Discrimination in Irish society against males?

gaffer91

Over the last decade, year on year, girls doing the leaving cert consistently outperform boys. As far as I am aware, girls occupy over 50% of the places in the top University courses with the exception of engineering.

Male unemployment for under 23 year olds (in july 2010) was 45 % as opposed to 28% for females of the same age.

42% of women in young couples are likely to be higher earners than their male counterparts as opposed to 28% of men.

If such figures were reversed there would undoubtedly be an outcry from various feminist groups against the "institutionalised discrimination" against females. However when it comes to men there is no clamor.

Should the Irish government investigate why good Leaving cert grades and university education (I accept that one tends to follow on from the other) are so heavily weighted towards females? Should they take steps to counter the growing gender imbalance? I think they should.

N.B I accept that there will always be some degree of imbalance and females do mature earlier than males which might explain their better grades in the LC. However, I do think the LC must be geared towards female strengths however if the imbalance is so pronounced. Also I am a male for what its worth.

Links- http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0814/exams.html
http://www.ronanlyons.com/2010/07/06/who-has-been-worst-hit-visualising-irelands-unemployment-crisis/
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1213/1224309000150.html

hatrickpatrick

Two 15 year olds in a relationship have consensual sex. The guy is a rapist, the girl is a victim.

Enough said. :mad:

johnnyskeleton

gaffer91 wrote: »

42% of women in young couples are likely to be higher earners than their male counterparts as opposed to 28% of men.

That doesn't make any sense, unless 30% of couples earn exactly the same as each other.

gaffer91 wrote: »

Should the Irish government investigate why good Leaving cert grades and university education (I accept that one tends to follow on from the other) are so heavily weighted towards females? Should they take steps to counter the growing gender imbalance? I think they should.

I think it is fairly obvious that girls tend to study more and therefore do better in exams. Not a whole lot can be done to redress that other than stopping girls from studying or giving boys an extra 10% of marks for free.

gaffer91

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

That doesn't make any sense, unless 30% of couples earn exactly the same as each other.

Yeah I thought that alright, i'm just quoting from the article. Maybe they only count a difference if its plus or minus 5 grand or something? Genuinely not really sure though.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

I think it is fairly obvious that girls tend to study more and therefore do better in exams. Not a whole lot can be done to redress that other than stopping girls from studying or giving boys an extra 10% of marks for free.

Well given the emphasis on rote learning in the LC it is clear that it is geared towards girls strengths. Something could be done about this.

mbiking123

Guys

Male, Christian, White, Hetrosexual can claim discrimination but it just wont work.

Icepick

So, where is the part about discrimination, OP?
Or are you suggesting that test makers, teachers and employers prefer females over males?

LH Pathe

seems the steady demasculization of society has registered w/ someone else. albeit long after the fact

Nanny state? Fanny state.. well actually it's global. Though not to the same extent

kate.m

gaffer91 wrote: »

Yeah I thought that alright, i'm just quoting from the article. Maybe they only count a difference if its plus or minus 5 grand or something? Genuinely not really sure though.



Well given the emphasis on rote learning in the LC it is clear that it is geared towards girls strengths. Something could be done about this.

Please link a study that shows how girls are better a memorising or rote learning? And an actual study not some article from the irish independent....

MagicMarker

Yeah this isn't making a whole lot of sense, the only way there can be discrimination here is if males purposely don't do as well in the LC to make the wimminz feel better about themselves.

gaffer91

Icepick wrote: »

So, where is the part about discrimination, OP?
Or are you suggesting that test makers, teachers and employers prefer females over males?

Perhaps the title would make more sense if I replaced the word "society" with "education". Everything else just seems to follow on from that.

What I am suggesting is that the LC seems to be geared towards female strengths.

kate.m wrote: »

Please link a study that shows how girls are better a memorising or rote learning? And an actual study not some article from the irish independent....

I think that this is generally accepted. This may be down to the fact that they study more.

johnnyskeleton

gaffer91 wrote: »

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

That doesn't make any sense, unless 30% of couples earn exactly the same as each other.

