The relentless onwards and upwards march of girls, through education and the workplace, is having an adverse effect on boys, and on society, writes SHEILA WAYMAN

I WASN’T expecting the Tesco advertising booklet that was pushed through my door to contain offensive language. But there, in the “Back to School” section, was a pink ringbinder illustrated with a drawing of a building labelled Stupid Factory and, underneath, ran the tag line “Where Boys are Made”, with “Boys are Smelly” in smaller type added for good measure.

I took umbrage on behalf of boys everywhere. If the word “girls” had been substituted for boys or, heaven forbid, “the Irish” there would have been uproar.

Maybe it is no worse than the nursery rhyme that decreed boys were made of “slugs and snails and puppy dog tails”, whereas for girls it was “sugar and spice and all things nice”. But that goes back to the early 19th century and we like to think society has progressed since then.

The few voices of protest – Tesco tells The Irish Times it got a “handful” of complaints and a granny of one expressed her disgust about it to Joe Duffy on Liveline – were drowned out in the stampede to buy what a spokesman for the supermarket chain says proved a very popular item and is now sold out. However, there are no plans to restock it.

Stupid Factory is a very successful brand created in the US by self-confessed “man-child” Todd Goldman, after he had some of his doodles printed onto T-shirts and founded the David and Goliath company to sell them.

I suppose I should be grateful that some of his other “hilarious” slogans such as “Boys are Stupid . . . Throw Rocks At Them” – also the title of his first book – are not being peddled on supermarket shelves here. No doubt I will be accused of lacking a sense of humour but the “irony” of grown-ups should not be inflicted on children.

At one time, having been educated in an all-girls school from the age of four through to 17, I was a cheerleader for all things female. I am of the generation of girls who went on to embrace the fruits of the “second wave” of feminism in Ireland, led in the 1970s by strong-minded women such as June Levine, Nuala O’Faolain, Nell McCafferty and Mary Robinson.

News of the “first woman to . . .”, for example, be an Aer Lingus pilot (1979), be enlisted in the Defence Forces (1980), become a Garda superintendent (1989) or be elected President (1990), was always a cause for celebration. It seemed light years ahead of our mothers’ generation who had to contend with the “marriage bar” until 1973.

However now, as a mother of two boys, I view the relentless “onwards and upwards” march of girls, through education and the workplace, in a different light. And while we might have been warned at school that “boys are only after one thing . . .”, the sight of gangs of teenage girls swaggering into discos today suggests the stiletto is firmly on the other foot.

An analysis of gender in Irish education, Sé Sí, noted in 2007 that the gap in performance in the Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate examinations was substantial – in favour of girls – and that it had widened steadily.

“Girls outperform boys in more than 80 per cent of Leaving Certificate subjects; and coincidentally, in 80 per cent of subjects the difference in favour of girls has increased since the early 1990s,” it noted, predicting that girls would soon be eclipsing boys in the one mainstream subject they had traditionally lagged behind in – mathematics.

Indeed, results for the 2011 Leaving Certificate show that 82.5 per cent of girls, compared with 79.5 per cent of boys, who sat higher level maths got C3 or higher. However, only 3,758 girls attempted higher level maths, compared with 4,479 boys.

While various factors are at play here, not least the earlier maturing of the female of the species, the “feminisation” of Irish education – from the staff to the system of learning – does boys no favours.

Even in most extra-curricular activities, the female influence is dominant – from the leaders to the ever-keen girls participating. It is no wonder boys take refuge in soccer, rugby or GAA.

The schooling system is quite female, agrees Sue Palmer, a former head teacher and author of several books on childhood, including Toxic Childhood and 21st Century Boys.

Girls, due to a mix of nature and nurture, are better equipped to do the things that are valued in school, like sitting down quietly, getting on with reading and doing small-scale stuff activity which often requires fine motor skills.

“If we start formal education early, as we do in Britain and Ireland, boys are going to be at a disadvantage. In the UK now girls outperform boys at everything at the age of five, which means they have a head start.”

Boys are competitive and if they can’t win, a lot of them will think that they can’t be bothered, says Palmer. “And they will do other things and become a problem.”

She is a fan of the Scandinavian system where formal education does not start until the age of seven and kindergarten education, from age three, is play based and supports children’s learning in ways that come naturally – and differently for boys and girls.

Good pre-schools here take a similar approach, according to Teresa Heeney, chief operations officer of Early Childhood Ireland.

“Children have a lot of choice in what they want to engage in,” she says. The key thing you want to see in any pre-school service is staff observing what interests children and ensuring that the environment, equipment and timetable affords the children the opportunity to pursue those interests.

It is accepted that boys require more space in pre-schools and want outdoor facilities. “They will take as much space as is physically available.” Yet more spacious childcare centres are penalised by the commercial rates system, she points out.

As the recognition of the importance of outdoor play for all children, but particularly boys, grows, Early Childhood Ireland is recommending to all its members that they provide outdoor gear.

“The notion that it is raining is no longer an acceptable reason . . . not to go outside,” says Heeney. Parents have a part to play here, she adds, and need to “accept that if their children come home manky dirty, they have had a good day”.

