The Rights Of Man

MALE GRADUATES SUFFERING IN RECESSION

Imagine a scenario where fewer female graduates were finding jobs in this recession than men or that fewer females were entering the professions than men. Imagine, the acres of newsprint, airtime and gnashing of teeth from Harman Towers, the Fawcett Society, the Equalities Commission and anyone else wanting to moan about discrimination.

Of course, the reality is that the opposite is happening in Britain in 2009 but the silence is deafening.

The  Higher Education Statistics Agency produced research this week that showed that one in ten men (10.3%) who graduated with a degree last year is unemployed, compared with 6.3% women. With fewer boys now going into university in the first place, this is a worrying trend partly I believe because of the collapse of the private sector (men predominate) as opposed to the continuing expansion of the public sector (female predominate). Certainly, it nails again the myth that Harman put about that women would suffer more in the recession than men.

The gender balance has been changing for years now as the education gap between boys and girls continues as now more women are entering the professions than boys (I swear there was more up-to-date research on this last week but cannot find it). No mention of this profession issue in the gender pay gap debates.

STORIES ROUND-UP

As is now becoming increasingly common, there is such a volume of stories and issues to cover it is difficult to keep up. However, please find below links to issues stories of interest that have not been covered in the last six or so weeks:-

False Accusations

There has been a deluge of false accusation coverage in the newspapers, it is concerning because the power of the false allegation is increasing all the time, to the detriment of the men falsely accused and of course, the women who are genuinely attacked:-

Basildon, Essex

Shropshire

Aberdeen

Durham

Berkshire

Thurrock, Essex

Jarrow, Durham

Advertising

Why men is ads are dumb?

British Men Make Best Husbands

Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph

Have You Turned Your Man Into a Hermaphrodite?

Judith Woods

Men Held for Playing Football With His Children

Daily Mail

President Obama

His betrayal of the working class male

GENDER EDUCATION GAP SHOWS AWARENESS IS BUILDING

One of the most satisfying parts of running this site is when issues raised end up being discussed in the mainstream media or elsewhere.

There was great article in the Mail on Sunday by Winifred Robinson about the gender education gap, a subject raised here.

The issue is now being discussed more widely, even though it has been an issue for decades now, but action is needed, talk is cheap.

IS ANTI-MALE BRITAIN DRIVING INCREASE IN BULLYING?

One of the most disturbing news stories last week was the news from the NSPCC via their What Boys Talk About To Childline report that the number of boys calling their Childline has more than doubled in the past five years.

Their key findings included:-

Between 2002/03 and 2007/08, the annual number of boys counselled by ChildLine more than doubled, from 24,823 to 58,311.

The boy-to-girl ratio of callers has increased from one boy to every four calls from girls, to one in very two.

Bullying was the single biggest reason for boys calling.

Disturbingly, there was a high number of boys reporting sexual abuse and the number of boys ringing because they were depressed, lacked self-esteem or lonely had increased fivefold.

On the latter point, the seriousness of male depression is one that continually is overlooked not just because of the implications for the boys who call but also because I would suspect it is one of the main reasons for the increase in bullying being seen in schools and has lead to more calls.

Why is there an increase in bullying, perhaps it is because those bullies are also lacking in self esteem and I suspect this is in some part due to the lack of progress they make at schools with their exam results. Is it because of the general debasement of men in UK society that instead of finding ways to channel their testosterone into learning or being seen as role models, they take it out on other boys. There is no outlet for them and society, the media, the state and The Government do not seem to care.

