[Music]

I'm Ezra Klein this is the Ezra poncho

[Music]

men and boys are in bad shape they're in

real bad shape

that's the argument of Richard Reeves

new book of boys and men

or maybe I shouldn't say it's the

argument it's just what the numbers say

across a huge range of domains health

and education and income and happiness

and friendship and

on and on Reeves is a senior fellow at

Brookings where he's been studying

inequality and poverty and family policy

and gender inequality for years

and that work has taken him to an

unexpected even uncomfortable place

when we think about gender inequality

we're usually thinking about women and

girls and for good reason

men have been dominant forcibly dominant

legally dominant in society functionally

forever

and only in recent decades have enormous

barriers been even weakened

but the progress women have made in that

time is remarkable here's one stat

resolver that blows my mind about Title

IX the big gender equity and education

bill has passed in 1972.

at that time there was a 13-point gender

gap in bachelor's degrees with men of

course that had 13 points that Gap has

only grown since to 15 points but now

it's women ahead so the Gap is bigger

now than it was in 1972 but in women's

favor

and obviously obviously the problem

there is not that women are doing well

the problem is it in a lot of places men

are doing poorly they're falling behind

they're falling behind where they have

been in the past and they're falling

behind in ways that are tough on

families ways that are tough on

marriages ways that are tough on

children and it gets much much worse

when you go down the income ladder

so I want to have reads on the show to

take a closer look at these numbers to

think through some of the objections to

them and ask what Canon should be done

here

and I went back and forth on saying this

next part because maybe it's just

obvious

but at a meta level I often think in

politics

you face this implicit sense that

Compassion or concern is zero-sum that

they care about one group or one issue

is to care less about another

and I I just don't believe that I

actually think there's evidence it's not

true and maybe I can talk about that and

uh ask me anything episode sometime but

but compassion it's not measured out in

teaspoons from a cup it's quite the

opposite

I think it's much more of a habit

something we get better at something we

have more capacity for

the more we practice it

as always my email as a pine show at

nytimes.com

[Music]