But children are trooping into the more structured environment of primary school too soon, where compliance, neat handwriting and a devotion to reading will be readily rewarded.

Palmer believes society has got less tolerant of boisterous children and boys exhibiting “what is probably fairly natural masculine behaviour”.

When I tell her about the Stupid Factory ringbinder, she says: “It just makes you want to weep, doesn’t it? Don’t they know about self-fulfilling prophecies if boys are given that . . .

“If they can make some money, they will make some money and they think it’s funny. It’s kids’ lives that they are ruining.”

To the common argument put up by commercial interests that “it’s only a bit of fun”, she points out that this has been the cry of the schoolyard bully through the ages. “The knock-on effect of brain washing children into negative attitudes about themselves, or each other, is going to be bad for society.”

She recites a rhyme that is popular in playgrounds and clearly a sign of the times: “Girls go to college and get more knowledge, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.”

While she agrees that girls have had advantages over boys in recent years, it is detrimental to them too in the long run, she says – an issue she is tackling in her next book. Between commercial pressures and the education system, girls are being made to feel they have to look and be absolutely perfect.

“That pressure is really not good for them and boys are being pushed to the back and given the impression that they are pretty rubbish at school.”

The advertising “law” on the way you address children has driven a gender gap which is greater than it used to be, Palmer argues.

We have to take into account that there will be differences between girls and boys. But if we want equality, we have to provide an environment “in which girls and boys – and boyish girls and girlish boys – have the optimum conditions for them to develop in as healthy a way as possible”.

Now that our society recognises the equal rights of men and women, “we have to make sure we are giving kids a childhood which will allow them to make use of those rights”, she adds, “rather than pushing them along gender tram lines which, quite frankly, are not going to be in their interests or in society’s interest, as we are getting more and more mental health issues”.

Our consumerist society pushes gender differences to the extreme, agrees Sheena Horgan, a consultant in ethical and social marketing issues. “The fashion, in music videos in particular, is playing to extreme stereotypes.”

She is involved in the Mykidstime Positive Childhood campaign, Let Kids Be Kids, where, inevitably, there is more debate about girls. “When we talk about commercialisation and sexualisation of children, it tends to be more female focused than boy focused,” she concedes. Yet boys “are equally in as much peril as girls are with all these negative aspects”.

There is a definite segregation in our attitudes to girls and boys – and boys get a rough time of it, Horgan agrees. She attributes this to “an inherent, intuitive feeling that girls are more vulnerable than boys and they need more protection”. While she has four daughters, she knows mothers of boys are as equally concerned about modern childhood as she is. “It’s just different concerns,” she says. “I don’t think we give enough weight and credence to that.” We need to celebrate the differences between the genders, Horgan adds, rather than trying to ignore them or make them into a big deal.

One of these days we’ll get our approach to gender equality right – in the meantime, mind those boys. They have feelings too.

Girls have an ability to play the angles that the boys don’t have



The rise of the Alpha female teenager is very evident to Darina Loakman, the mother of three boys aged eight, 12 and 13.



“When girls are hanging around with the boys they are very confident – much more than we were at that age.”



She has heard stories from parents on duty at young teenage socials of girls in the corner with guys queuing up to be bestowed with a snog: “Literally, ‘you next’.”



“That’s one scary side. The other aspect of it I have seen is on Facebook – girls are very forward there and have no issues about what they talk about and how they talk to the boys.”



With her two younger sons in a small mixed national school in Co Dublin and her eldest in an all-boys school, she has no gender concerns about their education. However, she remarks that in creative activities, such as music and drama, themes that appeal to girls are more likely to be chosen – possibly because they are more willing participants.



“You wonder if they did it a different way, would it encourage boys more?” she muses.



Wendy Beesley is struck by the contrast between her three sons, aged eight, 13 and 14, and her one daughter, aged 11.



“Girls are more mature, more wise, more clued-in. She just knows all the angles to play and I am expecting that will stand to her. Boys are much more straight forward – what you see is what you get.”



A difference between her childhood and that of her children’s, she says, is the range of extra-curricular opportunities they have and how competitive girls are now at her daughter’s age. “That is something I haven’t witnessed before,” she says. “You expect boys to be competitive – and they are – it is just I am surprised how competitive I see the girls.”



Girls are happy to go head to head with the boys. “They are happy to get stuck in and give as good as they get. There is a confidence and a maturity and an ability to play the angles that the boys don’t have.”



If they hold on to that and it is channelled in the right direction, it is going to benefit them later in life. She works in banking and sees how young people looking for jobs need to differentiate themselves – that favours young women who were more likely, as teenagers, to have been doing things that enhanced their CV, while their male peers were kicking a ball or playing computer games.



Girls are lucky, Beesley says, that nothing is seen as unsuitable for them anymore – be it tag rugby or soccer. Whereas boys are more likely to limit themselves to activities they perceive as masculine.



Boys define themselves by their sporting abilities, “whereas girls can define themselves across a much wider spectrum.



If one is good at tennis and one is good at singing and one is good at, say, miming, they are appreciative of all of that.”



