“Of Boys and Men:” Why the Modern Male Is Struggling

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Now, from the classroom to the workplace, many American boys and men are struggling. There have been decades of efforts to empower women and girls, especially over the last few years. But in his new book, scholar Richard Reeves says that not enough attention is being paid to their male counterparts. And he joins Hari Sreenivasan to explain why this issue must be addressed and how it can be solved.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Richard Reeves, thanks for joining us. Richard, you have been studying all kinds of inequality and poverty for a long time at Brookings. Why this specific focus, this book on boys and men and now?

RICHARD REEVES, AUTHOR, “OF BOYS AND MEN”: Well, because of my interest in equality, honestly. The class gaps that we’ve looked at, the stubborn race gaps we’ve looked at, also intersect with some gender gaps. So, the more I look at some of the trends in economic inequality, and educational inequality, the more I started seeing some gender gaps. But not in the way that we, perhaps, are used to talking about gender gaps. We’re used to talking about gender inequality in a way that disfavors women and girls. And of course, there are plenty of those still to tackle. But increasingly, I was seeing evidence that many men, especially black men and men who are working class from poorer backgrounds are really struggling in education, in employment, and in the family. And so, it seemed to me that the issue is all of a piece. The — in order to understand inequality, we also have to understand what’s happening to a lot of our boys and men.

SREENIVASAN: When you look back and dove into the data, what did you? How bad is the problem? Give us some examples?

REEVES: We know, for example, that young women are doing much better in education now than young men and boys and girls. But I don’t think many people realize just how quickly the gender inequality has flipped. So, we go back to 1972, when Title IX was passed, to promote women and girls in education, especially in higher education. Men were 13 percentage points more likely to be getting a college degree than women. So, it was a — that was a big hill to climb. But, today, it’s 15 percentage points more likely that a woman will get a degree than a man. And so, in the space of a very short period of time, it’s not just the women who’ve caught up in college education, they’ve blown right past. And in fact, we have a big agenda with — gender inequality in higher education than we did 50 years ago. It’s just that it’s reversed. And some of the statistics, honestly, took me a little bit by surprise to realize just how big some of these gaps have gotten.

SREENIVASAN: So, when you look at higher education — look, I can hear people watching this conversation saying, OK, fine. So, they might be getting more college degrees but how does that translate into power when you look at — you know, there’s three members of Congress that are men for every woman. And you look at the Forbes 500 companies and there is, you know, 10 times as many CEOs who are men. How do you, sort of, square that circle?

REEVES: Yes, so, I think there’s a couple of things there. One is it really does depend where you look. And I think if you’re just looking around the apex of society, looking at the very top of politics and business, then clearly, there’s still a long way to go in getting even close to gender parity on behalf of women and girls. And you’ve already mentioned a couple of examples. But if you take the Fortune 500 companies, for example, only 44 of them, I think, right now are led by women. So, that’s very, very far from parity. It’s worth saying, however, that it was zero only 20 years ago, or so, 25 years ago. And so, huge progress but much further to go. But if you only look around at the elite, you don’t look down. You don’t see what’s happening further down. And most American men earn less today than most American men did in 1979. Well, as you —

SREENIVASAN: In ’79. Wow.

REEVES: In ’79, yes. So, if American men were a country and we’re thinking about economic progress, overall, men’s wages have declined for most men. Now, for men at the top, that’s not true. And so, in economic inequality has been widening, even as gender equality has been narrowing, which is why I have to look at both of these factors. So, I get it. I think if you’re looking around elite circles, you’ll see what remains to be done by in-large for women and girls, but that’s not the world that most people live in. And in a world where most people live, there are too many pretty big gaps now that are disparate bring men in the labor market and boys in the education system.

SREENIVASAN: So, how far down that education system do you go or can you start to see these inequities where girls are outperforming boys?

REEVES: Well, it’s now true that it’s at every level. So, we’ve just seen women overtake men in pertinent PhDs and post-graduate degrees. Obviously, they’re well ahead in terms of four-year degrees, we’ve just discussed. But it’s now at every level. And so, in terms of high school GPA, for example, which is a pretty good measure of all kinds of things and important for college admissions, so, if you take the top 10 percent of highschoolers in terms of their GPA, two- thirds of them are girls. And the bottom 10 percent, two-thirds of them are boys. And the line is pretty straight between those two. So, there’s a very big advantage in high school GPA. But the truth is pretty much at every level now. And it’s also important to say that pretty much every advanced economy. This is not just a U.S. problem. It’s not just to say a grade five problem or a post-secondary education problem. Because it’s everywhere in every level in every age. I do think — and that means we have to look to some structural problems there are in the system. So, I think — I mean, one of the things I learned, for example, is I had it sense, I knew that girls are way ahead in English. And in the average U.S. school districts, girls were almost a grade level ahead in English on average.

SREENIVASAN: Wow.

