Beyond the Bust

The following article is evidence of perceptions of some males. I encourage you to send your comments to assist in formulating a collective response.

“BUT WHY is this an issue” That was what Gender Studies lecturer Dr Patricia Mohammed asked me last week, as did some politically conscious UWI gals ready to pounce on me.

Methinks the ladies doth protest too much.

There’s some serious boob-envy floating around campus, you know. I can’t help but look around and see how easy these girls seem to have it. After all, they’ve busted in and taken over.

Feminine wiles get girls everything. Once the pair of power points at you, struggle with all your might and squirm all you can, you just can’t say no. It’s the phallus of the females.

Woe to the few fellars who don’t make the macho mark because homophobia is perhaps the only tool guys now have to erect their masculinity in the unfamiliar marshes of female domination.

Geez – fellas have some serious issues to deal with.

But beyond the bountiful breasts ‘n bums lie some pretty big brains. Just take a look at President’s Gold Medal winner Summer Alston-Smith. My god: packages like that ought to be illegal. And of the 18 open scholarships offered this year, 12 were garnered by girls, who also got 60 percent of all further additional schools.

When this place really was a man’s world, “no one said a word,” according to Dr Mohammed. When the feminist movement of the ‘70s attempted to balance the scale of the sexes, gender deficiencies in myriad spheres were busted open. Women travelled beyond their conventional confines and seized places among men in the classrooms, job market and politics.

But does another outweighing of the sexes, this time in favour of women, justify itself simply because women have been scorned in the past? Does the present trend warrant the same silence of a century ago, simply because it is a righting of wrongs?

Man problems

From the A’Level results, it should not come as a surprise that girls dominate university admissions.

Perhaps it’s because they “mature” faster, or maybe daddies have them under lockdown. Some researchers believe girls have learning styles more conducive to the classroom, while boys are more vulnerable to the lures of popular culture.

Maybe that’s why nightclubs are full of lonely fellas and there’s all this “women get in free before 10 pm” business just to get girls to come. And it could also be the reason you won’t find a gang of bad Naps gals piping at Library Corner.

Additionally, boys are more likely to get on bad, i.e. drop out or be expelled from high school, than girls. And, in certain cultural customs, particularly in rural and low-income families, boys are expected to earn their keep as soon as it is possible.

When it comes to entering a university, a variance in opportunity arises. According to Prof Rhoda Reddock, head of the Department for Gender and Development Studies at St. Augustine: “Men have more opportunities outside of formal education for economic advancement.” “The options are few for women. Without tertiary education, women are usually relegated to service work.”

There are, in fact, a growing number of men seeking jobs in repair, construction, technology and other areas that don’t require a three-year degree but promise a good salary. As one female, second-year student pointed out, “Tech/voc institutions are predominantly male”: shorter study duration is preferred so there’s more time to live and lime.

Last year, the local UWI population comprised 5,141 women and 3,488 men: a 3:2 ratio. And there were nearly 600 more female part-time students out of 2,647. At Mona 71 percent of the total campus population was female two years ago.

Dr Mohammed, who has taught at Mona, noted a disturbing trend: “Boys think being a bookworm is unattractive.”

And, according to some researchers, mental learning isn’t easy for boys, “and it is easier to pick up a gun,” said Dr Mohammed.

That is where homophobia comes in.

“Education and masculinity don’t go together. Especially in Jamaica, that is how young boys see the image of education. It is homophobia. They must maintain the status quo,” she said.

Oh Lawdy, Miss Maudie and she neighbour Claudie! What a declaration, especially for this day and age! But could there be even a remotely comparable rebellion against fag-dom here in sweet T&T?

Of the 963 students in the Humanities Faculty last year, a spindly 167 of them were men. In Education, men counted for only 15 percent. And this trend has been static for a long time. I wonder if its former name, Faculty of Arts and General Sciences, i.e. FAGS, has something to do with it?

And on the other side, the bastion of masculinity seems to be standing firm: engineering is 74 percent male.

But women are making headway even there. Compared to first-year admissions of 1987, when men comprised 87 percent, the rise in women is significant. Women make up 26 percent of engineering undergrads today, and 38 percent of those pursuing higher degrees.

So while men are recoiling into their time-honoured domain, women are spreading beyond every confine: the phallus is falling flat.

In Part III, the problems associated with female predominance at university will be explored, as will the outcomes of more women than men with higher education.