Richard Reeves welcome to the show

thanks Ezra I'm really pleased to be

here

so your book opens with the line that I

have been worrying about boys and men

for 25 years

why 25 years what are you worried about

well that's a reference to the fact that

I've raised three boys and the oldest is

actually just about to turn 26 and so

I've been engaged in the the Enterprise

of fathering boys for that long and I

have this view that all scholarship is

at least partly autobiographical I think

inevitably we bring some of our own

experience into it and so I just wanted

to put out there immediately that that

is one of the reasons why I have a

particular interest in boys and men I

don't I obviously don't have a

counterfactual would I have written the

book if I'd had three daughters or would

have written a different book as opposed

to having three sons but there's no

doubt that that personal reason is is

part of the motivation for the book

but something you suggest there is that

in your long life as a poverty and

family policy scholar

15 years ago 20 years ago you might have

been worried about your boys but you

weren't as worried about boys and

something began to Ping for you and

change that what were the early signals

that this was a class that needed

special consideration now

while it's true that I I knew some of

the general Trends around what was

happening to to boys and men in various

areas but I just had a couple of moments

where I read a couple of findings or I

just it was a couple of facts were

illuminated in a way that I hadn't

really noticed before and I kept

stumbling across them essentially and

eventually just cumulatively I came to

see that my work on inequality generally

on family change even on Race Equity

just had this missing lens which was

this gendered lens and of course you

know then I'm bringing the conversations

from home into the workplace too but for

just a couple of moments where I just

read a paper or I saw a stat and I went

whoa okay didn't know that and then I

would sometimes share it with colleagues

and say did you know this you know did

you know for example at College

enrollment fell by seven times as much

for men as for women in 2020 that's one

example uh and and so I just kept

feeling like it went from stumbling

across these data points to kind of

running in them and bruising my shin on

them and then secondly the mere fact

that the these things weren't well known

enough was an indication that we weren't

having a very good quality conversation

about men and boys and masculinity I

looked around and I said why who's

talking about this and I didn't really

like the answer generally

to the question of who's talking about

this and so that felt like a both an

opportunity and a responsibility

I want to raise an obvious objection

here which which maybe speaks to that

who's talking about it why aren't people

talking about it which is

for most of human history might have

been socially and economically dominant

we're going to talk a lot about

education and college studies but men

were basically all college graduates for

almost the entire time there's been such

a thing as College we've had a couple of

Decades of just moving in the general

direction of equality and as soon as

women are head

on a couple of measures not by any means

all measures there's this oh crap what

about the boys feeling that emerges

how do you answer that objection when

you hear it

well the first thing I do is not only to

honor that objection if you like but to

share it it's honestly one of the

reasons I think that it's taken me so

long

to gather the evidence and to some

extent must have the courage to address

this issue because I had the same reflex

essentially what we're saying is Okay so

we've had I don't know 10 000 years in

which the cause of gender equality was

just intrinsically synonymous with the

cause of women and girls and then just

like yesterday women got ahead in a few

errors and suddenly you're freaking out

seriously like I I I get that instinct I

think that's actually a Perfectly

Natural reflex in part because the pace

of the change has just been so

extraordinary the updating our sort of

view of the world is very difficult it's

a bit like the needles on a compass of

swinging from north to south or

something it's like wait what I'm just

the updating our view of the world as

the evidence changed is very difficult

but also just a honestly at an emotional

level I I totally understand that gut

reaction to this sense of like oh wait

now you're freaking out about boys and

men like you get three minutes where

you're behind and it's a crisis I get it

but I don't think it's productive to

stay in that emotion I think that's an

understandable and necessary and

honorable emotion but then we say okay

having established that now let's look

at the facts and the facts are there are

a bunch of places where boys and men are

really struggling now and maybe it's in

all our interests to address them

let's work through a couple of them and

I want to begin with education

tell me about the the male female

education Gap that has opened in K-12

so it depends which measure you use of

course but a couple of data points just

to ground our conversation are that if

we take high school GPA which is a

pretty good measure of all kinds of

things outcomes it's a very good

predictor what does it look like and if

you then just rank high school GPA

across the distribution what you find is

that the top scoring students in terms

of GPA the top decile two-thirds of them

are girls and bottom 10 two-thirds of

them are boys with a roughly linear

relationship in between so there's a

there's a very big gender skew in high

school GPA there's about uh six

percentage Point Gap rather in on-time

High School graduation there's a very

big gap in kind of School Readiness in

the typical U.S School District now this

is work from Sean Reardon and his

colleagues at Stanford in the typical

School District girls there are at least

three quarters of a grade level ahead in

English and dead even in math and in the

poorer school districts they're a grade

level ahead in English and about a third

of a grade level ahead in math and so

the broad picture here is that in K-12

education and indeed in every level of

Education it will obviously come to

higher education in a moment what you're

seeing is that there is a really pretty

significant Gap in favor of girls in

school as opposed to boys a very

important caveat is that those gaps are

just much wider in certain places and

for certain groups so for boys of color

and especially black boys uh the gap

between black boys and black girls is

much bigger than the gender gap for

other racial groups is much bigger in

poorer communities and so there is a

very strong class and race Dimension to

this too essentially the gender gap just

magnifies the further you go down the

socio-economic scale or you introduce a

race Equity lens as well

yeah I want to hold on that for a minute

and this is a point you make in the book

which I think is a little

counter-intuitive because there's a way

of coding this conversation

as an almost backlashy conversation a

conservative take on where things have

gone

but something your book gets at very

clearly is that this is very much an

intersectional argument to use the terms

of the day that when you begin to stack

what is happening let's take schooling

here for a minute

with boys and then you add in poverty or

you add in race or you add in some of

these other markers the situation gets

very very Stark which I think is

honestly one of the better reasons to be

deeply concerned about it can you talk a

bit about that because I think when we

talk about boys and girls there's a

tendency to keep missing that uh the the

kind of subdivisions within there

yeah and the and the different ways that

different distributions overlap and and

again it's one of the reasons why I I

decided I wanted to write this book

because you do see that this story of

struggling boys and men is very largely

one of kind of less economically

powerful less advantaged uh boys and men

I've come to the point now where for

some of these categories that we're

looking at I think it's borderline

irresponsible just to look at a category

black for example in things like on-time

High School graduation or higher

education or even upward Mobility

because what that does by just doing of

course it's appropriate to look at it in

one way but then you have to break it

down because the differences between the

outcomes for black boys and black girls

for example are really very very wide so

I think that the intersectional lens

applied as I understand it anyway is to

say look let's look at how different

identities are coming together in ways

that would actually explain different

patterns of disadvantage and here it

turns out that when you add gender to

the story it goes in different ways so

working class boys low-income boys doing

really badly and as I said especially

black boys and men I compare person to

their sisters or to the girls in their

communities and the last thing I'll say

on this and it turns out this is again

something really struck me I didn't

really know this it's one of these

things that the scholars say oh well

it's a well-known finding in this

literature and in this case it means

seven people knew it which is that

poverty School quality family and

stability Etc dramatically affects boys

more than girls

and so that means that there's an

intergenerational element to male

disadvantage as well and the fact that

that inequality does affect uh poverty

and inequality do affect boys more as I

think an opportunity because what that

means is that if you're serious about

caring about boys and men which a lot of

people on the political right would

claim to be then you should get much

more serious about poverty and

inequality but also by the way if you're

serious about economic inequality and

poverty which a lot of people on the

left would say they are you really need

to look at the boys and men because

they're the ones who are struggling most

in those groups one thing that was a

striking finding for me is that we will

talk about the way school is structured

but this is showing up before school you

write quote girls are 14 percentage

