%
Asian 3.6%
Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander 0.1%
Some other race 5.5%
Two or more races 2.4%
Hispanic or Latino 12.5% [with the note that Hispanics can be counted under more than one category because they can be of any race]
Not to suggest that the stats should line up EXACTLY with the population, that’d be silly. But you can see some gaps - and blacks and Latinos are underrepresented as far as that goes. [I KNOW white people are as well, but let’s not play that game. :p] I think it at least makes sense to wonder if race is involved - which is all astorian and others are doing.
Typically boys haven’t been negatively stigmatized as a group but they do experience stereotyping along the lines of the “model minority”. Instead of the “Asians are industrious, smart and disciplined” we get “Boys are strong, independent, and capable”. These stereotypes while “positive” have very direct and real consequences for boys. IIRC suicide rates, societal safety nets, and health in general is worse for males. Just like women who have struggled with shrugging off the stereotypes of being a care-giver and homemaker many men have struggled with an inability to perform well in expected ways (be it athletics, mannerisms which are considered feminine, or any number of things). Of course the effects of those cultural pressures affect different groups in different. My point is that while people of different genders/cultures/socio-economic backgrounds are being treated unequally, no one is getting a “free lunch”.
I would guess that the reason most power positions in the country are primarily held by men is related to the point that g8rguy made earlier. Namely, that people with the appropriate experience (who tend to be older) are generally the ones who hold the reins. Most CEOs are (I would guess) at least 45 years old. When considering the pool of qualified candidates for such positions it is highly likely that there are a much larger proportion of men then women due to the number of years of experience required. Even if we were to assume that women’s roles as leaders was lower proportionally speaking then their numbers would warrant I can only see their absolute and relative rates of participation in leadership roles increasing. As each generation comes of age I would be shocked if the relative & absolute numbers of women leaders declined or even stagnated. WRT men making more money than women I believe the wage gap between like skilled, experienced, and educated men and women has shrunk so much as to make this a trivial point.
Like g8rguy, I would be very interested in hearing the ages of the professors and their genders in your dept.
While there certainly are scholarships for boys & people are more concerned about the performance of boys recently than they have in the past I believe these trends are due to shifting in the social consciousness and perception of boys and their performance rather than because of objective declines in their grades and test scores. In other words, as the “positive” stereotypes regarding boys as capable & independent loses ground boys are more and more seen to be in need of the same services as other “disadvantaged” groups.
To answer the OP directly: Different policies have been called AA by various people. So, I’ll be clear on which policies I consider objectionable in AA. I have no problem with policies targeted towards helping people from a lower socio-economic class (i.e., poor inner city black youths as well as poor rural youths in the Appalachians). These programs, IMHO, are fine in that they are applied equally & fairly based on need. Government programs designed to help a certain group (blacks, women, men, whatever) based on a biological characteristic and nothing else are counterproductive and I do not support them. In this case I would unequivocally be in opposition to the hypothetical “men’s program” just as I am against current program’s which target minorities and women that aren’t need based.
I know what they mean, Marley. But just because the gap is larger in some groups doesn’t mean it’s not a problem across the board.
To me, it’s not the stats people need to be quibbling over. It’s the issue. Shifting the attention BACK to minorities is what’s part of the problem. It’s annoying that it doesn’t matter what we’re talking about, we always have to talk about the minorities being worse off. I would love to be in the position where there is always someone worse off to compare myself to. That way I can always rest assured that I’m the “normal” one.
Please note that I’m not directing my pissiness at you, Marley.
The women in my department are in their mid-to-late 50s (although we do have one in her 40s), whereas our department has quite a few young guys in their 30s and 40s.
I’m not saying sexism is still biting women in the ass and that’s why we only have a few. I’m saying that there doesn’t seem to be a lack of male scientists and professors, despite the current trends.
Hey, it makes me sad when you misrepresent what I said.
**
**
In your example, that is wrong. The underqualified candidate should not be given preference regardless of race, sex, whatever. You are correct that hiring decisions are not based on mock-runs, however, you can get references from the teacher’s past employment or from his master teacher about how they handle their class.
I do think it is a bad thing and it should be stopped if it is resulting in less qualified candidates getting the job over more qualified ones, regardless of sex.
This AA-for-men is called sexism and it should stop. The best qualified candidate to meet the school’s needs should get the job.
