© Anne Else; 17 November 1999

We've been away for a month, hence the gap in Letters. But we were not far enough away from what is loosely termed Western civilisation (asked what he thought about Western civilisation, Mahatma Ghandi is famously said to have replied that he thought it would be a good idea) to have escaped the news of the All Blacks losing to France and South Africa and consequently coming fourth in the World Cup. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

The national wailing and gnashing of teeth was still in full swing when we got back over a week later. But one tantrum really stood out: the Evening Post column which appeared on 15 November, 230 years to the day since Captain Cook took possession of New Zealand in 1769. Its author was ex-Metro editor Warwick Roger, the very same Roger who first basked in the reflected glory of "The Unfortunate Experiment", the landmark article by Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle which exposed the cervical cancer scandal at National Women's Hospital, then later turned on the two women and published everything he could rake up to cast doubt on their work and on the findings of the National Cervical Cancer Inquiry. That doesn't stop him purloining the phrase "unfortunate experiment" to describe New Zealand rugby. There may well have been incompetence at the top, along with misogynist ideology, but there the similarities end - nobody died, nobody had their health and life ruined.

According to Roger, however, equally momentous social issues are at stake. The All Blacks lost primarily because - wait for it - their generation went to primary schools staffed mainly by women (though the majority of principals were men - funny, that). Then they went on to secondary schools where caring and sharing had ousted competition and winning, while whales and feminism had done away with Saturday sport and scrums. Hence the current losing streak, not just of the All Blacks, but of the Black Caps and the Silver Ferns as well. As usual, you see, the girls are to blame, along with the growing hordes of men who might as well be girls.

This is merely the latest and most bizarre episode in a current media soap opera called "What About the Boys/Men?" Boys are said to be failing at school (that is, being beaten by girls). Why? To the vast majority of media pundits, the reasons are blindingly obvious: because teaching (though still not principalships - funny, that) is dominated by women, more and more families are headed by female sole parents, and feminism has undermined the male psyche to the point of collapse. Ergo, boys and men need help and attention and resources devoted solely to them. Otherwise the All Blacks will slide unstoppably down the Cup tables till they end up losing even to notorious girls' blouses such as the Italians, bringing about the destruction of Western civilisation as we know it.

It's a neat argument. Unfortunately, it is also completely false. A recent summary of all the available statistics on how boys are doing at school, compared with girls, shows that a recent and rapidly growing gender achievement gap simply does not exist. Boys are certainly less literate than girls, and have more problems with reading and writing English generally - but that has been the case for a very long time. It is possible that they are simply not ready to learn to read as early as girls are. There is no evidence whatsoever that the advent of "too many women teachers/sole parents" has made this gap worse. Nor has it stopped men from hogging the vast majority of well-paid, prestigious positions in every field where literacy really matters, with the partial exception of fiction. Girls continue to be less likely to take the subjects which matter most for future earnings and status generally, such as mathematics. Where boys do tech drawing, girls do typing - still. The major problems related to boys at school, relative to girls, are to do not with their achievements, but with their behaviour - and that causes problems for girls as well.

However, the striking New Zealand gaps in school achievement today - and the ones where there really is evidence of widening - are in fact not between the broad categories of "girls" and "boys" at all. They are between ethnic and social class categories. "The more pertinent question to ask with respect to gender", the research concludes, "is which boys and which girls are not reaching their potential." All the misguided and frequently misogynist hype about boys being disadvantaged in relation to girls is drawing scarce attention and resources away from this issue. Solving it is absolutely crucial to New Zealand's future. But so is moving away from the dinosaur mindset which blames uppity women for any and every disaster that befalls New Zealand society, from the All Black losses on up.
 

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