Live data from Hacker News

A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

nytimes.com

21–30 of 101 posts

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably quite a lot. I'm reminded of a study I read a year or two ago which looked at academic performance in high school; girls received considerably higher class marks on average. However, this effect vanished when they took standardized tests ... and it also vanished when they had male teachers. Whether it's teaching style, the teacher acting as a role model, or something else, I don't know; but gender definitely…

Would there be a suspicion that this was because of sexism, if the genders were reversed?

I was wondering the same thing. It might be gender, but it could also be a strongly gender-focused society.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably quite a lot. I'm reminded of a study I read a year or two ago which looked at academic performance in high school; girls received considerably higher class marks on average. However, this effect vanished when they took standardized tests ... and it also vanished when they had male teachers. Whether it's teaching style, the teacher acting as a role model, or something else, I don't know; but gender definitely…

Would there be a suspicion that this was because of sexism, if the genders were reversed?

I've come to accept that people simply like people that look like them. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Women in tech is important. Minority representation is important. And yes positive white male role models for little suburban straight white American boys is important.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#23

Where to even begin, Part of this issue I feel is, as mentioned in the article, is that boys are taught from the young age to take care of their problems, which leads to more isolation. Another important reason I feel is the rising amount of "girls-only" opportunities that systematically make boys feel inadequate and since they are not able to participate for whatever reason (e.g. "its only for girls") they continue…

>My point is (or rather society's) is that if you're male and have a good start then you're automatically golden, but for those that do not have the same starting opportunities there are simply no other options that are, on the other hand, available to girls from all backgrounds.

This is definitely due to the mentality of "all boys are the same" and "all girls are the same" collectivist mentality that's so popular today. The same thing exists for races, ethnicities, etc. Basically, rather than looking at the background of a person these people tend to blindly make assumptions about exactly who and what they are. I think that this is one of the reasons affirmative action is especially broken -- a poor Asian student is basically doomed for failure whereas a rich Black student is going to have a huge advantage (over both White students at their socioeconomic level and poorer Black students). Rather than fixing the problem that people get unequal opportunities it sort of decides what the opportunities should be for every single person regardless of their actual situation, and that creates really skewed edge cases.

>Whats the deal with gender issues anyway in North America...

I think that the root of this issue is that there are basically two ways to fix inequalities: flattening out the entire system or raising those below up to the same level as everyone else. The technique that has proven most successful was really the type of communist philosophy that was used by lots of these Eastern European states, and that essentially comes out to be leveling the playing system by putting everyone below where they could possibly be. Of course raising everyone up is a possibility, but as a whole it's proven extremely difficult to do.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#24
post #21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would there be a suspicion that this was because of sexism, if the genders were reversed?

I was wondering the same thing. It might be gender, but it could also be a strongly gender-focused society.

It's actually a global phenomenon. Boys are performing worse in most of the Western world as well as much of the rest. When there are similar issues in the US, Japan, and Scandinavia you can rule out many cultural aspects as the cause.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#25
I suspect this is true for a larger cross-section of society in the USA – disadvantaged males are hurt more than disadvantaged females. However, advantaged males are way more successful than advantaged females. This leads to the somewhat paradoxical situation where males in high positions positing that men have an advantage because of their gender (because in the already advantaged group, they have seen the additional advantages of being male), and calling for more opportunities for females.

To give a practical example – as an Asian male who is not that good at coding, if I ask someone to explain some code to me, I am met with way less enthusiasm than if a female coder asks the same question. On the other hand, the guy giving the talk at the event has already written 10 libraries used by thousands of users, and codes kernel exploits in his spare time. He is already at a high position in life (in geek terms anyway), and tells me, "Hey, you have male privilege and weren't told to not code at elementary school. So we're going to focus on helping women more at this event."

I wonder how we can solve this conundrum and give disadvantaged women at the top, and disadvantaged men at the bottom access to opportunities. One thing that would definitely lead to progress (in my opinion) is a recognition and broader understanding that "male privilege" is often (but not always) confined to the top 1-2% of males in a given broad category. The rest of us often suffer the same impostor syndrome, rejection, and nervousness, regardless of our gender.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#26

Glad that there's a discussion. It would help humanity to also give enough focus on boy child development so that we could save their future, avoid the crimes they commit and their languishing in jails.

>It would help humanity to also give enough focus on boy child development so that we could save their future, avoid the crimes they commit and their languishing in jails.

You are right. I saw this show on CNN a few days ago and it was sad how these people have to re-learn basic things. http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/21/us/prison-reform-overview/

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#27
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would there be a suspicion that this was because of sexism, if the genders were reversed?

I've come to accept that people simply like people that look like them. And there's nothing wrong with that. Women in tech is important. Minority representation is important. And yes positive white male role models for little suburban straight white American boys is important.

You know what happens when everything is important, right?

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#28
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably quite a lot. I'm reminded of a study I read a year or two ago which looked at academic performance in high school; girls received considerably higher class marks on average. However, this effect vanished when they took standardized tests ... and it also vanished when they had male teachers. Whether it's teaching style, the teacher acting as a role model, or something else, I don't know; but gender definitely…

Would there be a suspicion that this was because of sexism, if the genders were reversed?

I think you are looking for something voluntary when that is almost certainly not the case.

1) A friend of mine once astutely commented that the diagnosis for ADHD was basically "middle class with behaviors which annoy female schoolteachers."

2) Boys tend to challenge authority from teens to early 20's to try and work out their place in the world. Most male teachers just roll with it until they have to make a sarcastic, embarrassing remark which short circuits it (never heckle a teacher or a stand-up comic--they've seen it all before). Female teachers tend to react more strongly. I suspect its a physical thing--boys start getting problematically large for most women about 7th or 8th grade and if, as a female, you don't nip it in the bud hard and fast, you can lose control over the situation.

3) Boys need male role models just as women need female role models.

4) Male teachers don't tend to view approval by their students as something useful or desirable (in the case of approval by the female students--it's downright dangerous). The better female teachers are in the same boat, but there are a LOT of female teachers that actively try to gain their student's approval.

If we stew all that together with an absence of male teachers, I suspect that you have more than enough unconscious bias to account for everything.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#29
post #19

Boys have trouble being ready for kindergarten and having self discipline. But those that do make it, even though they are fewer, tend to do better than their female counterparts in later life. Kindergarten activities and society's ideas of self discipline aren't really the conditions human life evolved under. Maybe fighting and looking for action/excitement are the same qualities that make boys successful later (if…

Do you think this also implies that men have more incentive to become successful in their careers, if they choose the socially acceptable route? And if so, do you think this might partly explain why we see more men in high prestige/pay professions (e.g. tech)?

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#30

Okay, waaaaay off topic (but still from the article!): > Low-income families are often led by single mothers, which has been found to affect boys differently than girls. "Differently than"? This is the New York Times . I expect better. (For those who don't get it, the snooty among us prefer "differently from".) A quick search shows any number of occurrences of this jarring bit of word choice in the NY Times of late:…

In this case "than" seems correct because it's short for "affect boys differently than [it affects] girls", right? In order to re-order that to use "from" you'd have to do something like "... the effect of which upon boys has been found to be different from that upon girls."

That's the way I read it also. Omitting words in a parallel structure like this is a form of "elliptical construction" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis_(linguistics)
Post reply on HN