points more likely than boys to be

school ready at age five controlling for

Parental characteristics why do you

think that is

the blunt reason is that boys develop a

little bit more slowly than girls on

average I think we can assume that for

this conversation people will your

listeners will understand that these are

averages and a fair question is how much

the distributions then overlap but on

average five-year-old boys just aren't

they're just not quite as developed as

five-year-old girls and that's why

controlling for all these other

characteristics is important and why

looking at siblings is important too so

it's just it's just not quite as grown

up as Girls by that point and then again

there's a much bigger Gap later in

adolescence which maybe we'll get to but

so it looks like the two big

developmental gaps by gender are around

the age of four or five and around the

age of 14 or 15 and the problem with

those dates is that it coincidentally

those turn out to be when you're

starting school and when you're getting

into high school which are in other

words very important transition moments

where you see this big development Gap

so

although there's a big heated debate

about the male brain versus female brain

in adults and so on how different are

the are our brains to which my answer is

not very different and not in ways that

really matter once you get to adulthood

there's really no debate about the

timing differences and that a girl's

brains do develop earlier than boys and

that seems to be particularly true at

around those two ages so I think it's

largely a neuroscientific thing but I

think there's also some evidence that

boys are a little bit more sensitive to

their environments they're a bit more

sensitive to Poverty a bit more

sensitive to family instability they

benefit much more from getting stable

foster care for example than girls and

so there's something also about if you

do have this disadvantage beginning

these early years these crucial early

years that the extent that there are

problems in those early years they'll be

more likely to affect the boys than the

girls and therefore show up in measures

of School Readiness

this is going to come up a couple of

times in the conversation but something

that struck me reading the book

is that there are moments of what you

might call biological determinism or

gender essentialism write this thing

about boys

brains developing a little bit later or

being more aggressive part of these

children

and then there's a lot that goes in the

other direction which I don't think you

always actually call out but struck me

as I went through it from our cliches

right this interesting finding that boys

are more sensitive to their environments

and seem to pick up more

intergenerational inheritance in some

ways culturally socially

than girls do I mean that is I would

call that a narrative violation right

boys being more sensitive to their

environments in a lot of different ways

masculinity being a much more fragile

construct which we will talk about boys

in some ways becoming less adventurous

that there are things that we have

claimed in society for a very long time

about how boys are strong and robust and

durable and stoic and so on and you know

women are emotional and sensitive and

hysterical and you know you can run down

the list of cliches

that is not really proving out right now

in a way that I think fascinatingly

upends a lot of

our typical conversation

I I came across this term in Psychology

a few years ago which I find quite

helpful in this debate which is the

difference between an orchid and a

dandelion you know so it's a well-used

just conceptual framework which is the

idea in Orchid is is some

developmentally much more sensitive

right it takes a lot of work to make an

orchid grow whereas a dandelion will

grow pretty much everywhere under all

kinds of dishes so dandelions are

resilient and it turns out that in terms

of the environmental conditions the boys

are a bit more Orchid and girls are a

bit more dandelion the difficulties that

no one really knows why

there isn't an obvious as far as I know

an obvious causal mechanism that says

why is it that boys are more sensitive

to these different backgrounds than

girls and there's lots of theories that

fly around in evolutionary psychology

but I just I haven't found any kind of

convincing story as to why but we do

know that it's true and that it's true

across all these different domains all

these different dimensions so in one

example that actually this is what draws

on the work of Raj cheddy that I know

you know very well is that kind of

neighborhood poverty just seems to

affect boys more than girls right the

independent of the family's own income

situation like just in a poor

neighborhood and you can speculate us to

all kinds of reasons that might be the

case but the same with like a poorer

performing school just seems to affect

boys a bit more and as I say I haven't

found a kind of convincing explanation

for why but I agree with you that it's a

narrative violation to the extent that

the narrative is you know if the

narrative is always a strong and

independent they don't need any

particular attention girls need

nurturing and tendering to the extent

that there is any difference it runs

exactly the other way

one thing you argue based on this

difference in the timing of of brain

development

is that

we need to face up to the idea that

school is simply structurally designed

in a way that disadvantages boys

tell me what you mean by that

yes and it's important just to say not

structurally designed in order to be

less favorable to boys so it's not

intentional there wasn't some great

secret feminist conspiracy a hundred

years ago when we were designing the

high school system to say aha

it'll take a century but eventually

we'll get our way but now that we're in

a situation where we have thankfully

taken away most of if not all of the

barriers to women's education girls and

women's educational

opportunities and Pathways and ambition

we do see this difference opening up and

what I mean by that is that the

education system rewards certain kinds

of skills and behaviors which are

everything else equal more likely to be

found in girls than in boys and more

like to come earlier in girls than in

boys like organization

Etc so I find the difference in the GPA

Gap and the standardized test score gaps

really instructive in this regard there

is a quite significant GPA Gap in favor

of girls but there isn't on standardized

standardized tests now are basically

equal so it's not that girls are smarter

than boys or of course the other way

around it's that girls have just got

their act together a bit more they've

got their prefrontal cortex ticking in

they're turning their chemistry homework

in they're getting their coursework done

those are what social scientists call

like non-cognitive skills or I do I

refer to is he turning in your chemistry

homework skills and so to the extent

that we reward those kinds of behaviors

and that they are more likely to be

found in girls than everything else

equal that means that baked into the

education system is something of a tilt

towards girls it's just that we couldn't

see that before because we weren't

basically not letting girls go into

college or certainly strongly

discouraging them from doing so so those

natural advantages weren't as obvious

and the other thing I'd say very quickly

are the drop in the share of male

teachers in public K-12 schools not in

privates interestingly it's going up

there but in there are fewer and fewer

men in our classrooms that everything

else equal I'm reasonably convinced does

seem to have some implications for boys

in the classroom so we're down to 24 of

K-12 teachers are men now down from 33

and the 80s and very few in particular

in early early years and elementary and

middle school and the last point is that

something of a retreat from vocational

forms of training which everything else

equal does seem to have some gender

effects technicals high schools more

vocational training seems to be a little

bit more attuned to boys learning styles

than girls and of course you want

balance here but we've actually under

invested in those slightly more male

friendly aspects of education so you put

all those three things together and what

you end up with is a school system that

not through intent but by accident has

ended up being somewhat more female

friendly than male friendly

I was somebody who struggled terribly in

school with these exact kinds of skills

and so I'm very on some intuitive level

sympathetic

but I want to make sure I'm raising a

frustration that I can imagine coming up

right about here which is traditionally

when we've had groups that were

struggling in school

kids of another race poor kids kids from

a different socioeconomic class women

we've tended to turn that into a problem

with them or the culture they came from

or their genetic inheritance

or something right if you didn't do well

at school school was a testing ground

and if you didn't test well

well that showed there was something

wrong with you

and then now boys are struggling and

it's like maybe there's something wrong

with school

how do you think about that difference

between

we should change school around Boys

versus

we somehow need to change Boys around

school or we're discovering something

here that is

more intrinsically telling

well I think I disagree with the way

you've described the way we've treated

those groups or at least you've

generalized it I think that one of the

big gains actually has been to move away

particularly I would say on the center

left away from that approach of saying

what's wrong with you right

individualizing these problems and

instead Well that took a long time I

would say well I mean if you go back to

the

like in the 1970s this is a good test

case which is more specifically around

gender like in the 1970s when we passed

Title IX and we were really pushing and

we're putting lots of money in trying to

get women into stem Etc I think that

actually there wasn't the presumption

that the reason the women and girls were

behind in education was because there

was something wrong with them I think

the presumption was because the system