Yeah I thought that alright, i'm just quoting from the article. Maybe they only count a difference if its plus or minus 5 grand or something? Genuinely not really sure though.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

I think it is fairly obvious that girls tend to study more and therefore do better in exams. Not a whole lot can be done to redress that other than stopping girls from studying or giving boys an extra 10% of marks for free.

Well given the emphasis on rote learning in the LC it is clear that it is geared towards girls strengths. Something could be done about this.

It's an interesting idea all right but I'm always concerned about wanting to change it not because it is bad or needs improvement but to make men and women equal. Maybe they should make it really easy so that it evens out for thick kids as well.

strandroad

gaffer91 wrote: »

I think that this is generally accepted. This may be down to the fact that they study more.

Studying and memorising are two different things.

Icepick

gaffer91 wrote: »

What I am suggesting is that the LC seems to be geared towards female strengths.

So where is your evidence?

You don't like the fact that women outperform men at young age and want to blame test makers.

RichardAnd

mhge wrote: »

Studying and memorising are two different things.

Agreed, and when one considers that it's possible to get a very high points score in the leaving cert by memorizing off volumes of material, that says much.

To answer the OP, I do believe that society does take a soft touch to women but this is the case in many countries, not just Ireland. Gay, black, non-Christian, female, the changes are, there's a law somewhere to give such a group an edge over the white, heterosexual male.

A fine example of this would be the gender quota for politicians which is a bizarre and extremely unfair idea that should have no place in a modern society, why should one group have any advantage over another? Further, why is it implied that women need such a rule to help them at all? Surely if a woman is a competent individual, she should be able to proceed on her own merit.

When I was in school, we once held a five-a-side football tournament that was blighted by a rule that required each team to have two girls. On top of that, the two girls could not be sent off for breaking the rules thus on the very first game, we had girls handling balls and committing other fouls that should have been bookable offences. This not only ruined the tournament for everyone, it also made the few decent female players look foolish as they were all lumped together on account of their peers' actions.

Thus, we can deduce that giving women or indeed, anyone else, an edge simply for being what God made them is a self-defeating exercise. Sexism will never disappear when we live in a world of token board members and bias rulings.

Clareboy

There is massive and widespread discrimination against males in the jobs market in this country, especially if one is middle aged and Irish.

Permabear

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gaffer91

Icepick wrote: »

So where is your evidence?

You don't like the fact that women outperform men at young age and want to blame test makers.

My evidence is presented in the articles linked in the OP. Also Permabear states that of the students attaining over 450 in the LC, only 38% are male.

How do you explain such a disparity? I just personally think, as I previously stated, that this would suggest that the LC seems to be geared towards female stengths.

strandroad

gaffer91 wrote: »

How do you explain such a disparity? I just personally think, as I previously stated, that this would suggest that the LC seems to be geared towards female stengths.

This is an interesting point. Seeing how previous posters suggest that female students spend more time studying, how would you proof LC against the effects of studying?
You could always throw in some questions with truly random answers I suppose!

strandroad

Permabear wrote: »

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I wonder what other social factors are at play as I don't believe that boys are less intelligent or lazier by nature.

Could it be that the stats are still skewed by the fact that boys are more likely to become tradesmen and used to be directed into building and other property related jobs where the skills are not passed via school/college education system?

Could it be that in farming families boys are more likely to inherit the farm and therefore may not seek or care for higher education?

I also wonder how frequent is the scenario my friend was in. She had two brothers (middle child) and as young adults in their home she was the only one expected by their parents to contribute money, go out and work, while her brothers were allowed to lounge around the house on SW and a few dodgy nixers which they kept for themselves - because "they are boys". In such an environment, out of three siblings with similar innate potential who is more likely to seek education? Just from reading PI it seems that it's still quite common for sons and daughters to be treated differently. My friend left her family home and went to college while working the whole time, her brothers are still at home.

Bottle_of_Smoke

An amusing incident occurred after the system was changed for getting into medicine. Previously it had been exclusively down to Leaving cert points. Now you have to do a surplus test (HPAT) in addition to getting point scores.