If the girls are doing better in school and are making themselves more competitive than the boys, more power to them. The fact that boys end up doing better ($$$) in the working world after school is a difficult to explain - perhaps the rewards of hard school performance for boys is about the same as for mediocre school performance, I dunno.
Warning - Rant ahead -
The belief that occupations, student bodies, and ranks of CEOs ought to be representative of the general population is a bunch of hooey! People who buy into this farce also buy into the AA utopian quota drivel. I suppose that were every profession, political office and college population representative of every gender, race, and creed we would be able to shelve AA? This is not realistic. Did anyone consider that perhaps there are certain jobs that women and men gravitate more to by nature? I bet you could not find 250 women to be CEOs of half of the Fortune 500 companies - they are not interested in the job, or they are not qualified for it (granted 4 out of 500 is pretty low). Are there enough men out there interested in filling the nursing gap between men and women? Why are we bent on having equal representation? What the heck is “under-representation” anyway? Who cares if there are “not enough” men nurses or female engineers? Should a professional sports team be required to hire someone just to have a representative from that group - of course not. The rules should not be changed for business, either.
Rant over -
I agree with posts that share the view that equal opportunity needs to be created and nurtured early on.
In business, I have noticed that people who are in hiring positions tend to hire people “like themselves”. This is not always the case, and I hate to make generalizations. What is “like themselves”?; usually by outward characteristics, then by personality, then by qualifications and experiences. For you students, you may not have experienced this yet, but has anyone else out there seen this (or do it?)?
And, as a job candidate, you may have favored jobs where you felt you could fit-in well. It’s all about “fit”. Under this phenom, the more female managers a company has, the more upward mobility women generally will see there. An ‘ol-boy’ type of company will be more limiting, just as a woman-owned company will be limiting to men, or by race, or religion, and so on. Although illegal, and companies are always eager to “promote diversity”; in practice, people tend to want to hire people like them in one form or another
Giving institutional preference to one group over another for any reason is dead wrong. No matter what past wrongs have been committed - this policy perpetuates people who have been wronged, and in the future will seek preferences over others.
No, it’s not a bunch of bs, it’s a moral statement about the way the world ought to be. You’ll note that no one who identifies as an AA opponent has said that men ought to be given AA.
This, I find rather objectionable. Sweeping generalizations are, pretty much, silly and wrong. Do women work twice as hard as men, even on average? I find myself highly skeptical.
In any event, you’ll note that I made no claims whatsoever about women in the workplace. Rather, I merely said that if women in academia are over-represented, than we can hardly give them AA in academia on the basis of them being an under-represented group, even if we believe in AA to begin with. This should be intuitively obvious to the most casul of observers upon initial inspection.
I don’t see this at all. However, as long as we’re willing to accept AA for women and for people who are not white, we have no moral way of denying it to whites and men when they are in “need.” What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Regarding the lack of women in science: I suspect this has everything to do with the stereotype that women can’t do math. Why would we not seek to eliminate that stereotype? Putting underqualified women in positions in which they’ll just serve to reinforce that stereotype is not helpful in this respect. In general, unless race or gender or mother’s maiden name really is a qualification, it is wrong to treat it as if it were! Period, end of story.
Well then just say that. No need to use inappropriate (and dare I say, sexist) descriptors.
And I did not intentionally misrepresent what you said.
Neurotik said:
I believed this to be an example of AA because of your use of a male teacher in this example. If you hadn’t used gender labels in this example, then I wouldn’t have assumed this. It shouldn’t matter that the teachers are male or female, right? If I mischaracterized you, it wasn’t my intention. I was simply reading what you wrote.
One could apply your logic to any number of “AA-like” scenarios. For instance, a black person with slightly lower credentials but better equipped with the ability to work with black customers would be more qualified than a white person with better credentials. A women mechanic with better “women skills” than a male mechanic would be more qualified to work at the local Jiffy Lube, even if she flunked a few more classes. A handicapped student with slightly lower grades would be more qualified to enter law school than an able-bodied person because they would be more likely to understand the plight of accident victims.
I do not think it is wrong or out-in-left-field to assume that a male teacher would be better able to reach male students. Children tend to look up to people who look like them, and people who “know what it’s like” tend to be more sympathetic (and therefore effective) than people who don’t.
