Boyz and Gr1lz

Gender Gaps, Real and Imagined

Came across this DW News episode — “Why the political worldviews of young men and women are increasingly diverging” discussing geneder gaps. Worth listening to, but I had a couple of slight objections to some of the language framing.

Early on one of the guests mentions that the social issues are not only problems for just boys.

5:30 probably could stop here, since this is the issue. It’s not that any gender is necessarily more or less (dis)advantaged, but rather neoliberal capitalism disadvantages people who can least afford to be disadvantaged, no matter what their race, religion, gender, or nation. I mean “neoliberalism” in the broadest sense, not just the centrists and their anti-democratic think tanks, but our entire culture, scientific culture, pop culture, all of it, materialistic and competitive with no sense of the benefits of collective cooperation and a true peoples government. Neoliberals talk-up “democracy” and “rule of law” to incite Color Revolutions and whatnot, but deep down somewhere in the pitiful remnants of their empty souls and tiny brains they hate democracy, they hate justice except if it for them, and most of all they hate the “unwashed masses”.
      Any discussion on the merits or demerits of any particular “gender equity” policy has to surely also consider not only gender-washing, but also class prejudice and the entire political economy, which is the real societal sickness we’ve been living with like a cancer for over 40 years (and returning to the 1960’s political economy is not the solution either). Neoliberalism (broadest sense) amplifies material and opportunity disparities of all kinds, not just gender. The rich get richer, winners take all.

Later, the same guest flippantly mentions something about how the education system is rightful to reward early acheivers. This is considered a “problem” for biys because they tend to mature slower than girls, just by biological circumstances (I beleive).

The problem with such thinking is that it ignores the greater purpose of an education system. Our education systems do not need to be thoguht of as merely vehicles for pumping out skilled workers. It is arguably far more important to have an informed citizenry. Any skill gaps any student has can easily be made-up when “on the job”. In fact, most employers need to train their initial employees. Hardly anyone comes out of school ready-made fit to work.

Here was my comment:

@8:40 no! The education system should not be weighted untoward to reward early achievers. What is this guy talking about? You want a system that rewards ipsative/relative progress. Otherwise you have a system that is presuming everyone is equal and all have equal opportunity, which is anti-humanist and essentially a soulless nerds view of the world (we are all computerheads, just need the “right” program). It is the neoclassical economics fallacy all over again. (The rational agent fallacy.) We do not all have equal opportunity, because we do not all start equal, we do not all enjoy the same kind parents and neighbours, we do not all enjoy the same ancestral wealth, and so on and so on. Heck, you can say we do not all “enjoy” the “benefit” of growing up on the rough side of the street.
      “Equal under the law” is fine, but it is not sufficient. We have to work towards a spiritual society, because you cannot fully legislate compassion and kindness, which are the virtues needed to overcome the aforementioned inherent inequalities and unequal spaces of opportunity. If you try to legislate morality it is a short-circuit that prevents people from exercising their own inherent morality and compassion, and such legislation backfires — people tend to act less morally wise (q.v. Samuel Bowles). Policy has to be designed to allow people to exercise morality, and prescriptive to eliminate injustices, but not to force people to behave by some artificial moral dictates. For example, if a male is doing poorly in school, help the guy. Same for a female, same for an X-gendered individual, same for whoever. But if they are acting like racist or sexist bigots, help them in a different way — they need to learn empathy, not be slammed into the gulag of prep-school concentration camps for “kids who can’t do math good” (q.v. Zoolander! ;-).

On the skills issue: it is worth pointing out that even when you next job is the same as your current job, you still will need on-the-job training. I had this every time I moved postdocs. It would have been very lucky for me to have a postdoc position doing the exact same research as my previous.

Absolute versus Relative

The same speaker suggested around 10 minutes in, that the real problem for young makes is they see both relative equality gaps closing, but also their absolute standard of living seeming to decline. It is probable this is fairly objective over the last 40 years, but with a baseline.

The baseline is not relative to female standards of living, but to technology. Most young men have computers and smartphones and all sorts of empowering technology the older generations never had, so “better off” needs to be relative to the technology baseline. Once we correct for technology, then it seems a good hypothesis to me that the standards of living of young men have declined. They have to work longer hours, or in more soul destroying jobs, in order to put as much food on the table as their fathers did, or to stay even with rent and other expenses.

Probably fewer new technologies have been more crippling in this regards than the bank credit card. These are enablers of poverty. They enable the younger generations to have as much material stuff, but at the cost of psychologically crippling bank debt. And there is simply no good reason for this, it is neoliberal political economy at its insidious worst.

If the bread, coffee, eggs,…, smartphones, laptops,… exist and are for sale, then the currency may exist with which to purchase these too, but with no need for credit card debt necessarily, the governments merely have to provide a higher wage floor. We know how to do this without inflation risk, by using the Job Guarantee as the price anchor.