Why Women Do Better In School and Still Make Less than Men Do

There are of course many answers to the question of why females have been outperforming men all the way through their educational careers, straight through to graduate or law school, then end up making less money.  But I've just learned of a new one.

It's long been clear that men benefit from a variety of sexist traditions at work, including: an over-valuation of occupations dominated by men; assumptions that men are supporting families and therefore should earn more than women; and work cultures that are simply more critical of and hostile to women.  At the top of the occupational ladder, highly educated women are more likely than their male peers to work part time or not at all because they are more likely to want to spend time with their children--and to recognize that their highly ambitious husbands are not likely to cut back much on their 80-hour work weeks to share that responsibility.

But  a recent Atlantic review of Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In, passes along some gender differences that I was not aware of, namely that once high-performing women leave college they are, on average, much less assertive than the male counterparts they have just finished pulverising in the classroom.  Men are much more likely to demand raises and to shoot for higher positions.  In sum, male employees tend to be more confident than female ones--though they would seem to have less reason to be.  And this confidence is often rewarded. 

Can Everyone Be a Winner? Reflections on Track and Field

My high school son, Peter, recently started competing in track and field after many years of playing soccer, and, as a former cross country and track guy, it's brought back a lot of pleasant memories.  And it's humbling to realize that after less than four weeks of training and three meets, he's already within 5 seconds of my best 800 meter time, which I achieved after logging about 6,000 miles of running over three years.

But watching track meets has also reminded me of the many strengths of timed and measured competitions.  In soccer, everyone is part of a team that wins, loses, or draws.  No matter how well one plays, the outcome essentially determines whether or not you were successful.  As the players age, they learn that needling your opponent or trying to injure him or her when the referees are not looking is often part of the game.  But the players generally behave with much more civility than their parents do.  Some years ago Oregon's head of refereeing told a group of coaches that he had a simple suggestion for improving the quality of soccer matches: ban the parents.

In track, on the other hand, one can finish last but still celebrate a "PR" (personal record).  There is a team score, but it's hard to keep track of.  The girls and the boys compete separately, but at the same meet, and everyone seems to cheer for everyone--parents and athletes.

Not only does everyone get to play, but politics (how much clout one's parents have) don't much enter into the pecking order.  "Stopwatch don't lie" means that the results clearly show who deserves to be on varsity in a given event.

Best of all, there are no controversies over playing time; the slower you are, the longer you are out there.

Video of Anani Memorial International School

My very talented and generous life partner, Wendy, made this short clip from video and photographs I collected while at this amazing school last September.
http://www.friendsofanani.org/

A Shrinking Professoriate?

Today's New York Times brings more bad news for professors: an automated grading system that evidently does a pretty good job of grading short answers--and does so almost instantaneously rather than taking a week or more.  The hope is that such technology will free faculty up for other duties.  Of course those "other duties" will often entail looking for a new job.  With undergraduate tuition continuing its ever-upward spiral, cutting labor costs is, understandably, a primary goal for administrators.  If technology can deliver outstanding online lectures and reliable assessment tools, then won't we simply need fewer professors?

The article notes that there are many skeptics--but also that most of the skeptics come from elite universities at which undergraduates receive a lot of individual care.  It seems to me that for the rest of us survival depends on providing students with the sort of attention that is too often missing at many universities.  If we believe that we can't be replaced by software programs and canned lectures, the onus is on us (no pun intended) to prove it.  The millions of students confronting murky employment possibilities and massive debts are soon going to be voting with their feet--and mouses.

Link to the story