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Can Men’s Centers Reverse the Gender Gap on Campus?

photograph of empty lecture hall

Within the past couple decades, the gender ratio of students entering college has been experiencing a great reversal from the pre-1970s college admission rates. Today, college’s student populations are made up of almost 60 percent of women and 40 percent of men, a number that is only expected to rise. Millions fewer men are even stepping foot on campus. And even once in college, women are graduating at higher levels than men across the four-year, five-year, and six-year rates. After a year of online classes due to COVID-19, 75 percent of those who dropped out of college were male students.

This may not seem like it would be a big issue to many people — after all, it took many decades of fighting by women to force colleges to even accept them into their programs. Now, they’re achieving at far greater levels than their male counterparts. Unfortunately, in the global context, millions of girls and women still have no access to education, or their education is lacking in the quality that boys and men receive. Meanwhile, in the professional world, men still dominate elite and upper level positions, while women are still trying to break the glass ceiling. Despite the significance of these larger trends, the gender gap in college enrollment will also have an important impact on society and the economy for generations to come. Yet, many people, administrations, and institutions are struggling to understand and explain this phenomenon.

While there are mostly likely a combination of factors that result in this trend, some have offered speculative explanations that might provide educators a way to prevent a continuing decline. One such theory suggests that the widening gap is simply an extension of the behavioral trends witnessed in child development. Historically, women and girls have been doing better with their education throughout their childhoods and into adulthood. Even at the elementary level, girls perform better at school with higher grades and improved behavior in the classroom. By the high school age, more girls are graduating with degrees and then applying to college, than boys, who continue to lag behind. The fact that this starts at such a young age could suggest biological factors, but could also speak to larger sociological factors. By the time children are entering school they are well aware of their gender and, while they are not explicitly aware, express behavior that conforms to the societal expectations of that gender. So, if 75 percent of public school teachers are women, then boys in those classrooms may internalize the idea that the educational field is a female-dominated field and not want to pursue higher education later in life. Or, a lack of male role models in school, or at home, could also push boys away from trying to excel in school.

Another historical factor could be that men have been skipping higher education for labor-intensive work for almost a century. Given the high cost of college tuition, it can be tempting to go straight from high school into the workforce for financial reasons. Women, on the other hand, have fewer opportunities outside of college (or marriage) to earn enough money to have a financially stable life.

But even when men do make it onto college campuses, they still are not graduating at comparable rates to women. Some have speculated that it has to do with the current culture and climate on college campuses. First, initial imbalances have a tendency to snowball; if a college’s student body starts becoming overwhelmingly female, then the school begins to lose more and more admissions. In an attempt to counter these shifts, colleges have been prioritizing admitting male students in hopes to shorten the gap because a more equal balance creates a more attractive campus for both male and female students.  Another (seemingly politically-motivated) theory is that college campuses are making men feel unwelcome on campus by focusing their efforts and attention on different student populations. These commentators claim that continued criticism of white male privilege has turned this audience off, and that we shouldn’t be shocked by their disinterest in the academy. Whether this is a factor that can be, or even should be, addressed is another question altogether.

One innovative way that colleges have been trying to address men struggling during college is with Men’s centers on campus. Most people are probably already familiar with Women’s centers on college campuses, which offer a safe place for people to visit to discuss or gather information on topics relating to women’s issues. Men’s centers, on the other hand, would work on issues directly relating to men, whose consequences are often the focus in Women’s Centers. For example, The University of Massachusetts Amherst has their own Men and Masculinities Center that takes a male-positive approach to their mission. By teaching men to focus on changing for the better, this mindset “rejects the idea that men are somehow intrinsically emotionless, violent or sexist.” It is a tragic and historical idea that men cannot feel or cry, which only results in men finding other, often violent, ways to express their emotions, particularly against women. In terms of mental health, this positive mindset could greatly affect the staggering numbers of suicide among men compared to women. For college students across genders, suicide is the second leading cause of death with over 1,000 suicides on college campuses per year. When evaluating the numbers by genders, in 2019 men were over three times as likely to die by suicide than women. Creating a Men’s center on campuses could potentially encourage men to speak with professionals or each other about their feelings and mental health. Even if campuses provide counselors, men might be deterred from seeking out help or visiting for fear of not living up to the image of a “true man” that society has depicted as cold and tough. While these are only a few issues that Men’s Centers could address for men in college, they could have a profound impact on the performance of men in college. Eventually, if more men graduate with college degrees, then more and more might start applying to college in the first place as well.

Men’s centers can’t address all of the issues that men face while pursuing their higher education, but they have the potential to create successful experiences for more men on campus. It would take time, but the ratio could slide back towards a more equal rate if boys see more and more examples of the benefits of higher education. As mentioned earlier, however, many of the factors can be attributed to starting at a young age for boys, so more will need to be done at the earlier stages of education to get at the root of the problem, rather than reaching the percent that make it onto college campuses.

