The Men — and Boys — Are Not Alright

<p>In 1972, when Congress passed Title IX to tackle gender equity in education, men were 13 percentage points more likely to hold bachelor’s degrees than women; today women are 15 points more likely to do so than men. The median real hourly wage for working men is lower today than it was in the 1970s.<strong> </strong>And men account for almost three out of four “deaths of despair,” from overdose or suicide.</p><p>These are just a sample of the array of dizzying statistics that suffuse Richard Reeves’s book “<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/book/of-boys-and-men/" target="_blank">Of Boys and Men</a>.” We’re used to thinking about gender inequality as a story of insufficient progress for women and girls. There’s a good reason for that: Men have dominated human societies for centuries, and myriad inequalities — from the gender pay gap to the dearth of female politicians and chief executives — persist to this day.</p><p>But Reeves’s core argument is that there’s no way to fully understand inequality in America today without understanding the ways that men and boys — particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds — are falling behind.</p><p>So I wanted to have Reeves on the show to take a closer look at the data on how men and boys are struggling and explore what can be done about it. We discuss how the current education system places boys at a disadvantage; why boys raised in poverty are less likely than girls to escape it; the fact that female students are twice as likely to study abroad and serve in the Peace Corps as their male peers; Reeves’s policy proposal to have boys start school a year later than girls; why so few men are entering professions like teaching, nursing and therapy — and what we can do about it; why so many boys look to figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate for inspiration; what a better social “script” for masculinity might look like and more.</p><p>Mentioned:</p><p>"<a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1234682.pdf" target="_blank">Gender Achievement Gaps in U.S. School Dist