War against boys--my foot
Salon.com Life | The campus crusade for guys
[Y]oung women might be more motivated to pursue higher education because, consciously or unconsciously, they sense that there are real economic advantages at stake. Her examination of a Department of Education sample of more than 9,000 high school students, interviewed over a period of eight years, revealed that women with bachelor's degrees earn 24 percent more than women without, while young men with bachelor's degrees experience no significant economic gains. For practical proof of her hypothesis, one need only consider that most well-paid, skilled, blue-collar professions continue to be dominated by men -- while minimum-wage jobs in hospitality and service remain the province of women.
If I were a guy I would never have gone to college, much less gotten a Ph.D. I went to college for exactly one reason: to avoid being a secretary. If I could have been a mechanic I would never have bothered. I wasn't motivated by the carrot--I was driven by the stick.
Forget about affirmative action for boys in college admissions. Why should they go? They don't need the credentials women need to avoid boring shit work. If you want to create a more even gender balance in colleges try affirmative action for blue collar trades and provide more opportunities for women who don't have academic credentials.
1 comment:
As devil's advocate, the reason that women historically chose barefoot-in-the kitchen was because male blue-collar jobs were more mind-numbingly boring than poverty stricken childcare. Maybe shovelling coal was really worse than taking in washing. Times change, and maybe affirmative action in blue-collar employment (whatever that means where you are) would now be a good idea. Might it just be that in a Hobbesian world female subservience served a humanitarian purpose?
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