The (un)Fairness of Cis-Only Sports

photograph of staggered starting blocks for track competition

On February 12th, three families sued to make women’s sport in Connecticut exclude trans athletes from participating. But this is just one event in a trend of anti-LGBTQ legislation and litigation in 2020, including bills in South Dakota, Florida, and Colorado that would make it a felony for medical professionals to provide healthcare to trans minors, despite the American Academy of Pediatrics’ statement in 2018 advocating for a “gender-affirming approach” to care for minors.

These teens in Connecticut are not alone in pursuing action for trans exclusion in sport: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Washington all have Republican-sponsored bills under consideration “prohibiting transgender student athletes from participating in gender-segregated sports in a way that’s consistent with their gender identity.”

Attorney Christiana Holcomb (using transphobic language that erases the fact that trans girls *are* girls) made the claim: “Forcing girls to be spectators in their own sports is completely at odds with Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics.” Note that if the plaintiffs have their way, girls who aren’t cis aren’t simply being forced “to be spectators in their own sports,” but rather are being excluded completely from competition.

Identifying gender with an underlying biological feature is actually pretty difficult from a biological perspective. In 2018, the Trump administration attempted to define gender biologically and received a great deal of criticism from medical and gender specialists alike. “The idea that a person’s sex is determined by their anatomy at birth is not true, and we’ve known that it’s not true for decades,” said executive director of the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, Dr. Joshua D. Safer. Chromosomes, hormones, or external anatomical features like genitals are insufficient indicators to categorize the population into two rigid gender binaries. Further, two percent of the population have differences of sexual development (sometimes self-identifying as “intersex”) – this is roughly the same portion of the population that has red hair.

So why are athletes clinging to identities given to them based on apparent anatomy at birth?

One of the teen athlete plaintiffs, articulated their position: “That biological unfairness doesn’t go away because of what someone believes about gender identity. All girls deserve the chance to compete on a level playing field.” The “biological unfairness” alluded to here is the supposed competitive advantage that trans women have over cis women. The statements made by the teens make many appeals to fairness in sport and making sure everyone gets “their chance.”

“Fairness” may be a common value that we appeal to pretty frequently, but it doesn’t describe a stable state of affairs: it means different things in different contexts. Being fair to employees may mean giving the same salary to those who do the same amount of work, or it could mean giving more money to those who have been employed for longer at the company. Being fair to individuals in a classroom may mean not making discriminations (say, in awarding grades) on the basis of health and likely lifespans, whereas in the context of determining organ transplant recipients, health and likely lifespans may be a morally permissible standard for discrimination.

In competitive sport, “fairness” is a complicated standard. Competitors are understood to be looking for and developing advantages over their opponents. If an athlete perceives a weakness in an opponent, taking advantage of it is often the appropriate response. Outside of competitive sport, taking advantage of a weakness can be a textbook case of exploitation.

Basically, in sport, having a competitive advantage is not the same thing as having an unfair advantage. From there, the fairness issue gets complicated further because there is empirical evidence that trans women do not achieve a “significant” competitive advantage after transitioning. The advantage that is found can be estimated “from 2-3%.”

Competitive sport is competitive in the sense that training and in-sport strategy is largely concerned with garnering advantages for one’s own side and diminishing advantages for one’s opponent. Living and presenting as one’s gender is not the same thing as seeking these advantages any more than having a disposition for a particular height may give an advantage for some sports. However, the claim made by some who are attempting to exclude trans women is that any advantage they may have over cis women in virtue of being trans is an unfair one – is different than the advantage gained by happening to be a particular height. It is important to acknowledge that different sports privilege different physical presentations. In basketball, for instance, being tall represents a considerable advantage – more than 2-3% – while in gymnastics it represents a disadvantage.

The range of differences in gender performance in competitive sport is also significant: in the Iditarod, women frequently win overall, and in many endurance sports the gender gap is quite small, but in competitive weightlifting the gap reaches nearly 37%. These gaps receive a great deal of interpretation; during the 20th century, women’s sport achievement improved at a remarkably fast rate and the previously wider gap decreased. The increased access to resources, training, and competitions fostered women in sport. It is difficult to predict, given advances in sports science, training, and hopefully further progress in gender inclusion, how the performance gap will behave in the future.

A systematic review of the literature pertaining to sport policies in transgender people in 2017 concluded: “there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery) and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.”

If we grant the 3% advantage, and determine this to be an “unfair” advantage, this does not necessarily lead to one clear call to action. For instance, in 2018, ethicists considering the advantage that trans women may hold in competitions concluded not that this should lead to exclusion from sport, but rather a more critical attitude towards male/female categories in sport in the first place. In 2019, ethicists suggested traits that are relevant to particular sports’ skill be the determining factor to segregate classes. For instance, we could consider dividing basketball into height classes, which would allow for shorter, skilled players to compete. This could mirror weight classes in boxing and martial arts competitions, for instance.