was sexist and Society was sexist and

schools were sexist and colleges were

sexist and we needed to batter the hell

out of those sexist institutions so I

think you're wrong I think that actually

one of the driving forces of the women's

movement at least was not to say what's

wrong with women it was to say what's

wrong with Society what's wrong with

these institutions and and move away

from that now of course conservatives

are much more likely to take that

approach the one you've described which

is the individualistic one I actually

think by contrast what's happening now

is that by and large on the center left

there is a tendency to say what's wrong

with boys what's wrong with men why are

they so toxic why are they so lazy or

whatever and and to not look for

structural problems so as I think we've

moved now to a world where we're much

better at looking at what are the

structural forces facing other groups

but we're not doing that for boys and

men now so in some ways I see it almost

entirely the opposite way to the way

you're seeing it in terms of this

structural versus individual way of

looking specifically at gender and I

could be getting the history of the

1970s and 1980s wrong but my sense of it

is not that we were blaming women and

girls and saying what was wrong with

them

well I'd say two things on that so one I

think if you only start the clock in the

70s and 80s that's sort of my point that

I mean yes we had a sort of moment of

liberatory movements but even there I

mean I came of age as a journalist at a

time when the cultural pathology

explanation

for black kids in school and their

achievement or what was happening in

black families was extremely dominant

and now that a lot of that has

moved over to White communities that's

become less true right the ways in which

we're thinking about breakdown of

marital stability I mean you know this

work much better than I do in white

communities now is much less about oh

there's some kind of cultural pathology

and much more about and and it's

somewhat in this book too there's a

structural set of problems and I mean

you see us again with the difference

between the way we've looked at crack

and opioids so my point I actually think

you're right I 100 agree that the left

one problem it has it is resistant to

making the same move for boys I think

it's actually one of the very important

contributions of your book but I also

want to I mean acknowledge I guess in

part to knock it down but in part

because I think it's been a real Dynamic

that it is an interesting move it is a

difference in the way of looking at

something to say okay as soon as a group

begins falling behind in school maybe we

need to remake schools as opposed to

begin looking for deficiencies in the

group or in their parents or in their

communities

yeah start fixing the individuals like

one individual at a time which is still

I think the dominant narrative for many

on the conservative side of this

argument and when they're being

consistent about it they also apply it

to boys and men they would say yeah they

need to Buck Up they need to need to

stop looking at so much porn and video

gaming so much and they need to man up

they need to ReDiscover they're in a

mask whatever right take take your

cliche from the right and of course I

could do the same for the left around

toxic masculinity stop being so toxic

and pathological but I I think that this

move that we've made which is to say

well look without in any way dismissing

the importance of what's happening to

individuals let's just look at the

environments let's look at the

structures let's look at the way in

which the systems and structures around

this person are informing their choices

and let's start with that right don't

necessarily end there but let's start

with that insight and so you're right

that what I'm trying to do is take what

I think was a very important move and

say let's look at structures and not

just individuals and apply that to boys

and men and it may well be that it

doesn't always work and that it's not

the right structure but I think that we

should have the same instinctive

approach when we see gender inequalities

running one way as the other way

one very striking finding given how

clear the data is for girls being better

than boys in grade school

is it Boys still perform a little better

on most standardized tests tell me a bit

about how that data has been changing

and what you make of it

yeah and it's important I think only a

little bit better I think it's gone all

together on the act now so it depends

which tests you're you're talking about

but that's generally right and the way I

think about that is the those tests are

largely getting at you know cognitive

ability let's call it just sort of just

smartness whatever whereas things like

you know GPA and so on and getting these

non-cognitive skills which turn out to

be very predictive by the way of life

success and college success and so on so

I think historically we've probably

overweighted the smarts the cognitive

right the good test taking skills we're

now actually we're now in danger if

anything Perhaps Perhaps are going too

far the other way I'm not sure but we

need to rebalance it and to the extent

that there are gender differences in

those outcomes then what we want of

course is a situation that balances both

that the way I interpret that difference

is I don't expect actually that the

girls will massively overtake Boys on

those standardized tests I think I would

expect it to level out at something

close to equality because I think girls

and boys are about as smart as each

other so that's a great thing that's a

great game A great win for equality if

you like I think the the more

interesting stuff is when you get into

those non-cognitive skills and then the

question is like how much do they matter

right so for example when a college goes

test optional in terms of its admission

so for a higher education institution

says don't you don't have to put your

tests in the main effect of that is to

significantly increase the share of

women by about four percentage points in

that student body now you'd expect that

because the girls are just doing so much

better on all these other measures

Student Government GPA Etc the only

place where there's kind of basically

equality is on standardized tests and so

I actually don't blame the institutions

for doing that but I think we should be

why Eyes Wide Open about the fact that

that kind of policy move is going to

have these gendered effects just because

we see these differences in the outcomes

on these two very different measures of

ability

let's move into higher education you

mentioned Title IX which passed in 1972

maybe you can say a word on what that

was but I think it's a good marker what

was the gender gap like in higher

education then and what is it like now

so in 1972 Title IX was passed and that

that was a a big change in U.S law that

just essentially said that we had to

have and enforce uh gender equality

across the board in U.S higher education

and it had really very positive and

dramatic effects on women's educational

opportunities and outcomes I mean so if

you just look at the lines it's pretty

extraordinary how quickly things changed

after Title IX at that time when Title

IX was passed boys young men were about

13 percentage points more likely to get

a four-year college degree than girls

now

girls young women are about 15

percentage points more likely to get a

college degree than boys and young men

and so we have Title Nine level gender

gap in higher education now it's just

the other way around so what happened

was that's an extraordinary finding I

mean not finding just that's just

literal data but it is an extraordinary

statistic

yeah now guess what I'm doing here is

I'm using it to just dramatize to some

extent the scale of the change to to put

it the way that I just put it you're

right it's not that's not difficult data

to find but it is it's it's it's really

interesting how many people are

surprised when I tell them that because

I'm like well it's there in the NCIS

data sets and like like didn't you know

and of course the answer is no of course

it didn't know because it's not really

anybody's job to make them no and it

might not matter in the same way by the

way I mean we might pick a very

different view even if the gap's about

the same or a little bit bigger now we

might very reasonably take different

views about the gaps not least because

we might see them as having different

causes which indeed they do have right

the main reason for The Gap now is that

the boys are just performing not as well

at high school that predicts how they do

a college that's a very different

problem to basically having this ceiling

that we used to put on women's equality

so an inequality doesn't necessarily

mean an injustice but it did in 72 does

it now I would say no it doesn't it just

means we should look harder at the

structures and so very quick catch up

and then I think it's also important to

note that nobody predicted or expected

this great overtaking we were quite

rightly focused in the 70s and 80s and

we really were focused on just like how

do we do better in terms of getting

women and girls better educational

opportunities and outcomes but the lines

just kept going and no one expected that

there's you cannot find anybody in the

literature saying well wait actually

this is going to turn out to go the

other way which I think is partly why

we're struggling to kind of get our

heads around it because it was just so

in some ways unexpected that the lines

would just keep going in the way they

have

something you note which I really didn't

know I mean I I did know the college Gap

although I didn't know it was a perfect

inversion of when Title IX was passed

but the idea that female students are

now twice as likely to study abroad

they're much more likely to do things

like Peace Corps or Americorps that the

Gap is even greater in the UK's

voluntary service overseas program

that's really interesting to me to talk

a bit about that observation and what

you make of it

yeah it's an example of what I now think

of as like the small data points as

opposed to the big data points so you

have these big data points like college

