The Gender Debate: The goose and the gander - who gets the golden egg?

[LostInTime]

Jamaica Gleaner News
Barbara Bailey and Suzanne M. Charles, Contributors

Over the past month, quite a maelstrom has been created over the enrolment disparity at the University of the West Indies (UWI), which favours females to males 82:18 and, is in fact, similar to patterns in other tertiary level institutions in Jamaica and indeed the wider Caribbean.

[Hypatia]

It seems then, that in society's establishment of the roles of males and females in diametric opposition to each other and privileging the former over the latter, males are now entrapped by the same hegemonic masculinity that once allowed them the privilege, at the expense of their female counterparts, of the very education they now shun.

Painted themselves right into a bleedin' corner, they did. Yo, better to be macho and dumb than smart and sissy, right mates? 

It shouldn't take a college degree to understand the concept of "irony." 

[Hazumu]

At the end of the 19th Century, the job of bank teller was a well-paying, prestigious occupation.  It was an exclusively male occupation.

Then they started letting in (underpaid, compared to their male counterparts) women who proved to be very conscientious and also more docile than the males they replaced.

Where is the status of bank teller these days, only now admitting males back into its ranks after a period of being almost exclusively female, with the low status and low pay attendant with that?

My point is, I think that in Jamaica we're seeing the same sort of dance where the males spend scads of energy in maintaining power/status/face over other males and all women.

The battleground changes but the battle remains the same...

Karen