The day before yesterday I read an article in my favourite newspaper that argued that in the US, males are turning into the weaker sex. Amongst other things, it pointed to an article called 'The End of Men' by Hanna Rosin. It says '[size=2][font="Arial"]Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same[/font][font=Georgia,]'.[/font]
[font="Arial"]Is there anything men can do about this? What do you think?[/font]

[font="Arial"]Is there anything men can do about this? What do you think?[/font]

I don't understand the question. My fellow gender aren't getting educated as much as they could be -- so I should do something?
Are there any signs that this trend is actually due to gender discrimination? (i.e. something that we should do something about).

I thought the point of gender equality was that you don't have to care about gender in work/education any more? You know, meritocratic instead of sexist...

And as for genetic predispositions (e.g. one gender being better at something), they're just head-starts. People with negative genetic predispositions just have to try harder or be nurtured differently to reach the same levels of merit. Predisposition isn't destiny.

[color="#1C2837"]Are there any signs that this trend is actually due to gender discrimination? [/quote]
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[color="#1C2837"]It isn't due to gender discrimination, but it is actually causing gender discrimination. The article mentions that some universities are now actually letting in fewer women in order to avoid crossing the 60% gender line. Which to me actually sounds like a good thing. I don't neccessarily believe in meritocracy. If so many girls are applying to universities and actually having better chances of getting accepted than boys, something should be done to level the playing field (which it seems these universities are doing).
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[color="#1C2837"]'[size=2][font="Arial"]To avoid crossing the dreaded 60 percent threshold, admissions officers have created a language to explain away the boys’ deficits: “Brain hasn’t kicked in yet.” “Slow to cook.” “Hasn’t quite peaked.” “Holistic picture.” At times Delahunty has become so worried about “overeducated females” and “undereducated males” that she jokes she is getting conspiratorial. She once called her sister, a pediatrician, to vet her latest theory: “Maybe these boys are genetically like canaries in a coal mine, absorbing so many toxins and bad things in the environment that their DNA is shifting. Maybe they’re like those frogs—they’re more vulnerable or something, so they’ve gotten deformed.”[/font][size=2][font="Arial"]Clearly, some percentage of boys are just temperamentally unsuited to college, at least at age 18 or 20, but without it, they have a harder time finding their place these days. “Forty years ago, 30 years ago, if you were one of the fairly constant fraction of boys who wasn’t ready to learn in high school, there were ways for you to enter the mainstream economy,” says Henry Farber, an economist at Princeton. “When you woke up, there were jobs. There were good industrial jobs, so you could have a good industrial, blue-collar career. Now those jobs are gone.”[/font][font="Georgia,"]'[/font]

There is always discrimination on college entry, we discriminate to choose the candidates accepted. You just have to determine what is acceptable to discriminate on. Innate things like race and gender are clearly unfair ways to discriminate in this case*. Discriminating on academic ability is a reasonably fair, because a) you can work at it and b) it is related to the goal: education.

Fairness is a desirable sub-goal, but not to the detriment of the actual goal. Of course our measurement of academic ability is quite biased, those with good memory but little understanding can perform at the same level as those with lots of understanding but who refuse to rote learn.

Another option is to give males some extra time, as they lag behind females in their mental maturity by a handful of years. I don't know the best way to do that though.

Choose your poison - you've got to discriminate somehow. Or institute a random lottery system - that'll be fair, right?

* Consider how we do consider it fair to discriminate on gender in sports, as it has a role in determining a persons physical peak. It is also interesting to think that we don't discriminate on race, even though that seems to be related too (at least for running!).

TBH I think men in general just need to step up their own game without holding women back. EDIT: Also I think it would be healthy to stop thinking about this as a competition... Men and women are both essential parts of the world, and it would be wise to work together EDIT: taking advantage of our different strengths.

How many of these females are going to graduate with some useless arts degree and end up in a managerial position at McDonald's though?