completion that we just talked about or

GPA or you know earnings or whatever but

then you stumble across these like small

data points which I find in some ways a

more culturally Illuminating so you're

quite right that studying abroad twice

as likely Americorps and Peace Corps

women twice as likely to be doing that

as men and so there are these like

outside of the kind of mainstream data

sets there are these really interesting

data points that I think indicate

something about ambition

aspiration about future orientation

there's this sense of like not a

passivity of drift of a bit checking out

a little bit in young young men and boys

and you see that then playing out things

like more like to live at home parents

less like you know women and animal like

to buy their first home

Etc and so you're seeing a whole series

of scattered small data points or things

speak to a deeper cultural problem which

is something like male Drift But

passivity uncertainty a bit lost so the

women and girls are actually just a

little bit more metronomically going

forward and I'll give you actually this

is a big data point but another one that

really struck me is that there's about a

10 percentage point gap in college

enrollment four-year college enrollment

between males and females but then

conditional on enrolling is a very big

completion Gap and particularly four

years so there's a 10 percentage point

gap between conditional and enrolling

graduating four years later in favor of

women and so they're just much more

likely they graduate they they're more

likely to finish High School go straight

to college finish college on time go and

so there's a linearity to the progress

of girls and young women and more of a

zigzaggy look and a bit more of a sense

of retreat perhaps among many boys and

young men

this struck me as another interesting

narrative violation that

you know we talk about men being very

testosterone soaked risk-taking

aggressive and and there's good evidence

for that I mean you talk a bit about

aggression statistics and they're very

clear

but packaged in all that I think in our

stories at least has been that men are

adventurous that were explorers that you

know we want to go out into the world

and women are oriented to Home and

hearth

and

whatever the the sort of underpinnings

of this this is quite different what

we're starting to see now I mean the the

degree to which women are venturing out

and Men seem to be closing in including

in sort of digital worlds and otherwise

is striking

yeah I I say something along the lines

of like women have been having to fight

against misogyny outside of them and men

are now struggling for motivation within

themselves and it turns out that

actually men if anything perhaps need a

bit more structure a little bit more

sense of a script if you like uh which

maybe we can talk a bit more about but

even things like geographical Mobility

is really interesting I I think I

discovered this after I finished the

book but in many countries women are

much more geographically mobile now

partly that's driven by the higher

education thing but not just that and so

a great example of this is East Germany

where actually what happened was a lot

of the women left and went to the west

to seek New Opportunities and so there

are parts of East Germany now where

there are massive differences by gender

just in the populations also not

coincidentally the heart of the

reactionary right in Germany so this

sense of actually men being left behind

not moving not getting up not going

having less agency in many ways than

women and that could be partly related

to the internet I think in some ways the

internet might be both bad news and good

news in that sense because it might be

better that men are in the basement than

you know roaming around doing uh

anti-social things we can maybe get into

some of that theory as to like is it

good or bad that men are on the internet

all the time

um but I do think the kind of the

broader point is that absent a really

clear set of messages and scripts men

are actually not as likely to be

adventurous the only thing I wonder

about I'm just thinking about this

recently is like is this a temporary

effect I've had a lot of people say to

me well look women are basically like

immigrants now they've had to fight

their way in they're fighting for it

they want to be independent they're

getting message about being independent

so there's a generational two of women

that are just unusually like ambitious

and aspirational now and that will pass

that over time that difference will go

so the aspiration Gap could be it's just

that women are just unusually like

killing it right now and very

aspirational and that will pass but I'm

not convinced actually I think that

there might be something more structural

going on here

that brings up something I've been

wanting to ask about which is the

international data let's take schooling

as the example here when you look at

peer countries so other

post-industrialized mostly democracies

what do we see

we see the same patterns pretty much

everywhere is the is a short version to

some there are differences at different

levels but I think it's important that

it's happening pretty much everywhere in

terms of those advanced economies

because that's a good sign that's not

something weird about the US K-12 system

for example like if it wasn't also

happening in Canada and the UK and

Western Europe and everywhere then then

you might start to think oh maybe it's

something about our system it's not it's

something broader than that which I

think speaks to these more deeper

structural issues that we're facing so

in every oecd country for example there

are more young women with a college

degree than men the Gap is much wider

and more gender equal places which you

might expect so places like Scandinavia

there are much narrower gaps in other

places like Germany for example has you

know a much smaller Gap than others in

terms of getting some kind of

post-secondary education but that's

largely because of the technical

education system in Germany but the

basic picture is I know the UK best

Associated where I'm from the UK

database and the UK data is very similar

to the US data in terms of educational

outcomes for boys and girls

as someone who spends a lot of time

reading about policy interventions

something that you tracked in here that

I really didn't know and was striking

was that there are we've seen how a lot

of pretty profound efforts to increase

college attainment or better K-12

outcomes that look like they work and

then we when you dig into them they only

work for women and you have quite a few

examples here so I want to see if you

could talk through the Kalamazoo study

and then just generally what you think

this might be

revealing

yeah it was the Kalamazoo one that sent

me down this track so the Kalamazoo

Promise is the most generous college

scholarship program there are there are

a number of these promised programs now

around the US and essentially what they

do is that they say like if you're from

this place you can go to college for

free so in Kalamazoo if you come out of

a Kalamazoo high school you go through

the high school system there we'll pay

full tuition we'll just pay for it this

uh in any basically any college in the

state so it's unusually generous as a

promise program but also it's really the

only one that's been properly evaluated

by Scholars at The upjohn Institute and

I looked at their evaluation of the

Kalamazoo Promise and it finds Pretty

good overall results but huge gender

differences in fact all the positive

result is driven by women so it

increased College completion for women

by around 50 which they describe quite

rightly as a really just very very big

increase but it didn't move the needle

at all on male College completion there

was no effect on male College completion

so that again is one of those moments

where again it's not a data point you

stumble across it's one that like you

bruise your shin on you fall over you

get up again you run around the

corridors of Brookings showing up to

everybody saying did you know this

they're saying no and then I dug in and

I kept coming across other studies so

yeah Community College mentoring program

a school choice program

Etc and I and I actually discovered that

you know colleagues like Brad hershbein

who who was one on the team in up John

but also David Autry and Mallory

Wasserman David figlio and others

they've done work on this and and there

were sentences in their conclusions

saying and we find as so many other

studies that this well-known effect that

the intervention worked for girls or

women but didn't work for boys and men

and I was like well I didn't know it I

sort of think I should have known it

given where I am and so I walked around

the corridors again I'm going to call it

did you know it and they're like no not

really you know so it was literally a

handful of Scholars knew that there was

a pretty well-known effect that we had

these interventions that didn't work for

boys and men so I end up really digging

in on that and finding examples now of

course there are examples that go the

other way not many actually and and like

a Boston Pre-K evaluation Founders a bit

better if anything football is and there

are lots of things that seem to work for

both both like the ASAP program for

community colleges and stuff but to the

extent that there are differences they

tend to break that way and the scholars

themselves very often weren't making a

very big deal of it with some honorable

exceptions it was sort of noted well

that's interesting we found the same

thing as that last study move on but I

didn't want to move on I thought okay

this is just an important from a public

policy point of view why is it that

these policies or programs are working

for one sex and not the other

so you went down to Kalamazoo and you

talked to some of the men who would have

benefited from it or maybe tried to and

didn't what did you hear

I heard a lot of what what we've been

talking around in terms of the the

social science actually which was you

know these guys were very the ones who'd

struggled they'd gone in hadn't finished

Etc and I heard a few things I heard one