It seems (to me) like you’re defining “qualification” to mean merit plus a bunch of intangibles (which means we’re in agreement). But isn’t this also the basis of most AA hirings?
Monstro, I think you’re misunderstanding the example, possibly by intention, and getting yourself in a snit over nothing. (Is a snit somehow racist or sexist? I confess my ignorance on the subject.)
What neurotik said was that if a man happens to be a better teacher than a woman, he’s the more qualified candidate, regardless of having slightly lower grades. Sure, he happened to use male students in his example, but if male students are the ones in trouble, maybe they’re the ones we need to be most worried about a teacher being able to reach. I don’t know.
I do know that in the school’s I attended men were often bumped up the administrative ladder as quickly as possible for one reason: to get them out of the classroom and someplace where their utter incompetence at teaching would hurt as few students as possible. The competent male teachers were left in the classroom where they were needed, and the incompetents rose to the level of their incompetence.
Teaching, like medical care, is a field where one’s people skills are just as important, if not more so, than one’s grades. If you’re running a residency program in, say, community-based internal medicine and interviewing medical students, do you want the student with the highest grades and shitty patient skills, or do you want the one with slightly lower grades and outstanding patient skills? Or the one with the grades who does fabulously with one specific type of patient but not well with everyone else?
I agree that we shouldn’t put a women in a situation where she’d be teaching that 2+2=22, but as Neurotik and I have pointed out “qualification” is subjective. It isn’t always based on objective standards of merit, and often the weight put on individual “touchy-feely” criteria shifts according to the situation.
Say you’ve got two math professors knocking on your door for a job. One is a woman. One is a man. They’ve both gone to top-notch schools and have fabulous recommendations. But the female has only five publications under her belt, while the dude has twice as many. He’s also taught two years longer than the female.
Objectively, the man is more qualified. But look at your department. It’s 99% men, and the one woman on your team is about to retire. And also guess what? The university is breathing down your neck to join the other departments by retaining more females in your major.
Does the fact that the woman mathematician is the head of the National Society of Women Engineers and Mathematicians sway your opinion about who is more qualified? Shouldn’t it, if only just a little bit? It’s complicated, right? That makes this:
A little oversimplistic.
Whether it’s twice as hard or 1.3 times as hard, there’s lots of evidence out there that guys have been underachieving for years and that they have not suffered in terms of job placement and salary. This leds me to believe that women’s accomplishments–their qualifications, if you will–don’t matter that much in the long run.
You’re skeptical, but on what basis do you draw your skepticism? The notion that society is a meritocracy? It’s never been one and it never will be one. Period, end of story.
If you artificially correct things, then no one has any incentive to improve. Boys can skate by knowing that they’ll face fewer consequences for their lack of hard work than will girls.
Please don’t go there, CrazyCatLady. Your username is too cute for you to play board shit-stirrer-upper.
He defined being a better teacher as “being able to reach male students”. If a female teacher is able to reach female students better, does that make her a better teacher? No. It means she has an asset–reaching female students. To say that slightly lower grades are overshadowed by the ability to reach a certain demographic is to say that objective criteria (merit) isn’t everything. I don’t see how this differs from the stance of AA supporters. Perhaps you know?
Ignoring the fact that you wouldn’t really know this to be true if you were just a student, doesn’t this indicate what I’ve been saying all along: merit means doodly squat when it comes to men getting jobs? Do you think incompetent women get promoted like this? Or do you think they get fired because they’re a dime-a-dozen?
I wouldn’t want doctors with bad people skills, and you wouldn’t think I would if you had actually read the content of my posts. Goodness, I think it’s you that’s intentionally mischaracterizing posts, CrazyCatLady. You seem to think that I’m, like, always wrong or something. Go back and read what I wrote and you will see that we’re in agreement (and believe it or not, it is not the first time).
A few things:
[ol]
[li]If the university is breathing down your neck to retain more females in your major, or more males, or blacks, or hispanics, or people named Billy, that’s wrong. As such, you have the moral obligation to ignore them.[/li][li]I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, saying that academic excellence is the only qualification worth considering. I am, however, saying that having a specific set of chromosomes is not a qualification in any meaningful sense of the word.[/li][li]If one considers that being the head of the NSWEM is a qualification, that’s fine with me. The point is that the qualification isn’t having breasts, the qualification is being the head of some national organization related to the field.[/li][/ol]
No, with all due respect, it doesn’t. If having a penis, or white skin, or whatever other unrelated thing has no bearing on your ability to perform a job, it should have no bearing on your chances of getting the job. In your hypothetical, the qualification isn’t being female, the qualification is heading an organization. If, for some strange reason, a man headed said organization, this would be an additional qualification for him instead.