REEVES: But I still had a sense that — yes, that the boy we’re kind of ahead in math, and they’re not. And actually, in the average school district, they’re now dead hit (ph) in math. And in poorer school districts, the girls are quite a long way head in math and English. And so, I had this idea — I think a lot of you have ideas. Like, girls are better at some things, boys are better at some things, it kind of comes out in the wash. That’s basically not true anymore. There are essentially no subjects at pretty much any level where girls are behind boys but there are many, many where boys are now behind girls.

SREENIVASAN: Is the advancement of girls in math, does that have anything to do with the policies and the programs that we have, sort of, tried to make a concerted effort for science, technology, engineering, math, and trying to make sure that girls get in this? I mean, is this a success in some senses that —

REEVES: Yes, yes.

SREENIVASAN: –that our intervention has worked?

REEVES: It’s a huge success. And I think, just to take a step back for a moment, just generally, to make the point that the transformation and the educational outcomes for girls and women, and the economic outcomes for women has been stunning in the last 50 years. Arguably, it’s the greatest economic liberation in human history. It’s just been astonishing. And I think — I don’t think anybody listening to this, I hope, would say that was anything other than a great thing. But the key thing is it didn’t happen by itself. It took intention. It took effort. It took political capital. It took the courage of many women, absolutely, to push on these things. So, take STEM as a great example. They worked incredibly hard to get more women into science, technology, engineering, and math with really very significant success. More scientists in the U.S. now are actually women. And we’ve significantly increased the number of women who are entering those professions. Now, I think it’s time to look at why — how badly many of our boys are doing in subjects like English. And think about whether we might need some more male teachers in English. One of the ways that we helped girls and women to do much better was by getting more educators in those subjects. But there are very few men teaching in schools at all, and fewer and fewer overtime. But also, there are particularly few men teaching the subjects the boys are struggling in. And so, I think we can take a lesson of the women’s movement on how well it did in terms of breaking some of those barriers down for women, and apply them to boys and men.

SREENIVASAN: When you look at some of this data, how much of it is influenced by class and race? I mean, because — you know, depending on who in the audience is watching this, they’re going to say, well how is this possible if your kid is going to a good school already or if it’s a private school and you’re paying for it? You might be affluent and not see what you are defining and what the numbers are defining as the average male or the average boy in school.

REEVES: That’s exactly right. Like, at this point, the average is looking around at the top. We’re not looking down. And the truth is that the gender gaps in education, and more generally in education and employment, are just much, much smaller at the top. And in some ways, of course, in the very elite circles, it’s still the other way around. I think it’s important even there to say we’ve made huge progress. I was really interested to discover, for example, that the law review at every top law school in the U.S. two years ago was edited by a woman. Which is kind of unthinkable when (INAUDIBLE) like every single one of the top 16 law schools had a woman editing the law journal which is just amazing when you think what that means. So, we’re making progress even there. But it’s true, as you suggest, that this gender gap just gets much bigger for working class kids and for black kids, especially. And if you look in education, for example, for every two black women getting college degrees, there’s only one black man, which is even bigger than for other races. And so, when you look at this through a race and class lines, you really do see much bigger gender gaps. And the question then is why that is? For what it’s worth, I think it’s because parents with the means, the resources are actually investing heavily in their sons. They’re actually helping them through an education system that may not actually suit them as well as their sisters. But they’re helping them more. And I’ve raised three kids — three boys myself, I’m sure many people will resonate with this, is that actually which of your kids needs the most help with their homework, turning it on time, tutoring, et cetera? And it’s very often the boys. And so, what’s happening is upper middle-class parents are investing in their boys so that they don’t fall so far behind.

SREENIVASAN: So, how does this translate when it comes to finding jobs? How they perform in the labor market? Because even if there is a better pipeline today of women that are pursuing STEM fields, getting more college degrees, et cetera, it doesn’t necessarily seem to still translate into $1 earned versus $1 earned whether you are a man or woman.

REEVES: That’s right. Well, there’s two things on this. Overtaking in education we’ve seen has happened in the last two or three decades. And so, it’s taken a while to play out in the labor market. The gender pay gap is narrowing however. And in particular, it’s essentially disappeared among those before they have — men and women before they have children, not completely but it’s really — the pay gap is really now a parenting pay gap. What happens is that when we have kids, women are much more likely to take the time out from the labor market or work part-time and fathers are not. And so, that’s — that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. It just means it’s a different kind of problem. It’s no longer a problem by in-large of employers discriminating so, too. The other thing is worth saying though is that it used to be true that men were more able to get decently paid jobs even at lower levels of education. So, you can come out of high school and still get a decent manufacturing job to say. But those jobs are increasingly disappearing. And so, to the extent that there used to be a labor market where modestly educated men could outperform even better educated women, overtime that’s becoming less true.

SREENIVASAN: So, how do you fix that? I mean, when you were talking about the labor market of the future, I don’t see a manufacturing plant saying, let’s put the robots away and let’s put hundreds of humans back on the line.

