Congress is considering legislation to establish regular “workshops to enhance gender equity” in the hopes of remedying the supposed “gender gap” in math and science education.
However, despite conclusive results of German, Swedish, and Australian researchers as well as a 2005 study by the RAND Corporation indicating that the alleged “gender gap” is an exaggerated non-issue, legislation to “close the gender gap” remains on the table.
As Congress debates the dubious gender issues, an even bigger “gap” is emerging…
According to recent studies and widely accepted statistical results, it is the men who are lagging in everything from elementary education, to college, to today’s job market.
Women have quite simply been out-performing men at home, school, and work – an unavoidable fact that many seem to overlook in their crusade for “gender equality.”
In April of 2007, well before Congress’ proposed science “workshops” and Obama’s signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Krista Kafer of the Independent Women’s Forum asserted that
[B]oys… are more likely to be suspended or expelled, need special education, smoke, drink and do drugs, repeat a grade, commit suicide, become incarcerated, leave school without attaining literacy, drop out of school or be unemployed. Marginal advantages in math and science for boys pale compared to the sheer advantage girls enjoy throughout school.
However, while politicians and educators have joined forces to ensure that these boys’ “marginal advantages in math and science” are reduced, there has been little-to-no effort made on a national level aimed at improving boys’ lagging, precarious performance.
This reluctance to help men is not due to mere oversight or unwillingness to consider unavoidable facts. It is due to women’s status as a pseudo-protected class and fear on the part of both men and women. Men do not want to seem sexist in advocating improved standards for boys and women fear that if they “give an inch, they’ll take a mile.”
Promoting gender equality is not a zero-sum game. That is to say, women’s success does not necessitate men’s simultaneous failure.
The radicalized bra-burning, shoulder-pad-wearing, men-hating feminists of the 1970s and 80s were a necessary force in the women’s movement, willing to go to extremes to challenge the male-dominated status quo. However, a steadfast adherence to the feminist dogma of previous generations – a dogma that regarded men and the institutions they monopolized as “the enemy” – will only inhibit the maturation of the women’s movement and imminent establishment of true equality.
Modern women cannot continue a crusade against men, nor can they reject women such as Nikki Haley or Sarah Palin for not heeding the traditional pro-choice, work-first-babies-later feminist manifesto.
To be truly equal to men is to promote their success as equally as we women would our own, rather than continue to feel threatened by the virile “enemy.”
As society progresses and we move out of the industrial, manufacturing era, “we have seen a decline in the overall welfare of males,” claims Carrie Lukas of the Independent Woman’s Forum. In an interview with FrumForum, Lukas affirms that while there are a host of opportunities offered to women, “it is bad news for women if men aren’t succeeding.”
In the African-American community, women are excelling leaps-and-bounds beyond men – a phenomenon that has posed a host of counter-intuitive issues for women who increasingly find themselves unable to relate to the enormously less successful majority of African-American males.
“It is time to end this concept of us versus them… we want to see our husbands, sons, and brothers succeeding right along with us,” rightfully asserts Lukas.
An unwillingness on the part of politicians, employers, and men and women alike to acknowledge women’s unthreatened, growing success will not only negatively impact men, it will eventually hurt the establishment of equality … which is – and always has been – the ultimate goal.