Look, my position is absurdly simple. I posit that the morally correct thing to do is to consider all criteria which relate to a person’s ability to do the job under consideration, and no criteria which do not do so. Having considered the appropriate criteria, whichever person is most qualified should get the job. If there are multiple people who you feel have identical qualifications, flip a coin or something.
But unless you can demonstrate that being white or black or male or female or short or tall or fat or skinny is actually a criterion which relates to the ability to perform a job, you have no business, morally, using said criterion to help decide who should get the job. And I would suggest that if anyone feels that being a Japanese Catholic female whose last name is Smith is a job qualification, the burden of proof is on them.
If one is prepared to accept that women make less for doing the same work with the same qualifications (and I am, given the evidence), then yes, being a man is being treated as a qualification. And as I’ve said repeatedly, this is wrong.
However, I happen to subscribe to the charmingly antiquated idea that two wrongs don’t make a right.
I base my skepticism that women work twice as hard as men on observation. Being a scientist, this seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do to me.
Is society a perfect meritocracy now? No, nor have I claimed otherwise. Should it be? I think it’s obvious that my answer to that question is in the affirmative. Can it be? I doubt it, but I see no reason to dismiss the notion out of hand. Even if it can’t be, should we seek to approach as close to a perfect meritocracy as possible? Absolutely! Does judging people based on things other than merit help in this goal? Absolutely not! Whether society can be a perfect meritocracy or not, do two wrongs make a right? I see plenty of reason to dismiss that notion out of hand.
Hey, I’m not the one accusing other posters of sexism over the term “throwing a hissy fit” which is used equally (IME) to refer to males and females. So don’t start, all right?
Yes, I was just a student at the schools in question, but my mother was also a teacher in the same school system, one who happened to be a member of the site-based decision-making council for her school. In other words, I got a backstage pass into the hiring and firing of various administrators and the rationale behind it. The higher-ups in the school system often “suggested” that certain applicants be more strongly considered, to get them as far from the students as possible. (Of course, the superintendent never seemed to think that he been the beneficiary of such “suggestions” but that’s whole other thread.)
And frankly, it wasn’t meant as support for either side of the arguent. I’m sure some of the folks in question had higher grades than my mother, but that doesn’t make them better teachers. It was more an aside that every workplace has a way of dealing with people who seem qualified but really aren’t. Our school system’s way was to shove them into administration, or make them consultants of some type, to limit children’s exposure to their incompetence.
My point with the medical student example, and I’ll type slowly and use small words for anyone who isn’t paying attention, is this:
Paper credentials are NOT the end-all and be-all of being qualified for a job. Regardless of age, size, shape, color, gender, or sexual preference, there are intangibles to be qualified for something. There always have been, and there always will be.
If someone is better at reaching the kids who most need to be reached, then they’re the better candidate for the job. Whether boys are, indeed, the students who most need to be reached, I’m not sure.
Stop throwing a hissy fit, CrazyCatLady. You’re going to give your hysterical self a heart attack if you keep it up.
(IME, it’s one of those phrases reserved for riled up women. But YMMV.)
I agree with this. And I also think those intangibles can be strongly linked to age, size, shape, color, gender, or sexual preference. But according to many people this thinking is wrong. Maybe it is, but I can think of many instances where it makes sense.
monstro, the point is that while those intangibles may be linked to age, size, shape, color, gender, sexual preference, and so on, the intangibles are not identical to color, size, shape, et cetera. And treating them as if they are is unacceptable.
That said, if you think that intangibles are strongly linked to age, gender, and what not, why do you think there’s anything wrong with men making, on average, more money with inferior academic qualifications? What’s to say that they don’t have better intangibles?
All of which is to say that intangibles exist, but are not as important as objective criteria. If I have a 3.95 GPA from Harvard and Joe has a 2.25 GPA from Texas Tech, in the same fields, he’d better have some utterly outlandish advantage in “intangibles” if he gets the job and I don’t.
