Maharey fears gender imbalance at university

Boys may need a Boys Can Do Anything campaign to improve their attitudes toward academic achievement and tertiary education.

Boys make up only 39 per cent of the enrolments at Massey University, and university vice chancellor Steve Maharey said a societal shift might be needed to fix the growing gender gap.

Mr Maharey told the National Council of Women Manawatu branch yesterday that last century, boys got on very well choosing to go into jobs that didn't require university qualifications. But now many of those jobs were disappearing, and the widening gender gap at universities would become a crucial issue for New Zealand if it wasn't addressed.

His "pop sociology take" on why boys weren't going to university in the same numbers as their sisters was based partly on how society let boys behave in adolescence.

"You've all heard parents say it, boys stop talking at 12 and don't rejoin the human race until they're 20. That's right through the key academic NCEA years at secondary school," Mr Maharey said.

"Speaking as a sociologist, that's just learned behaviour. Girls are working in groups, talking, thinking it's good to achieve academically ... they've learned that. So can boys."

Council members wanted to know if boys needed a Boys Can Do Anything campaign, similar to the 1980s Girls Can Do Anything push that saw women enter tertiary education in droves, and take up wider career options than the traditional petticoat nursing and teaching.

"[The] first thing we need to teach them is that they can talk while they're teenagers," Mr Maharey said.

Proof that there was a gender imbalance showed in courses such as veterinary science, medicine and law. Twenty years ago, male students far outnumbered females. Now the opposite was true.

Nobody wanted to stop girls achieving or limit their access to tertiary study, but society as a whole needed to do a better job encouraging boys to reach their full potential, he said.

- © Fairfax NZ News