While the underlying value that the plaintiffs are appealing to is “fairness,” their aim is to exclude their fellow athletes from competing. A more critical analysis of why the aim of a fair competition and success in sport is required for these athletes to move forward. Perhaps they should consider why the the American Civil Liberties Union is on the other side of their case: though the plaintiffs are appealing to Title IX’s gender protections, the ACLU has said it will represent the transgender teens: “Attorney Chase Strangio, deputy director for Trans Justice with the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project, said transgender girls also are protected by Title IX.” Women get to play sports.

The Cost of Motherhood

Image of a woman holding a young child

Having a child is one of the most impactful decisions a person will make in their life. And yet, this decision affects women much more than it does men. From the physical act of birthing a child to the thousand daily needs encountered in a day, women frequently inhabit what Mary Mellor has called ”biological time”. ”Biological time” is distinct from remunerative, capitalist time in that it includes all the work that is necessary for the maintenance and flourishing of human life, from giving birth and palliative care, to feeding, clothing, providing emotional reassurance, interpersonal interaction, education, laundry, specialist appointments and play dates, birthdays and leisure activities, and health care. This means that women, far from possessing leisure time, have traditionally created it for men by taking care of the innumerable necessities of daily life, including child rearing.

In 2018, it seems strange that we still face a gendered division of labour that was first rationalized in Aristotle’s Politics. Aristotle justified a labour division which grouped women (and slaves) as domestic workers – an arrangement he found reasonable in order to free up the male household head for self-development and the presumably nobler activities of studying philosophy and city governance.

Some strides have been made to close the gender gap in household tasks and caregiving. While the gaps have narrowed somewhat, they are far from closed. Men typically receive adulation and support for the parenting and adulthood tasks which they complete. A man taking his children grocery shopping will likely be perceived by bystanders as a swoon-worthy superhero, while a mother doing the same thing is more likely to be scrutinized. This unfair standard follows women into the workplace, where men who leave early to take care of family members are seen as responsible individuals, but women struggle to be seen as competent and professionally motivated when they do the same thing. White men who have children earn a fatherhood bonus, while women who have children earn 20 percent less in the long-term.

The design of the work week itself is not open to those who are responsible for giving care. Instead, the structure of contemporary labour presupposes a gendered division of labour whereby the worker is freed to devote eight or more consecutive hours daily without interruptions or crises from home. While economists have already critiqued the 40-hour work week, with evidence showing higher productivity and well-being among workers for less and more flexible work hours, companies are slow to follow the evidence. Even in businesses which have implemented these policies, women may avoid taking advantage of proffered flexibility to forestall being judged as “uncommitted”. On-site child-care remains a pipe dream for most professions. Even among Fortune 100 companies, which typically have generous terms towards its employees, only seventeen offer daycare.

Loss of leisure, earnings, workplace respect, and career opportunities are not the only penalties women face in virtue of having a reproductive body. Women bear intimate scrutiny, politicization, policing and even bans for actions regarding all their choices – from contraception to breastfeeding, while condoms, Viagra, and even public urination are taken for granted as essential.

Given these challenges, it is hardly shocking to surmise why young women are choosing to have fewer or no children. Young women realize that the idea that women can ”have it all” remains a cruel joke, and it seems they are responding with pragmatism to harsh facts.

But just as was the case with capitalism’s role in shifting gender roles (though in many cases by increasing women’s work rather than transforming it), we may be headed toward another shift. The post-recession economic challenges Millennial women face may place the zero-sum competition between career and family in a much starker light, to the degree that many are embracing their professional and leisure capacities fully to the point of declining parenthood.

It is clear that women, as individuals, are responding in creative and complex ways to competing social structures that combine to exclude them from ”having it all”. Women are negotiating their limited opportunities to make the best of their singular lives. Nonetheless, the struggles that they face reveal a society where lack of gender parity runs much deeper than numbers. When we look at women’s meager options, they reveal how the structure of late capitalism, imbued with patriarchal assumptions, has made absolutely no provision or priority for caring and the culturing of humans. Women are aware that they subsidize not only career and leisure opportunities for their partners, but also subsume the costs of producing workers, citizens and leaders of society as a whole. It is our collective responsibility to address the lingering absence of care in our economic and social structures that have so marginalized women from full participation in remunerative and political life, separated men from the responsibilities and the humanity of caring labour, and left our social structures and institutions so alienated from the needs of the human spirit.

Does the U.S Need a School Lesson from Finland?

Addressing American families, Howard Gardner, an education professor at Harvard, suggested to “‘[l]earn from Finland, which has the most effective schools and which does just about the opposite of what we are doing in the United States.’” William Doyle, writer for the Los Angeles Times, abided by Gardners advice and enrolled his seven-year-old son in a Finnish school. Doyle got an inside look at the higher education system as well when he became a professor in a Finnish University. Reflecting fondly on his familys five months there, he refers to the school system as stunningly stress-freewhile being stunningly good.Doyle recalls, Finns put into practice cultural mantras I heard over and over: Let children be children,’ ‘The work of a child is to play,and Children learn best through play.’” These values contrast greatly with Americas mentality of teaching for the standardized test.

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