Men of the World, Unite!

Men: traditionally good at numbers?

I did at least find this inspiration in a manly way, for I indulged in reading the magazine to rescue myself from the monotony of an everyday event. I read it on the loo.

We shall not dwell on the way in which I found the material, but move swiftly on to the material itself. Traditionally, it is thought that men are usually good with numbers while women, on the other hand, are good at reading. This apparent development is a fair one, for intelligence has been spread out fairly equally, and in any case at least there would always be a role for us guys.

However, the bad news is that our strength in mathematics is not something we can take comfort in any longer. The consolation that the girls would need us around to balance the books and work out percentages was a nice one to have. But it seems that this consolation has now been removed.

Some academic bloke in Italy has just released a study that suggests that the gap between the mathematics scores of males and females pretty much vanish in countries where there is sexual equality. Now, I'm all for sexual equality but there is a clear downside for the boys, this being the girls' growing capability in this field. The next few years could see us trailing in the wake of thousands of much cleverer ladies. Not only have they caught us up when it comes to numbers, they've also managed to maintain their lead and become substantially stronger when it comes to reading.

The only advantage for us is that our strength in geometry still remains. This might allow us to continue to claim that men are better navigators than women, but this is scant consolation when you consider the fact that we've lost our lead in terms of counting and slipped further behind in terms of reading.

It falls to me, therefore, to issue a rallying call to the members of my sex. In equal societies, girls have managed to get themselves a clear advantage over the lads. What is clear is that the danger of us becoming a useless burden to society is very real, unless we do something about it. Nobody is advocating a return to the dark days of the subjection of women, but men must find their place in this post-feminist world of equality for the sexes. A distant future where men are no longer needed in order for a woman to have a child or fill out a tax return is perhaps closer than you think. We need to pull our collective fingers out in order to make sure we don't lose this great hypothetical battle of the sexes.

So my rallying cry is this: Men of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our reason for existence!

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.