But is it sexism, or indeed institutional sexism? That's the question.
My opinion with no time to look for citations to back it up.
Women have made tremendous gains in some traditionally male occupations in the last 10-20 years. These include especially medicine, research and laboratory medicine (although they still lag in some areas of research) and veterinary medicine.
I think that there are a few reasons for this. The first, most obvious reason is that there has been a much larger, more obvious effort to promote interest of girls in science and a larger recognition on the parts of society, universities and professional programs that increasing participation of females is good for society and good for demonstrating that you are not biased against women.
At the same time all of this positive attention towards the need to increase girls' participation in science and education in general, there has been a marked drop off in positive attention towards boys' participation in science and education in general. This, coupled with an increasing number of female headed households where children have little or only sporadic contact with their fathers, has not worked well to boost the confidence of boys.
We need to encourage the participation of all students in math, science, literacy, the arts, social sciences, etc.
My husband and I have spent a lot of time discussing our different experiences as elementary and secondary students. I have strong memories of being told that my perfect math scores meant that I was 'lucky' and hearing over and over that boys were better at math and science, despite the fact that I usually had the top score in any math or science class I took and that generally, two of the top 3 scorers in my schools were female. My husband recalls the negative attitudes he faced as a boy for needing to be physically active rather than sitting quietly at a desk, and the general attitude that girls were well behaved and boys were not.
The terrible fact is that at least for the last 30 years and probably for longer, elementary school children have less recess time, barely have 20 minutes for lunch, including time waiting in lines. Home lives have altered so that it is very uncommon for children of working or middle class homes to come home at 3:00 to a parent who will give them a snack and then send them outside to burn off some more energy. Children are increasingly in structured group settings from shortly after birth until they are finished with high school, either because they graduated or dropped out. There is little time to explore independently, to daydream, to run around and invent your own games or play pick up games of any sort. Most free time is devoted to screens. In poorer neighborhoods, they are often unsafe enough that parents keep their kids indoors in order to keep them as safe as possible.
Not only have children become fatter, they are increasingly likely to be diagnosed and medicated for all sorts of learning disorders and hyper active and attention deficit behaviors. My thesis is that this hits boys harder even than it hits girls. Schools are more likely to have every second of school time devoted to structured 'learning' involving butts in seats, with compliance to be more and more emphasized. Middle class and above structure their kids every waking moments in sport and structured lessons. Y's and after school programs and boys and girls clubs try hard to make up the difference in programming for less fortunate kids but don't reach every kid. Kids are parked in front of screens from a very early preschool age onward.
This is not a way to raise any child and in general, it hits boys harder as they are more driven to the need for physical activity. Girls are, too, but my observation from raising male and female children is that boys tend to need to run around even more than girls. And folks, I spent hours riding bikes, running around, climbing trees, exploring woods and meadows. The time I wasn't doing those things, I was in school, doing chores and mostly reading. I read a LOT. My husband did the big city version of these things. Most kids walked to school. In my small town, virtually no child will ever walk to school anymore as neighborhood schools are shuttered in favor of large schools located away from anybody's neighborhood.
Women have always been talented in the areas of math and science although that talent has seldom been recognized, much less developed or utilized. This is changing. I would expect there to be a more equal distribution of participation in math and science between the sexes.
But boys are taking a hit and we need to stop this. Not by taking away from girls but by building up boys again, as they were built up in my generation and the generations before.
Having said all of that, as a society, we need to do a much better job structuring our society, our world, to nurture and serve the needs of all of our children and young people---and meet the needs of older folks, as well. If we do that, all of us will better have our needs met and be able to more fully utilize our talents and enjoy our lives and serve society.