is like I couldn't make up my mind what

to do or so I kept changing Majors then

my friend had an idea for a business so

I stopped out to go and help him and I

never got back on on the rails or

someone got sick and I couldn't get back

and so a bit zigzag versus straight line

again but they're also very values

Tyrese was one of the guys that I talked

to there and he's like well look the

women are more motivated they're more

organized they've got longer term kind

of Horizons and they've got better study

skills she's like duh and said I think

it was one of them said to me I always

try and get women if I'm going to do a

study group right because they're just

so much better they're just on it and

that sense of just being on it really

kind of came through from these guys so

they were they were seeing themselves

just this skill Gap essentially that

they thought explained most of the

difference in the ability to take even

the money so what it suggested to me and

this is a broader point now I think just

from gender is that sorry about the

skill you know study skills and the

ability to kind of make your way through

college that's important and I'm pleased

some colleges a handful are starting to

realize that men are just men are just

finding that harder Queensborough

Community College for example just

launched a men's Resource Center there's

one at the University of Oregon I think

we'll see more of those as colleges just

wake up to the fact that the guys just

don't have quite the same developed

skills as the women now certainly all

the ones I spoke to in Kalamazoo said

so now to wrap this in an actual

proposal you argue that the college Gap

reflects the K-12 cap and I think your

most eye-catching idea of what to do

about it

is to red shirt Boys in school to start

Boys in school a year later than than

girls tell me about that

yeah so it's based on the evidence that

boys just do develop later than girls

again on average age of course is a very

crude proxy like when do we put our kids

in school right how do you just start

different countries different states

different different schools have

different rules about this so it's a

very

arbitrary system in a way is that when

when we put them in but given that there

is this Gap and especially this Gap in

adolescence where girls seem to develop

earlier and in terms of non-cognitive

skills they're a year or two ahead of

boys and adolescents why not just start

the boys a year later so if we start

girls at five start boys at six or four

and five or whatever it would be and I

see that as leveling the playing field

it would mean that developmentally the

girls and boys would be closer to each

other even if chronologically the boys

are ahead so the relationship between

chronological age developmental age is a

bit different for the two of them and so

for us in ninth and 10th grade for

example where you see these huge gender

gaps opening up I think you'd see less

of that I think the boys are doing a bit

better if they just had that extra year

essentially for their brains to catch up

with the girls brains and the other

thing and here I'm putting on my sort of

class analyst hat too is I really

noticed that it's affluent parents for

quite commonly holding their boys back

and in one private school they went to

in DC area 30 of the boys were actually

old for their year and I interviewed

this is for an Atlantic article that I

did on sure the boys I interviewed a

bunch of people in and around these

affluent parts of DC and it was kind of

common knowledge I mean you know this

woman who was actually a counselor to

parents said well there are two there

are two entry days one for boys one for

girls everyone knows that and so as soon

as I see people in positions of power

people with the resources to do

something doing something and paying

attention and right now this is a very

upper middle class thing to do but

ironically it's the boys who are the

poorest who would benefit the most from

an extra year not the ones who are

richest

how would this affect girls I mean

imagine a world where all boys are

starting a year later and that means

they're going through among other things

puberty earlier they're that much bigger

have we been able to see in the studies

why this creates a better or worse

environment for for girls in these

schools

no so I think importantly of course it

would mean actually that boys were

hitting puberty at about close to the

same time as girls in the school because

of course girls hit puberty quite a bit

earlier than boys but I don't know of

any good evidence for the effect of

having older Boys Around in schools has

on girls in the school or in the

classroom I think at a classroom level

it's reasonable to think that it

wouldn't be a bad thing right if the

boys are just a little bit more mature

they're a little bit more developed and

I think that's if anything gonna create

a Better Learning environment for the

girl so if you're a 15 year old girl

trying to study then actually you want a

boy that's a bit more like you in terms

of age and one data point on this is

that girls are twice as likely to date a

boy that's older than them in school

that's obviously a romantic thing so

it's a different measure but it speaks

to something about that developmental

Gap I think and it's not as if we don't

have a lot of older Boys in our schools

anyway I mean you know quite a few boys

will get held back a grade and so it's

not a new thing to have older Boys in

schools this would have caused me

there'd be a lot more of them and I

think we'd have to evaluate I think we'd

have to see but but on the face of it I

actually think that having slightly more

mature boys in a school wouldn't

necessarily be a bad thing I mean

they're going to hit puberty in high

school anyway they're going to have that

kind of the bath of testosterone that

comes with puberty that's going to

happen anyway and so actually in a sense

that it happening a year later to them

in terms of the school year isn't a bad

thing I think in terms of the fact like

how how do they deal with that I think

it would be on balance I think it would

probably be good for everybody but

especially good for the boys

so far as interventions go this just

seems like a dream to Pilot and evaluate

like you choose six school districts in

different areas of the country you

randomize which schools within them do

this you follow the students for 10 15

20 years and boom you really know what's

going on here

but there have been some studies done

that are more limited

talk me through the effect sizes we seem

to see here yeah so first of all yes if

there's anybody listening who would love

to Pilot this that would be great and I

do think it needs careful evaluation for

sure but so the studies that have been

done and there's a very good one by

Diane schatzenbach and Elizabeth Cascio

and I should say by the by the way that

they do not agree with me in terms of

the policy proposal although I partly

base it on their research I want to be

clear and honest about that but what

they do is they take a study that

actually just accidentally meant that

there were some kids that were older in

their classes as a result of an

unrelated policy reform it's actually

about class sizes reassigning kids to

different class sizes but it had this

nice effect of basically randomly

putting kids of different ages into

different school years in Tennessee and

what they found was that there were some

positive effects to being absolutely a

year older so it's not about relative

age within the class it's about your

absolute age but strikingly they found

that the effects were just much bigger

for boys than for girls and for boys

they lasted all the way through high

school graduation or at least sat taking

but for girls they they disappeared by

high school and they were much bigger

for boys what was nice about their study

was that it was largely lowering come

boys and disproportionately black boys

and so it was an unusual sample for this

quote redshirting thing because most of

the people being redshirted tend to be

more affluent and white and so it was a

good a chance to see what the effects

were and they were there were

non-trivial uh effect sizes and so to

the extent that we have evidence from

those kinds of studies where there's

been almost this accidental thing

happening the evidence points to some

positive effects I think the question is

just are they big enough to justify the

policy overall and what I argue is that

we should just change the default we

should just think differently about it

and say maybe by default just boys a

year later than girls and of course you

could override the default just as we do

now or maybe ultimately just have a

system for admissions that was a bit

more developmentally sensitive anyway

you said those researchers don't agree

on the policy what is their argument

what don't they buy in yours

so one of the concerns is that assuming

that we keep girls starting schools at

their current age if we start boys a

year later then they're going to be

older they might be more likely to drop

out of high school that's one thing

because they hit a legal age where they

could do so that's a real concern but we

could increase the school leaving age

maybe someone said to me we'll just

start the girls a year earlier because

they're ready earlier so that's a

different way of structuring the policy

of course but they're also concerned

that there are costs because there's an

extra year of child care or Pre-K and so

that's an important thing to bear in

mind as well and they're worried about a

loss during the labor market they're

worried that by taking an extrude note

another year over finishing school

essentially that's one year Less in the

labor market which has effects on

earning Social Security Etc I'm much

less worried about that than them

because honestly the boys I'm most

worried about are not are not generally

going straight from high school to

college to a good job and staying in

work they're zigzagging one way or the

other and so I think they're

overweighting that that one year for the

group I'm most worried about but I think

that's a reasonable concern and I think

again a reason why ideally you'd want to

evaluate a policy like this

[Music]

foreign

[Music]

