Blog Post

The table above is based on some of the items in the list “For every 100 girls….” that I featured last April on CD here. The list was originally created by Tom Mortenson in 2011 and I updated the list earlier this year with Tom’s permission. Special thanks to Gale Pooley for helping create the table.

The data in the table show that on many, many measures of a) educational, behavioral and mental health outcomes, b) alcohol, drug addiction, and drug overdoses, c) suicide, murder, violent crimes, and incarceration, d) job fatalities and e) homelessness, boys and men are faring much worse than girls and women. And yet despite the fact that boys and men are at so much greater risk than girls and women on so many different measures, those significant gender disparities that disproportionately and adversely affect men get almost no attention. In fact, it’s girls and women who get a disproportionate amount of attention, resources, and financial support, including:

1. There are women’s centers and women’s commissions on almost every college campus in the country, but not a single men’s center or commission that I’m aware of.

2. In higher education, there is a significant and disproportionate number of sex-specific scholarships, fellowships, awards, initiatives, etc. for female students and faculty. Many of those single-sex, female-only programs are currently being challenged with Title IX complaints to the Office for Civil Rights.

3. From the Obama White House website:

On March 11, 2009, President Obama signed an Executive Order creating the White House Council on Women and Girls. In his remarks at the signing, the President underscored that the purpose of the Council is to ensure that each of the agencies in which they’re charged takes into account the needs of women and girls in the policies they draft, the programs they create, the legislation they support and that the true purpose of our government is to ensure that in America, all things are still possible for all people.

Despite pressure from various groups to address some of the concerns outlined in the table above that disproportionately affect boys and men, Obama refused to create a “White House Council on Men and Boys.”

4. There are hundreds of single-sex, girl-only summer (and other) STEM programs at universities all over the country that illegally discriminate against boys in violation of Title IX’s prohibition of sex discrimination, including sex discrimination against males. More than 70 of those programs are currently being challenged for violating Title IX and more than 30 programs are now subject to federal investigations for civil rights violations. At least six of those programs have either been discontinued, supplemented with boy-only programs, or converted to co-ed programs open to students of all gender identities.

5. Multiple single-sex, girl-only computer science and STEM organizations that exclude boys including Girls Who Code, Latina Girls Code, Black Girls Code, Techbridge Girls, and Project Scientist. Some of those programs are currently being legally challenged with complaints to the Office for Civil Rights when those programs are hosted on the campus of a university that receives federal financial assistance and is therefore required to enforce Title IX’s prohibition of sex discrimination.

6. There are Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE and similar names) departments or units at most major universities like the University of Michigan, Rochester Institute of Technology, Syracuse University. and Georgia Tech. There probably isn’t a single “Men in Science and Engineering” program in the country, and there are very few if any “Men in Nursing” or “Men in Education” programs that address the under-representation of men in those academic fields.