Well the first year it was introduced the percentage of successful male applicants increased

Some people then began complaining the system discriminated against women. Bear in mind, the majority of successful applicants were still female (think went from female to male 60:40 to 52:48) just the percentage of males increased.

That is the kind of mentality you come up against in gender politics.

johnnyskeleton

Permabear wrote: »

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I agree, what we need in this area is some good old fashioned government intervention. We simply can't leave our future up to the vageries of the free market which has led so many of our young men to pursue profitable jobs in construction instead of higher education. Or is your point that this is all due to the existence of government education in the first place and in a libertarian society all children would achieve the same level of education?

johnnyskeleton

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

An amusing incident occurred after the system was changed for getting into medicine. Previously it had been exclusively down to Leaving cert points. Now you have to do a surplus test (HPAT) in addition to getting point scores.

Well the first year it was introduced the percentage of successful male applicants increased

Some people then began complaining the system discriminated against women. Bear in mind, the majority of successful applicants were still female (think went from female to male 60:40 to 52:48) just the percentage of males increased.

That is the kind of mentality you come up against in gender politics.

That is amusing, but its more about ignorance on the part of those particular persons who might have only heard that there were new entry conditions and less women got in and then mixed up correlation with causation.

Icepick

gaffer91 wrote: »

My evidence is presented in the articles linked in the OP. Also Permabear states that of the students attaining over 450 in the LC, only 38% are male.

How do you explain such a disparity? I just personally think, as I previously stated, that this would suggest that the LC seems to be geared towards female stengths.

Correlation does not imply causation.
The links prove that young females outperform young males and say nothing about the cause.

There is massive and widespread discrimination against males in the jobs market in this country, especially if one is middle aged and Irish.

Even if it is (no evidence provided), should an employer not choose the best candidate?

BTW, the property bubble affected recent education stats significantly as the sector is male-dominated. And the bubble was also mostly orchestrated by "white Christian Irish males" who are so discriminated according to some posters here.

Permabear

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johnnyskeleton

Permabear wrote: »

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For better or for worse (usually for worse), Irish educational policy is designed and implemented by the state. Saying that the government needs to change government policy is just acknowledging reality.

The property bubble did not arise because of the free market — it arose because we had a government engaged in countercyclical spending and tax cuts designed, in the words of Bertie Ahern, to "make the boom boomier" — but you're right that it played a huge role in warping young men's incentives during that period, enticing many of them to drop out of education to pursue (at the time) lucrative earnings on building sites.

Just because I post in a thread doesn't axiomatically mean that it has something to do with libertarianism. Your final question is completely off topic.[/Quote]

I don't think you can blame the property bubble primarily on the government, but that's perhaps a matter for another thread.

In any event it is good to look at these things from a practical perspective rather than an idealistic point of view. I think equality as an issue is best resolved by one big levelling of the playing pitch and then any complaints can be addressed on the basis that equality must be earned from that point on. If boys or girls start to underperform after that point, so be it, and I think we as a society have passed our levelling point and need to move on.

Permabear

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matthew8

Males and females are different and that's that. We don't need any legislation to try and change a few percentages around. I oppose it when it's meant to "help" women, I oppose it when it's meant to "help" men. However, we could use some legislation to change the quality of our education system.

Black Swan

Permabear wrote: »

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Consequently, "one shoe fits all" curriculum is inappropriate for boys (and girls), and should be tailored to not only respect male and female developmental differences, but more importantly, be tailored to meet the individual needs of students, regardless of their gender; i.e., to this extent I agree with the "I" rather than "we" metaphor in Anthem as pertains to curriculum delivery.

Permabear wrote: »

Psychologists even frequently refer to the "boy brain," the kinetic, sometimes maddeningly chaotic, but occasionally brilliant behaviors found in boys, but less so in girls.