let me ask about one other solution in

the the educational space which is you

argue for a dramatic expansion of

vocational and technical schools not

just education not just a class in the

school but school is really dedicated to

this for people not familiar tell me

what the schools are like and then tell

me the kinds of

effect we we see of sending voice to

them so a technical high school is one

that's intended to be one that is

focused more around vocational kinds of

learning and so it could for example be

doing more stuff in stem but it could

also be doing sort of vocational

training towards for example some areas

you'd consider to be more female like

like healthcare administration Etc but

also a lot more around what you see as

kind of classically vocational classes

that were kind of more leading towards

engineering type jobs or electrician Etc

so they're just more vocational or auto

mechanics is another one you do so it's

essentially just more of what people

might think of as quotes more shop class

now importantly not instead of academics

they still do very strong academic

programs as well and there are a few

states in the northeast of the US that

do have quite a few technical high

schools where we can actually draw some

good evaluations from and I do propose

to be significantly increase that so

just gets more Hands-On learning more

vocationally oriented more career

oriented and the evaluation studies that

have been done in places like

Connecticut show really some very good

results in terms of earnings in

particular particular for boys who go to

those schools and no results for girls

this is a great example of a counter a

counter example to the general trend of

an educational intervention tending to

work for girls and boys to the extent

this is seen as an intervention it tends

to be quite Pro male it really does seem

to help boys a lot more than girls and

so and for me that's a reason to do it

rather than not do it an important

although slightly wonky point is that

the evidence that I look at anyway

suggests that Career and Technical

education just spread across high

schools doesn't seem to be as effective

as just okay here's a technical high

school and you're going to go to a

technical high school and I'd love more

students and parents to have that choice

there's a real suspicion around that

some of them I think maybe a bit of

snobbery some concerns about tracking

which obviously have you know deep roots

in American educational history so there

are lots of reasons why the US just is

not as cool with the idea of these high

schools as other countries are but I'm

pretty convinced that they would be a

good idea not least for boys

so let's move then to what happens after

school how would you describe the way

the labor market change over the past 50

years for men and for women

so we've seen dramatically different

trajectories for many men most men and

many women and most women but by no

means all so the way I see the labor

market over the last 50 years and here

I'm very influenced by the work of

people like Claudia golden and others

just looking at labor market

trajectories is that

for most men things have been pretty

tough and David Auto and Melanie

Wasserman are good on this too it's been

pretty tough so a data point here is

that most American men earn less today

than most American men did in 1979.

