I Love Being Right

Here is a little blip from feministing that all but confirms my rant earlier this month:

May 21, 2008
New study says "boy crisis" is a myth
A new report from the American Association of University Women says that the idea that there's a "boy crisis" in U.S. education is a myth. (Cough, cough.)

The most important conclusion of "Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education" is that academic success is more closely associated with family income than with gender, its authors said.
"A lot of people think it is the boys that need the help," co-author Christianne Corbett said. "The point of the report is to highlight the fact that that is not exclusively true. There is no crisis with boys. If there is a crisis, it is with African American and Hispanic students and low-income students, girls and boys."

Of course, the original media frenzy wasn't exactly focused on kids of color, but instead featured magazine covers with sad looking white boys and complaints about young men having to deal with the horrors of a supposedly feminized education system. Let's hope this report will set some of that straight, and put the educational focus where it really needs to be.


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From the Washington Post article:

AAUW's study does show female students outperforming male students in some measures. Women have earned 57 percent of bachelor's degrees since 1982 and outperformed boys on high school grade-point averages. In 2005, male students had a GPA of 2.86 and girls, 3.09.
The proportion of young men graduating from high school and earning college degrees is at an all-time high, the study notes. "Perhaps the most compelling argument against a boys crisis is that men continue to outearn women in the workplace," the report says.

Among all women and men working full time, year-round, median annual earnings for women were 77 percent of men's earnings in 2005. When looking at the college-educated, full-time work force a year out of college, women, on average, earned 80 percent of what men did in 2001. Women a decade out of college earned 69 percent of men's earnings in 2003. And men consistently earned more than women at differing educational levels and within race and ethnic groups, the study found.
Hill said that recent articles highlighting the success of female students in college have incorrectly suggested that men are being undercut as a result.