[color="#1C2837"]Are there any signs that this trend is actually due to gender discrimination?

[color="#1C2837"]It isn't due to gender discrimination, but it is actually causing gender discrimination. The article mentions that some universities are now actually letting in fewer women in order to avoid crossing the 60% gender line.[/quote]Well I'd say they should quit caring about gender ratios and not discriminate.[color="#1C2837"]

If so many girls are applying to universities and actually having better chances of getting accepted than boys, something should be done to level the playing field (which it seems these universities are doing).[/quote]This makes no sense to me. Should they make sure there's equal representation from every year of birth-date, every hair colour, every choice of favorite colour, every skin pigment, every religious dedication, every choice of car-make? Those things are all just as arbitrary as trying to ensure equal representation from both genders.

How many of these females are going to graduate with some useless arts degree and end up in a managerial position at McDonald's though?

O_o

Another option is to give males some extra time, as they lag behind females in their mental maturity by a handful of years. I don't know the best way to do that though.

I think giving males extra time sounds like a good idea!

I don't see no issue here. In the long run, it may be frightening or something (...), but the progress is pretty slow, so I don't really feel the thing. I grew up in this world, so I'm used to it I guess. Anyway, when mammoths are back again, we can prove our physical strength again.

EDIT: my message didn't go through I'm sure. So, it's like heating the pot under a frog, but this gender thing doesn't seem to be a bad thing. But of course, we can (and probably will) make it worse that it should be.

[quote name='MatsK' timestamp='1304592049' post='4806838']
[color="#1C2837"]If so many girls are applying to universities and actually having better chances of getting accepted than boys, something should be done to level the playing field (which it seems these universities are doing).

This makes no sense to me. Should they make sure there's equal representation from every year of birth-date, every hair colour, every choice of favorite colour, every skin pigment, every religious dedication, every choice of car-make? Those things are all just as arbitrary as trying to ensure equal representation from both genders.
[/quote]

I wouldn't say that trying to ensure equal representation from both genders is 'arbitrary'. How men and women are educated and ultimately earning has alot to say for family compositions and birth rates in a society. The article also mentions that the number of single mothers is steadily increasing, as there simply aren't enough partners with equal or better status to choose from, and the girls are steadfastly rejecting the guys with a poor or no education. Also, women with higher education tend to postpone familylife, and by the time they're starting to reach their biological peak of 35-40, they're either finding that there aren't enough potential partners to choose from at a higher or equal status, or that males with a lower status have altogether given up the prospect of marriage and/or dating.

[font=Georgia,]The terms of marriage have changed radically since 1970. Typically, women’s income has been the main factor in determining whether a family moves up the class ladder or stays stagnant. And increasing numbers of women—unable to find men with a similar income and education—are forgoing marriage altogether. In 1970, 84 percent of women ages 30 to 44 were married; now 60 percent are. In 2007, among American women without a high-school diploma, 43 percent were married. And yet, for all the hand-wringing over the lonely spinster, the real loser in society—the only one to have made just slight financial gains since the 1970s—is the single man, whether poor or rich, college-educated or not. Hens rejoice; it’s the bachelor party that’s over.[/font][font=Georgia,]The sociologist Kathryn Edin spent five years talking with low-income mothers in the inner suburbs of Philadelphia. Many of these neighborhoods, she found, had turned into matriarchies, with women making all the decisions and dictating what the men should and should not do. “I think something feminists have missed,” Edin told me, “is how much power women have” when they’re not bound by marriage. The women, she explained, “make every important decision”—whether to have a baby, how to raise it, where to live. “It’s definitely ‘my way or the highway,’” she said. “Thirty years ago, cultural norms were such that the fathers might have said, ‘Great, catch me if you can.’ Now they are desperate to father, but they are pessimistic about whether they can meet her expectations.” The women don’t want them as husbands, and they have no steady income to provide. So what do they have?[/quote]

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