so not all the men at the top are doing

better than the men at the top are doing

but just overall that means at the

median and a little bit above the median

male wages are a little bit lower

controlling for inflation of course than

they were we've seen Rises across the

distribution in wages for women although

again much faster at the top than at the

bottom so the class Gap is massively

widened for both men and women but in

terms of wages of course there's still a

gender pay Gap largely as a result the

differences in the impact of parenting

on men and women but another data point

is that in 1979 only 13 of women earned

more than the median man a typical man

13 and today is about 40 percent

so about 40 of women now earn more than

the typical man that's just a dramatic

economic change the female wage

distribution has not caught up entirely

with the male one and especially at the

top there's still a lot more work to do

but wow I mean it's hard not to look at

that and see that as I do as the

greatest economic Liberation in global

history the amount of economic power

that women now have in the labor market

compared to 50 years ago is

extraordinary and then of course that

plays out in employment too and it rates

of female employment and just much

higher than they were and actually male

labor force participation has obviously

dropped quite significantly

you mentioned that the gender wage Gap

and the role of parenting there I do

think that's an important thing to talk

about directly so the stat people will

hear maybe know for every 100 earned by

men women are earned 82 dollars

tell me how you understand that data and

tell me a bit about how you parse the

debate over that data yeah and it's

actually also just a great example of

just another debate where I was so

frustrated by the arguments on both

sides honestly where there's all these

YouTube videos of why the gender pay Gap

is a myth right and then there'd be

someone saying yeah but once you control

for occupation and earnings and age and

time in the labor market it basically

disappears right so it's a myth well

even if all those things are true well

it doesn't make it a myth it's you

you're helping me explain why it's

happening but it's not a myth it's just

math it's just just true

there's a great line sometimes of

controlling for what you're measuring

which I always think about when I see

those videos yeah exactly like aha I've

control the way the differences I was

looking for I mean you see it in race

too I mean actually I've seen studies

that say basically if you control for

every aspect of what it means to be

black in America then being black

doesn't make any difference and so I

think that's a that's that's a real

problem in the way you use controls

generally and so I think that's a fair

criticism of it so you're controlling

away the very you know the gendered

nature of the labor market for example

but on the other hand there is also a

very strong sense among a lot of people

that yeah there's a gender pay Gap and

that's because of discrimination right

and in fact I'm really struck by the

survey evidence that the more educated

the respondent is the more likely they

are to believe that the cause of the

gender pay Gap is employer

discrimination that it's because women

are paid less than men for doing the

same job and that's just not true

um it's actually for much more

interesting and deeper and structural

reasons about gender division of labor

and child care occupational segregation

Etc and so it's just a more complex and

new debate as so often then either side

of this would prefer us have to believe

you know on the one hand it's a myth on

the other hand it's a sign that

employers are still Patriarchs

discriminating wildly against women

doing the same jobs and neither of those

are true it's actually just a much

deeper question

I think at this point it is fair to say

we simply are using the wrong word for

it so back when I uh was at vox's editor

uh I Sarah Cliff who is there too is now

at the New York Times it is great health

and policy reporter she did a ton of

work on this and we actually did a

Netflix episode about it in the whole

thing and it's really a motherhood

penalty right

and you could see this in different

countries and you see it in lesbian

couples yes can you just Trace some of

that that finding yeah I actually Drew

on some of Sarah's work when I was

looking at this I think it's a really

really excellent work and that is

basically right I mean essentially what

you're seeing is it's a it's a parenting

penalty I'll put it that way because it

actually turns out as you say we have

very good some same-sex couples now Etc

that it is just this fact of like you

have a child that affects what happens

to you in the labor market and because

that's mostly women that's having this

gender effect so it's really striking if

you look at like earnings of men and

women in their 20s now are very close

but you know around the age of 30

somethings happens what is that thing

well duh and if you look at the charts

that I think Sarah and others Drew on

from somebody's work Cleveland has good

work in Denmark but Corrine Lowe I think

and others have worked in the US that

it's still essentially true that for

women having a child is the economic

equivalent of being hit by a meteorite

whereas for men it doesn't make a dent

you just don't see it you know it's

assuming they're in heterosexual couples

and then what you see from this new data

on same-sex couples is that it's really

the parent so among lesbian couples is

just a I think alluded to it's like the

birth parent has suffers this wage

penalty what's interesting of course

about lesbian couples is that very often

you can take it in turns to be the birth

parent and so to that extent within the

couple at least the quotes pain of being

out the labor market for a while and

learning some are losing out the labor

market can be shared but in a straight

couple

obviously it's inevitable that the woman

will be the birth parent and if the

birth parent is still the one that's

kind of paying this economic cost in the

labor market we're still going to see a

gender pay Gap and that is largely the

reason for the gender pay Gap now now of

course that doesn't mean okay nothing to

see here then move on what it does is it

just raises the more interesting

question which is huh okay so why is

that then why is it that women are

taking more time at the labor market why

does parenting have such disparate

effects on women and men is that really

a choice how far is that choice

constrained why the trade-offs so hard

how do we make this better so in a way

it just raises a more interesting

question rather than saying there's no

question here to be answered

so to go back to the pay data and I

think this gets to something very

important

we can talk about medians right the kind

of imagined person in the middle of the

the data set and we can talk about means

right the sort of averages of everybody

and one thing that one of those will

catch and the other won't is that Elite

men men at the very top of the income

distribution

there's a very different story to tell

about them than men in the bottom half

including comparatively with women so

can you talk about a bit about that

difference and also the ways it might

deform this conversation

yeah it's true that like men at the top

are continuing to do really well you're

also seeing like massive wage gains for

educated women at the top as well

relative to where they were before and

especially for white women actually I

mean white women now earn more than

black men for example but it is this top

of society it's the top 20 this is back

to my earlier work on the dream hoarders

the top 20 and they tend to marry each

other and so on and so there's just like

massive like runaway economic inequality

or there has been the last few decades

towards the top and that is driven to

some extent by men so men at the top yep

still doing pretty well economically and

women at the top doing pretty well

economically a lot more than they were

before and then when you get into the

institutions especially the Apex right

you start to see like who makes the

partner in a law firm who gets into the

c-suite ETC are still very gender skewed

and so at the Apex of society what

you're seeing is that women are still

struggling to turn these kind of

massively increased educational

credentials into economic power at the

same rate as men they're obviously much

more economically powerful than previous

generations of women but that

translation mechanism just isn't working

quite the same way and I think that's

because there remain these structural

barriers in some ways in some areas like

politics which you know better than me

for sure Ezra but in things like how do

you make partner how do you get tenure

how do you get into the c-suite and the

way that the labor market currently

works is that basically the way you do

that is by killing yourself from about

the age of 27 to the age of 37. well duh

they then wonder why it's harder on

average for women to do that and so

again it's the trajectories of elite

professional careers that really seem to

end up penalizing even these very highly

educated women which results in some

pretty big gender pay gaps even at the

top

one of the questions I think your book

is asking is why there isn't more

attention to how badly men are falling

behind predicting the bottom half the

income distribution particularly black

men why The Narrative of female

disadvantage is still so Stark and

entrenched and sort of all-encompassing

and I do suspect there's some answer

here that if you think about where

a lot of this conversation comes from

who who has access to the level of

microphone to be in this conversation on

this podcast you know writing stories in

the media Etc

it is people men and women who are much

more familiar and are themselves

operating within the Dynamics of lead

institutions

and so you know when you think of some

of the very culturally important

documents here you know you think about

Charles sandberg's linen or you think

about Henry Slaughters Big Atlantic

article from a couple of years ago on

whether or not women can have it all

there is as always as in all things an

outsized focus on what are the Dynamics

of elite institutions because people

from them have access to

the media and write books and so on and

so if they're telling a pretty different

story if if that is a very different

reality in those institutions than it is

in society at large you're going to get

a very skewed conversation and I do

think that has happened

um quite significantly here

I think that's right we're leaning in

but we're not looking down and

inevitably our reference points are

those that are around us and so and I

think you're right and this a really

deep problem the within Elite discourse

you just look around so these you know

if you're an upper middle class educate

woman trying to make law partner you're

listening to this you're looking around

saying what is he talking about

because all you see is guys right above

you and Etc and I'm not suggesting for a

moment that like people at all levels

can't be struggling with in all kinds of

ways but the Deep problems here are just

much lower down and so this class

fracture gets in the way of more honest

debate about this because even the women

who are doing so much better than their

mothers are doing at the top of the

distribution they're still looking

around and seeing a society where

there's still a lot more to do on behalf

of women and girls but that can

simultaneously to women particularly

into these c-suite jobs and so on where

again there's been huge progress but

more to do but we can think two thoughts

at once we can think yeah particularly

around political representation

corporate leadership Etc there is really

quite a lot more to do and I think here

we are into the design of Labor Market

institutions and so on but whoa look

down here look over there crikey those

boys over there the boys and men are the

ones who are really struggling and are

we allowed to think both those thoughts

at once and I'm afraid up until this

point it's been like a choice and that

people have understandably but wrongly

thought that focusing on the problems of

boys and men even those who are really

disadvantage somehow distracts from or

means less attention to the problems of

women and girls especially in these Apex

situations and I think that zero-sum

framing is just poisoning the whole

debate as it is generally our politics

it's not Zero Sum we can think two

thoughts at once

can you talk about Raj chetty's findings

here on the differences in upward

Mobility between black women and black

men

because I remember being

knocked over by this finding a couple

years ago

and watching as the coverage of that

study filtered out and realizing nobody

knew what to do with this part of it

again like one of the studies that

really influenced me thinking about this

was rochetti's work showing this just

much higher rates of upward Mobility for

men and for women from poorer

backgrounds but especially a huge

difference in the upward Mobility rates

between black men and black women and he

and his research team conclude that all

of the difference between black and

white Americans in intergenerational

Mobility is explained by black men boys

and men all of it

and there's actually more recent work

from the urban Institute that tries to

control for the structural effects of

being black In America which again shows

this huge difference like in the impact

on black boys and black men it

essentially shows that taking away to

trying to look at the effect of

structural racism and it would have

massively beneficial effects for black

men if we were to do better on that

front than for black women so again I

agree with you that we didn't quite know

what to do with it or at least certainly

perhaps in center-left circles didn't

know what to do with it because it sort

of disrupted some of these senses that

we have we like the world to be neat we

like it to be white above black men

above women straight above gate we don't

take take your thing and it all just

Stacks up neatly like that like some

sort of you know a chilled child's toy

where it's all just neat but that's not

how it works and especially when it

comes to the experience of being black

in America gender is hugely important

and seems to strongly disfavor black

boys and black men and what Raj and his

colleagues work really showed was that

just plays out in this intergenerational

literature very very strongly and what

it means is that if we're genuinely

worried about what's happening to Black

Americans then most of our attention

should go to black boys and black men

so I want to talk a bit about the

solutions chapters you have here

and one opportunity that you talk a lot

about

is for men to expand their I think I

call it identity in the labor market the

the way they understand themselves in

relation to jobs and so you talk a lot

about the work on stem jobs and the need

for symmetrical work on what you call

heel jobs tell me about that

well the first thing I I stumbled across

this great story looking into the

background of stem which is that a woman

called Judith ramallay who'd been

brought into the National Science

Foundation to promote what at that point

was called Smet

Smet occupations and Smet careers and

she said what the heck is that and they

explained that there was science