Brain development in the literature has shown "boy brain(s)" to be significantly different from girl brains, and should be treated differently from nature and nurture standpoints in the curriculum. But to imply that "brilliant behaviors found in boys, but less so in girls" is due to nature, rather than nurture is problematic and not consistently supported in the scholarly literature; i.e., both boy brains and girl brains can evidence "brilliant behaviors" if encouraged, and barriers to development are removed for both in curriculum and society in general (To this extent I disagree with the Anthem metaphor that subordinates girls to boys in terms of "brilliant" potential).

junder

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

gaffer91 wrote: »

42% of women in young couples are likely to be higher earners than their male counterparts as opposed to 28% of men.

That doesn't make any sense, unless 30% of couples earn exactly the same as each other.

gaffer91 wrote: »

Should the Irish government investigate why good Leaving cert grades and university education (I accept that one tends to follow on from the other) are so heavily weighted towards females? Should they take steps to counter the growing gender imbalance? I think they should.

I think it is fairly obvious that girls tend to study more and therefore do better in exams. Not a whole lot can be done to redress that other than stopping girls from studying or giving boys an extra 10% of marks for free.

Watched a panorama programme that looked at this issue. It seems there is an inverted sexism (admittedly mens own fault) as righthy women are now being encouraged in education while within male culture education is looked down upon. The top boys in school are normally the captain of the football club etc while the kid who is top of his maths class is more often enough a target of bullying

Permabear

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Black Swan

Permabear wrote: »

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This is the larger issue, which often results in disparities by gender for the delivery of curriculum for boys and girls. Our "assembly-line model of schooling punishes individuality while rewarding submission, docility, and conformity" for students AND TEACHERS in a self-fulfilling way during the delivery of curriculum and LC.

Would you be willing to pay (taxes) for a new model of instruction and LC, to where the brightest and best individuals would be competitively attracted away from the highly compensated private-for-profit sector professions to teach exemplary, individualized instruction for boys and girls?

Bottle_of_Smoke

I don't really believe the "girls are better at rote learning" notion myself.

One thing that stands out to me is girls on average start puberty on average 2 years before boys. Its also a different process with different effects.

On top of that different stresses fall upon girls and boys growing up. I just wonder is it possible male "growing up" in general is more detrimental to learning , and now that similar encouragement and expectations are there for males and females regarding education and careers, we are seeing the effects.

Permabear

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coolshannagh28

Female teachers greatly outnumber male teachers .This naturally discriminates against boys as the form of tuition provided meets the needs of girls much more ,ie empathy ,quieter classrooms , more rote learning . Boys thrive in a more challenging environment with more emphasis on competition and a strong male mentor .The LC also is a factor where all the emphasis is on rote which favours girls who work harder .
However this will change as due to the recession more men come into teaching as construction declines ,also the reforms taking place in the LC seem built in to address the imbalance

Black Swan

Permabear wrote: »

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Unfortunately I have to agree with you in this case; i.e., unfortunately for the gifted and talented students and teachers. While I could not find data to support the underfunding or lack of funding for gifted and talented children in Ireland, I did find rather sad data for the United States published by the National Association for Gifted Children.

Whereas the US Congress appropriates and spends billions per month to fight two non-value-added producing wars over the past decade, they only funded $7.5 million during the 2010 fiscal year for the Jacob K Javis Gifted and Talented Students Education Act.

Left to their own, Federalism failed and the States did no better. Only 15 of the 50 states bothered to fund gifted children, but all 50 were involved in funding the GW Bush administration endorsed "No Child Left Behind" that addresses "students performing below proficient levels." Essentially the United States suffers from a similar problem of teaching to the test (teaching to the LC in Ireland), with gifted and talented boys and girls left to suffer the consequences of a curriculum that teaches to the average (e.g., puts a whole new spin on regression towards the mean).

Batsy

Icepick wrote: »

So where is your evidence?

You don't like the fact that women outperform men at young age and want to blame test makers.

Girls only outperform boys at school because the education system is geared towards girls. Girls are not cleverer than boys - males, on average, have a higher IQ than girls - and have not always outperformed boys in school. It wasn't that long ago that boys outperformed girls.

The problem of education being skewed in girls' favour arises, of course, from the Left, who believe that, apart from gender, males and females are equal. So males and females are taught equally.

