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Affirmative Action for (White) Men
Whenever I hear someone bemoaning how hard it is these days to get into Harvard or Yale, I tune out. May be it’s because my children are still years away from college, but I just find the hand-wringing silly, especially given how many people I know who have succeeded without having attended a “top” school.
But my mind was changed last week when I ran across an article in U.S. News & World Report showing that many universities now are rejecting women at higher rates than men. Facing more applications from women than men, many of the selective, “second tier” universities are trying to achieve gender balance by, in effect, practicing affirmative action. For men.
While in the last year, I had read suggestions that this “gender balancing” was going on, US News, using data from its infamous annual college rankings survey, actually produced the hard numbers. And the statistics are appalling. At the College of William and Mary, admission rates for men were 40% in 2006, compared to just 26% for women. At Pomona College, the admissions rate for women was an average of 9% lower than that of men, while at Wheaton, it was a staggering 21% lower, U.S. News found.
What that means is young women who have worked hard to achieve may be passed over by lesser-qualified male applicants-- simply because of their gender. Now, I have been in favor of affirmative action because it has been about leveling the playing field (as well as promoting diversity); but these new admissions practices can benefit men who are white and from families of privilege. Since when has that group been disadvantaged and requiring of an extra leg up?
There are those who argue that there is a “boys’ crisis” and cite stats that show fewer boys apply to colleges and, in general, do worse academically than girls. Last year, I attended a New York Times Company Foundation conference for journalists on this issue; after spending five days listening to a bevy of social scientists, educators, and mental health professionals, and deconstructing a few alarmist magazine stories on it, it was obvious to many of us that this “crisis” was yet another media manufactured myth.
Overall, boys’ academic performance hasn’t declined (in fact, in many instances, it has improved). In addition, more men are attending college than ever before (and still are more likely to earn more and reach positions of power than their female counterparts.) The difference is that women’s academic performance and college enrollment are improving at an even faster rate. Some boys—especially those who are Hispanic, black, or low-income—are suffering and need and deserve help, but the main issues have to do with race and class, not gender.
To their credit, universities today don’t try to argue that men are a disadvantaged group in need of preferential treatment. They tend to defend their admission practices by citing market concerns; neither women nor men want to attend a school in which a majority of students are female, the schools say. Even if that is true (though my guess is students at Vassar College, American University and any other number of schools that are largely female might beg to differ), is the correct and fair remedy to give more privilege to an already privileged group? What about addressing the underlying factors that discourage boys from applying to college, rather than penalizing girls for doing better academically?
In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that colleges have the right to use race as one of many factors in admissions. But yesterday, the new Justice Roberts-led Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that it was unconstitutional to use racial guidelines to integrate public schools. Whether that means this new gender balancing would withstand legal challenge is unclear.
I know I’d like to see a group like the American Civil Liberties Union try to overturn it. Because while I still don’t believe it matters all that much where you go to college, I do believe in the importance of fairness. Young women already face a world where men, particularly white men, hold the upper hand in the workplace; men earn more and tend to dominate the top ranks of virtually all professions, as well as our government. Must we really add one more advantage to the list?
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Blindsided by a Diaper event
How does parenthood change couples' relationships?
This question was the starting point for Blindsided by a Diaper, an interesting new essay collection of which I am proud to be a part (Random House). Edited by Dana Hilmer, the book has essays by some wonderful writers, including Susan Cheever, Rick Marin, Hope Edelman and too many others to list.
This Monday, June 18th, 7:30 pm, there will be a reading/performance to kick off publication. A few of the contributors--Beth Levine, Sandi Shelton, William Squier, and myself--will be reading from our essays, and there will be a performance from a new musical, BABY, at Stamford's Kweskin Theater. Details here.
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Vaccination Fears and Autism
Is the incidence of autism rising, and if so, why? Five years ago, I edited a story that posed this question, and still, today we are no closer to an answer.
To be sure, there have been large scale studies published, which rule out vaccines as a cause of autism. But there is no scientific consensus on what could be the reason for the apparent increase in cases--or even if, in fact, there are more kids with autism. (Some believe there are just more kids being diagnosed, due to a better understanding of the autism spectrum.) But you also have a large, vocal group of parents of autistic kids, who are convinced that we are in the midst of an epidemic, and a major culprit are vaccines that had mercury.
Both sides are about to come to court, and likely the controversy will be stoked again. Investigative reporter David Kirby's book, Evidence of Harm, and various activists have suggested that the link to vaccines was never fully explored or purposely suppressed because of undue pressure from the pharmaceutical industry (a charge denied by government officials, scientists and many others).
Unfortunately, we're living at a time when there is so much suspicion of vaccines that people are refusing to have their kids vaccinated. So we're seeing increases in diseases like whooping cough, which were all but eliminated before. Or, as fellow journalist Jessica Snyder Sachs reports, parents are purposely exposing their kids to chicken pox (rather than get their kids vaccinated), even though chicken pox can be an extremely dangerous disease.
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Does the Wage Gap Really Matter?
This was the seemingly thought-provoking question posed by Penelope Trunk on her blog. Her answer: The wage gap is pretty irrelevant since what matters is the pursuit of happiness. Women, she suggests, just aren't motivated solely by money.
This kind of argument really disturbs me.
First, is this kind of thinking any better than what my mother's generation faced when they were in the workplace? (ie: "We can pay married women less because they have husbands.") These kinds of generalizations about women (or any group of people) are dangerous and reckless, and I noticed that Trunk supported her assertions with just gross generalizations about what she thinks happens women have kids. Why is it that people understand it's wrong to generalize about a race or ethnicity ("Italians don't like to put in long hours") but feel entirely comfortable doing that when it comes to gender?
Second, the pay gap--which has been documented in many studies, not just in AAUW's recent research--needs to be seen as part of a larger context of workplace inequities. For those wanting to learn more about these inequities, start your research here.
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Women and the Wage Gap Redux
I was feeling bad about some of the comments (nasty and plain old misogynistic) that my Huffington Post column on the wage gap and the Supreme Court's decision on pay discrimination generated.
Until I came across this blog by Cathy Arnst on BusinessWeek.com. Clicking through BW's work-family blogs, I noticed that very few columns prompt more than a sprinkling of comments, but Arnst's columns on the wage gap got all the angry men out in force, busy typing away.
It's interesting, but a little scary, to see how much vitriol some men feel when it comes to talking about discrimination against women in the workplace.
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A Sign of the Times: A Parenting Mag Goes Digital
Mothering magazine, which has been around for about 30 years, announced that it will now be publishing in digital format.
When I read the press release, I initially thought they were ceasing their print pub, but after checking with Mothering mag pr person, I stand corrected. She said it is simply another option.
I'm glad they haven't done away with the print version altogether (although one wonders whether they hope to move in that direction ultimately). I'm not one of those people who feels technology is destroying journalism; I do most of my news reading online and can't imagine a day without Google News. I also see the benefits to digital mags--they're searchable and provide links and can have multimedia capability. But they feel like poor substitutes for web sites or mags. They're neither. And I wonder if it's just a matter of time before digital mags go the way of CD-ROMs (remember them??)
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