“It may still be a man’s world. But it is no longer, in any way, a boy’s. From his first days in school, an average boy is already developmentally two years behind the girls in reading and writing. Yet he’s often expected to learn the same things in the same way in the same amount of time. While every nerve in his body tells him to run, he has to sit still and listen for almost eight hours a day. Biologically, he needs about four recesses a day, but he’s lucky if he gets one, since some lawsuit-leery schools have banned them altogether. Hug a girl, and he could be labeled a ‘toucher’ and swiftly suspended — a result of what some say is an increasingly anti-boy culture that pathologizes their behavior…. Now, in every state, every income bracket, every racial and ethnic group, and most industrialized Western nations, women reign, earning an average 57% of all BAs and 58% of all master’s degrees in the U.S. alone. There are 133 girls getting BAs for every 100 guys — a number that’s projected to grow to 142 women per 100 men by 2010…” Michelle Conlin —The New Gender Gap: From kindergarten to grad school, boys are becoming the second sex (Businessweek)

This story starts out with an alarmist tone that is designed to get the reader riled up — so read it with care. It does settle down and become more balanced. But anyone who can look at these stats and say “It’s about time men paid for what they did to women for centuries” is completely missing the point.