But males and females are not equal. They are different mentally as well as physically and education today favours girls' mentality. Boys require a much more physical and active style of learning than girls. That's why boys find it harder to sit still in a classroom for too long.

Also, coursework favours girls and raw exams favour boys, so when you consider that a lot of GCSE grades today are composed of coursework you can see why boys are outperformed.

Many experts have noted this and want something done. They say boys and girls should be taught separately. Boys should have more physicalness to their lessons and spend more time studying outdoors. Boys should also do less coursework in their exams and just do raw exams. Boys also do better than girls in some subjects - such as maths and science - and when they are taught in a way that suits them better they will pull further ahead of girls in these subjects.

I believe that if both boys and girls are taught in ways that suits both of them, rather than in a way that suits just girls, boys will start to outperform girls again.

Boys and girls could take different GCSE courses in the same subject under plans being considered by one of England's awarding bodies, it was revealed today.

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) said it is looking at introducing exams that play to different strengths.

It could mean that boys are offered the chance to sit exams while girls could have their GCSE graded just by coursework.

Research has suggested that boys prefer traditional exam-based courses while girls prefer coursework, which is based over a prolonged period and does not depend on performance on a single day.

Bill Alexander, AQA's director of curriculum and assessment, said: 'We could offer a route for boys that is very different to a route for girls.

'Girls tend to perform better with coursework while boys do better with end-of-year exams.

'So we are pursuing that in science to see if we could have an option in science where we might have a straightforward examination for boys but a possibility of having a coursework option for girls.'

Last year a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute said the introduction of GCSEs to replace O'Levels in 1988 was the most likely cause of an achievement gap between the sexes.

The emphasis on coursework and continuous assessment in GCSEs appears to favour girls, the report concluded. But there was an unwillingness amongst bureaucrats to tackle the issue for fear of being seen to favour boys.

The switch away from exam-only O'Levels has led to women outperforming men on almost every measure of university achievement, the study found.

More than 49 per cent of women go to university by the time they are 30 compared to 38 per cent of men. Women also do better at university when they get there.

The belief that boys are relatively weak in coursework has also been supported by changes in maths grades since coursework was scrapped in the subject three years ago.

This change is said to have helped boys beat girls at GCSE maths last year for the first time since 1997. Exam chiefs said the results in maths showed the changes benefitted boys who prefer to cram for one-off exams.

However, girls remain decisively ahead in most subjects, which usually include a coursework element or some form of out-of-exam assessment.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1287670/Exams-boys-coursework-girls-Exam-board-considers-separate-GCSEs-sexes.html#ixzz1ib1R6I85

Godge

Icepick wrote: »

So, where is the part about discrimination, OP?
Or are you suggesting that test makers, teachers and employers prefer females over males?

If you accept the premise that boys and girls are inherently equal, there is discrimination in the results achieved.

If you accept the premise that girls are a superior gender to boys then there is no discrimination in the results achieved.

As I believe that boys and girls are and should be equal, that implies that there is something wrong with the system of assessment that favours girls or with the education system that produces the candidates for the exams.

Icepick

Batsy wrote: »

- males, on average, have a higher IQ than girls -

No, they don't.
Some tests show a small male advantage and some a small female advantage. But the differences are very small and also depend on age, social and ethnic backgrounds and other factors.

Conguill

There is a huge body of evidence suggesting that male and female brains operate differently and that this is independent of conditioning.

In terms of IQ tests, males are consistently tend to be concentrated at the upper and lower ends of the distribution while females tend to be concentrated in the middle.A whole range of mental 'conditions' such as OCD and autism impact more frequently on men more than women with both upsides and downsides in terms of educational attainment.

The second level education system does not take account of these differences in any significant way and it is this system that firstly determines how university places are distributed (with some exceptions) and secondly has a huge bearing on how engaged males are with the process.

It does boggle my mind that while the question of the gender proportion of successful CEOs and politicians (a tiny proportion of the population) is an ongoing public debate, the disparity in educational achievement across society is almost never discussed.