Media Coverage - Google News

 

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STORIES ROUND UP

As ever, the stories and issues have come thick and fast so here are some that were too important to miss:-

The Guardian (Lee Elliot Major) - Why Boys Can't Keep Up With The Girls

Daily Telegraph (Melanie McDonagh) - Maybe Men Are Now The Underdog Sex

Sunday Times (Sarah Baxter) - Women Are Victors In The ManCession

The Guardian (Sarah Boseley) - The Future Is Female

The Independent (Richard Garner) - University Women Beating Men At Almost Everything

Scotland on Sunday (Dani Garavelli) - Let Our Boys Be Boys

Daily Express (Anil Dawar) - Outrage At White Men Prevented From Being PCs

LEICESTER COUNCIL SHOWS HOW TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST MEN AND BOYS

If it is not women-only hours for swimming baths, women-only courses, awards and everything else, this site has been alerted to the fact that Leicester Council's Highfields Library offers a women-only session on Tuesday's between 1pm and 3pm. In addition, on the same day it offers women-only drop in sessions.

Not only is this in breach of the Sex Discrimination Act, it shows how ignorant Leicester Council is.

A few weeks ago, a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute highlighted the barriers faced by boys in education and that more needed to be done to break these down. In addition, sites like Books for Boys highlight the need to get more boys reading as they are a long way behind girls in English subjects.

So what does Leicester Council do to help boys read, it turfs them out of the library every Tuesday.

This needs a complaint to the Equalities Commission and the Council.

COMPARE THE HYSTERIA OF THE GENDER PAY GAP WITH THE SILENCE ON THE GENDER EDUCATION GAP

Figures and analysis published by the Higher Education Policy Institute  shows that whilst 49% of girls are going onto university only 38% of men are.

The Gender Education Gap has been much commented upon on this site as all indicators show that at least two generations of boys have performed worse than girls, so much so, that GCSE/A-level results are seven years behind those of girls.

In addition, the site has long stated that a big part of the problem has been the feminisation of education which stemmed from the scrapping of exam based O-levels in 1998 with course-based GCSEs, more suited to female learning.

This point was made by the Institute's Bahram Bekhradnia in an article in The Guardian who said the exams are the "most likely cause" of an achievement gap between the sexes that starts at school but carries on into adulthood. The result is that men are less likely to go to university and less likely to do well when they get there.

However, the silence is deafening from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission who run to the cameras or the press to profess their anger about any statistic which may suggest that women are behind men on some issues. Also where is the Government who Gordon Brown said was if it was not about fairness, then it stood for nothing.

The Government, the Equalities Commission, The Minister for Equalities (Harriett Harman) and the Fawcett Society have dominated the airwaves for years on the gender pay gap and the new equalities bill. They cannot shout loud enough but there is nothing on the fact that boys are languishing behind girls at education. It only matters if it is the other way round.

Their silence is deafening and shows how sexist against boys/men these organisations truly are. If girls were underperforming boys in the same way, you would never hear the end of it.

Other coverage - The Guardian, BBC, The Times 1, Times 2, Daily Telegraph

NEW RESEARCH SHOWS BOYS PERFORM BETTER IN ENGLISH IN SINGLE-SEX CLASSES

Significant research from Steven Proud of Bristol University shows that boys perform better at English when there are fewer girls in the class, especially at primary school (5-11 year olds).

His report Girl Power?, though published in January 2008, seems to have some media leverage as he was talking about it at a Royal Economic Society's conference earlier this week.The report was covered in the British media (BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, Daily Mail).

As stated in the Guardian piece "Boys' English grades are up to a tenth worse when high numbers of girls are in the class with them, though girls' grades are unaffected. Boys do worse in English when there are girls in their class, researchers will say today, contradicting the widely held belief that girls are always a good influence on boys in school."

What Mr Proud is essentially saying is that English should be taught in single-sex classes because boys perform worse in the subject when there are girls present.

He suggests it "there are several possible reasons why boys do not perform well in mixed English classes. One is that if the majority of pupils are girls, the teacher uses learning techniques that are more suited to girls than boys. In addition, a class could be seen to be performing at an acceptable level overall, but boys are being overlooked and left behind."

What it shows is that there are reasons why boys fare less well than girls at English. This site (section and article) has long advocated more widespread single-sex schools/classes and the re-introduction of O-levels (also keeping GSCEs) as one way of tackling boys underachievement. Boys results in English are a long way behind those for girls (link). 

