SHAMEFUL SILENCE ON GENDER EDUCATION GAP

Figures released by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills today showed that 51% of girls now enter higher education compared to 40% of boys. A gender education gap of 11%.

There is not a peep from the Government, the Conservatives or any other party about the gender education gap. Nothing from the laughably entitled 'Equalities' and Human Rights Commission.

Nothing, just silence.

Far more girls are entering the professions and boys are continually behind at all levels of education, nothing either is said on that

Compare it to the constant hullabaloo (and myth making) over the gender pay gap (12% for full time workers) even though it has been proven that the pay gap is due mainly to many women taking time out of the workplace to bring up a family.

No proper research, no proper thought as to why this gender education gap is happening and no policies that could help to boost boys education (rightly of course not to the detriment of girls' education) are ever expounded.

Can you imagine, if the genders were reversed and that far fewer girls were entering university than boys,  - we would never hear the end of it. But because it is boys, the figures just float by without comment. It shows inherently and culturally how much boys and men don't matter to the establishment in this country, they are the disposable sex -a culture explained very well by Conservative MP Paul Goodman yesterday.

It really is a tragedy that politicians and the establishment pay no attention to this matter when attention would be paid if the genders were switched. No explanation is ever given as to why this is the case.

It is sexism by silence. 

Posted by Skimmington

Comments

[John Kimble]

Excellent article.

One should also note the media's failings here too. The fact that 51% of young women going to university was announced as something positive, with incredibly one sided reporting. It's like pure gender feminist PR:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8596504.stm

Many reports didn't even disclose the percentage of men at university so we could see the actual gap, and they certainly didn't dare suggest there might be sexism and failures occurring. No link was made to issues a primary school level etc which is of course exactly where this problem begins.

Finally, there was zero acknowledgement that some of our best universities still actually ban men from attending! Imagine the outcry if we had a significant minority of university places filled by females AND still had men only universities on top. You'd never hear the end of it.

[Groan]

As has been noted in this blog previously there is remarkable resitance to proper research into the poorer performance of boys in education. When I was young there was a great deal of work done on the poor performance of girls. However I suspect the growth in female university participation is less surprrising than at first seems. Many young women choose interesting but not very marketable courses and still head for a narrow range of jobs. Many young men actually choose work over uni and tend to be more resent in the hard subjects. The result is still that men are in a much more diverse range of work including the dirty dangerous and risky jobs. However they are effectively being excluded from state sector jobs and some of the key professions. As research showed a few years ago men face discrimination as these professions prioritise women entrants.

[Tony Rogers]

When was the last time anyone with an honest brain believed that any of these so-called "equality" groups actually wanted any sort of "equality"? They are, and always have been, self-advocacy movements. They were always going to jump off the equality bandwagon once the inequality was in their favour. To be successful, these divisive cretins have been guilty, indeed the main perpetrators, of all those claims of collusion and nepotism etc that they spent years accusing us of. Like them though, we too must conquer the law if we want any kind of redress.

[Jim]

Don't worry things even themselves up later. All those gung-ho women with degrees soon get married, have kids and leave the labour market, or go part-time. Leaving the men to pick up the slack.

I would hazard a guess that if you analysed all the people with degrees under 35 say, pretty much all the men would be employed in jobs comensurate with their standard of education, (or running their own businesses), whereas there would be a significant proportion of women who were not in the labour market at all, and another large chunk working considerably below their degree education level. I reckon by age 40 the number of economically active men and women of degree level would be pretty equal.

Of course you could argue its a complete waste of taxpayers money to educate all these women who then never use their newfound knowledge, but thats another argument!

[Groan]

Jim you are quite right. However the choices made are used to justify discrimination against young men in two ways. The fist is the lack of attention to boy's poor performance at school.With notable exception of the recent flurry of inititives for black boys, the fact that men go on to work hard and achieve is used to excuse a lack of interest in their education. The second is a whole raft of scholarships,bursaries,support groups and positive action hanging over from the days decades ago when wen were in the minority at Uni. Clearly now they are not needed yet they continue. You are probably correct that the result will be women "drop out" of the rat race at least for a while. However this shouldn't excuse the inequity meted out to boys and young men.

[John Mackie]

A read through the equality guff of universities and colleges tends to illustrate the level of sex discrimination against men.
men seem to be included as an after-thought.
Examples of this feminism can be seen in:

Derby college: "currently the College employs a higher ratio of women to men; and that the female student population is greater than the male student population: in general females are still more likely to suffer discrimination".

nottingham university: "The establishment of a Women‟s Officer was considered a potential solution to some of the difficulties perceived by women".

"The School of Biosciences is delighted to announce it has been awarded an Athena SWAN Silver Award in August 2009. The Athena SWAN awards recognise and celebrate good practice on recruiting, retaining and promoting women working in science, engineering and technology (SET) in higher education and research."

loughborough University: "Our in house monthly publication, news@lboro, regularly features items promoting positive images of women staff and students.".

"Each year, a list of actions for the forthcoming year are identified as a result of cases dealt with the previous year and other initiatives. Figures for the year of these cases are low with slightly more women reporting incidents, whether staff or students, and slightly more men being highlighted as perpetrators".

"SWAN is a scheme that recognises excellence in
science employing female staff in higher
education. The charter was launched in June
2005. Loughborough University is a founder
member. It is has bronze, silver and gold awards to
apply for by UK Universities, who are committed to
working towards the achievement of Athena's
aims"

It all gets a little one side what with women committees and women networks while men are perpretrators.