REEVES: I can point you to a number of politicians who are going to promise to bring back manufacturing jobs, including pretty much every president whoever takes there (ph). We’re going to bring back factory jobs. And honestly, I think it’s a little bit irresponsible because what it does is it suggests to these men that all they got to do is wait for this magic wand that’s going to rip — bring back the economy of the ’50s and they’ll be OK. In the meantime, they’re just being benched by the current economy. And instead, we need to help men adapt and take these new jobs which are more about soft skills, relationships, which remain female dominated rather than pretending that we can save men by magically going into a time machine or bring back the factory jobs of the past. That’s not going to happen. And pretending so doesn’t help anyone.

SREENIVASAN: All right. Let’s talk about the third of your book or so, that really deals with, kind of, prescriptions and solutions. One of the things you touched on already a little bit but trying to encourage more males to become teachers. Why is that important?

REEVES: Well, the first thing to say is that the teaching profession used to be much more gender equal but it’s becoming more and more female dominated overtime. So, whereas many professions that used to be male dominated, like law or medicine and others we could talk about, have become much more equal. That law and medicine now are pretty much at gender parity. Teaching has become more and more female dominated. So, it’s only 24 percent of K-12 teachers are now men down from 33 percent only a few decades ago. In elementary schools there’s only one in 10. And in early years, education, essentially, there are no men. In fact, as a share of the profession, there are fewer men teaching kindergarten than there are women flying U.S. fighter jets. And I’m all for having people — more people flying fighter jets, I think it’s great. In fact, I just want the best people at flying to fly the fighter jets, to be honest. But there’s no discussion, really, for a lack of men in the classroom. And why does it matter? Well, it seems as if — for reasons that — to be honest, we’re not entirely clear about. But having men in the classroom does seem to help boys to learn. Especially in the subjects where they’re traditionally weaker, like English. And that’s interesting because it’s a direct — it’s a directly mirror image of what we know about girls. Girls and women seem to do better in traditional male subjects like STEM when they have a female teacher. Men and boys seemed to do better when they have a male teaching subjects, like English.

SREENIVASAN: So, besides encouraging more men to teach, what else can we do?

REEVES: I was, again, somewhat shocked to discover that a lot of policy interventions in education training and some in employment just seem to work pretty well for women and girls, but not very well for men and boys. The most dramatic example was a free college program in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I ended up going to Kalamazoo to interview as many men as I could find out — find to say, what’s going on here? But what they found in Kalamazoo is that free college programs, all tuition paid for for those who graduate from the school, they increased women’s college completion by 50 percent. It was a huge impact. And increased male college completion by zero. So, it had no impact on men at all. Which is an extraordinary finding and one that wasn’t getting as much attention as I thought it deserved. And there’s bunch of others, a mentoring program in a community college, some school choice programs. And I think the message here is that if you have a group, you seem to be having particular struggles, like many men and boys than a gender-neutral policy might not help them. It will help the ones who are already strong or doing well. But it won’t necessarily help the one who are struggling most. And so, I think we need some more male specific policies, if you like. It wouldn’t be restricted to men, of course. But things like vocational training, which does seem to help boys and men on average a bit more than girls and women. We’ve already talked about male teachers. I argue also that we should consider starting boys in school a year later just because they are developmentally behind girls throughout school, essentially. So, this is called redshirting, just hold them back for a year. But all of those would be a recognition of the fact that there are some problems in the education system that are specific to boys and men. And so, just a gender-neutral approach won’t necessarily work.

SREENIVASAN: You know, what you seem to be asking your readers to do is — I guess, America to do is to hold two thoughts at the same time. That’s it’s not a zero-sum game. That you can agree that there are still more work to be done to get women on a level playing field and point out what’s happening to men and boys. And that is, right now in this era that we are having this conversation in, that seems right at the center of so many different types of culture wars. That you cannot have two thoughts that can be equal without being labeled a misogynist, because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some of that on Twitter, of people who clearly haven’t read the book and saying, oh, my God. I can’t believe he’s saying this. And so — I mean, I’m assuming that you’re getting critique here from both sides of the political spectrum.

REEVES: If we dig in on the culture war, as you say — I mean, like at zero sum. And you say, look, even to talk about the issues of boys and men requires them to give up your commitment to women’s rights. If we frame it that way, that means the only people talking about it are going to be the most-fringy folks. That sort of manosphere folks rather than people of good faith. You can in fact hold two thoughts in your head at the same time. And I think very — one of the reasons I wrote the book, honestly, is I couldn’t tell you how many very liberal women would — really worried about boys and men in private. But worried about saying anything in public because they felt that would somehow diminish their feminist credentials. So, there’s this difference between the private discourse that people are having and the public discourse. And it turns out that most people away from the heat and lie (ph) of the culture war don’t see a zero sum. They want their sons and their daughters to flourish. They want their sisters to have great jobs just as they have great jobs. They don’t see it as zero sum. And it’s an unfortunate biproduct of the culture war that some of our politicians are engaged in. It makes it hard even to have this conversation in the first place and to think two thoughts at once. But most people I talked to are perfectly capable of having both of these thoughts at once. It’s not one or the other, it’s both.

SREENIVASAN: The book is called, “Of Boys and Men”. Richard Reeves, thanks so much.

REEVES: Thank you.