Nearly all education specialists, local eductaion authorities, the Government and others continue to fail do anything much about this. Here is more evidence that shows soemthing can be done to prevent  another generation of boy's falling behind.

There is always one intransigent voice (in the Guardian article) and this is provided by Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham. He said "Boys might be discouraged by how well girls are doing in English," he said, "but that still does not explain why they would do better in maths and science with a higher proportion of girls in their class.

"This is one study, among many, which detects very small differences between boys and girls. But you can't say that it means boys or girls should be separated. It has very little practical importance for schools."

It of course does have a practical significance on boys and they are the ones that count, not the institutions, which are supposedly there to support all pupils. That's what we pay taxes for.

What is he proposing, that we not bother to help boys and it is untrue that there are very small differences between boys and girls. He doesn't bother looking at the exam results then.

SHAMEFUL 'UNIVERSITY' REPORT UNDERMINES BOYS AND BRITISH MEDIA LAP IT UP

A story produced by the University of Ulster came out yesterday (link) that said that sisters spread happiness while brothers breed distress. These so-called academics quizzed a mere 571 people aged 17 to 25 about their lives and found those who grew up with sisters were more likely to be happy and balanced.

This was covered throughout the UK media (BBC, GMTV, Times, Independent, Telegraph, Mail)

There are a number of specific issues:-

Firstly, the sample size is small (only 579) and because of the myriad of ways that families are constructed (for example, two sisters with one brother or one sister and two brothers etc) these conclusions cannot be drawn. In addition, the research is not quantitative or objective, it is based on   the subjective opinions of those surveyed.

Each family is unique - will have different incomes, make up, parental attitudes, geography etc so you cannot draw these types of general conclusions without understanding each family's background.

Plus of course, with the discrimination that boys face especially poor schooling because the education system is geared towards girls plus the problems many boys face if they have no male role models (especially if there is no father in the home because of the family court system), this would also need to be taken into account.

What is concerning is that because this has been produced by 'experts' at a 'university', it is given plenty of coverage by the media even though it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. There is no quote from anyone anywhere in the coverage that challenges this so all the UK media have done is taken the spin from the university (who make it as sensationalist as possible to get the coverage) and rehashed it unthinkingly. Not one journalist has stepped back for a minute and thought about challenging it.

It also means that it is now too easy for every brother in the land to be labelled and stigmatised as a problem - someone who causes distress. And of course, the generalist nature of it all means that the report is basically stating all sisters are good, when as outlined in this debate on the BBC (link), it is not true.

What this 'university' and the so-called 'experts' are doing is saying girls=good, boys=bad, and the media, because it is socially acceptable to attack boys/men, play along with it. Shocking but alas, not surprising. 

Could you imagine the coverage if their research said it was sisters who caused distressed? It would be very little, if any.

CRISIS IN BOYS EDUCATION - LACK OF MALE TEACHERS AT PRIMARY SCHOOL

The UK Government's Training and Development Agency (link) has revealed that more than a quarter of England's primary schools (5 to 11 year olds) have no male teacher (4,587) and in eight counties, there are more than 100 primary schools with no male teacher. Teacher colleges still are admitting three women for each man.

This is of real concern and is partly down to men being demonised as some parents think there is something odd or sinister (link) about a male primary school teacher. In addition, with so many boys living in households with no father or male role model, they are not receiving the discipline, empathy or male role model they need. This then feeds through into discipline problems and also poor results as boys specifically need challenge and discipline which male teachers can often be the best to instill.

This has been a regular theme on the site (link, link) and is a clear reason why there is a crisis in the education of boys in the UK. When will the Government and local eductaion authorities take some real action on this or are they happy for it to continue?

NB - The story was covered in the UK media (Daily Telegraph 1, Daily Telegraph 2, The Guardian, Daily Mail)