Resocializing boys in the direction of femininity is now high on the educational agenda of many educators, women s institutes, and government officials. Notably active on this front of the undeclared war against boys are the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, and the U.S. Department of Education. It argued that schools discriminate against girls, ruin their self-esteem and stamp them with a badge of inferiority that they wear for the rest of their lives. It is now clear, says Hoff-Sommers, that the report was a bogus pretext to subsidize and promote feminist propaganda, and that the reality is that boys are the disadvantaged ones in our schools. But the information is not true.
Women earn more than half of college degrees, and the proportion is rising.
The report from the Wellesley Center is riddled with errors and much of its data is unavailable for review, says Hoff-Sommers. Nevertheless, the media were completely uncritical of it, she reports, just as they are with much feminist research. The New York Times did not provide a critical analysis of the report until six years after it was issued. By then, much damage had been done and millions of dollars had been spent following its dubious assumptions. And the education gap is just the tip of the iceberg of the boys crisis.