Article here. Excerpt:

'The gap is so great that the UK's university admissions authority has warned that being male could soon be seen as a new form of social disadvantage.

In the UK, the gender gap between men and women entering university has never been wider. In a remarkable statistic from the Ucas admissions service, the gap is more than 50% in a quarter of parliamentary constituencies. And no doubt this disparity will play out over future generations.

But hold that bandwagon there.

Because a global study from the OECD, based on more than 60 countries, has thrown up some very interesting challenges to generalisations about girls always doing better than boys.
...
First of all, it suggests that school systems give greater rewards to girls rather than boys, even when pupils are of similar ability.

Teachers are more likely to "mark up" girls' work, says the study. It suggests that this leniency in marking is an unacknowledged reward for girls being more school-friendly.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The initiative hopes to motivate men to work towards equality in all areas of their lives, including at home with housework, with their children, in their marriages and at work. The campaign includes tips that men can implement in their daily lives at work and at home.

Some of the tips include being an active father by participating in caregiving and being a 50/50 partner by doing half of the childcare and housework. Tips for men at work include actively giving women credit when it's due and sharing "office house work" such as organizing events and training new hires.

"When men lean in for equality, they win -- and so does everyone else," Lean In's website reads.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'The Daily Beast has retracted an article claiming that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker cut all provisions requiring the state’s universities to report sexual assaults. Before finally admitting she “screwed up,” the source of the post tried to defend herself on Twitter.
...
Then she refused to apologize, blaming both the Wisconsin budget and Walker himself for her mistake:

“And I’m not gonna apologize for what was in the budget. Because that was in the budget. Ask your gov. to apologize for bad optix.” — Natasha VC (@natashavc) February 28, 2015"
...
In a related story, a New York Times columnist wrote two weeks ago that Walker was responsible for 2010 cuts to education, resulting in teacher layoffs. The problem being, Walker didn’t take office until 2011.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The U.S. Air Force on Wednesday announced a series of initiatives aimed at increasing the number of female pilots and improving retention and promotion of female and minority airmen.

The initiatives include a push to give more waivers to people who don’t meet Air Force height requirements to increase the pool of officers who are eligible to become pilots. While the waiver program currently exists, many cadets aren’t reviewed to see if they are eligible, Air Force officials said.

Air Force officials estimate that over the next five years, approximately 900 female airmen could be granted waivers, allowing them to enter pilot training.
...
Ms. James said women aren’t as well represented in the pilot career field, and the service must do what it can to try to increase the pool of potential female pilots.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A new documentary calls colleges like Harvard and Notre Dame "The Hunting Ground," where rapists prey on women. A bipartisan group of senators demand new rules to "curb campus sexual assaults."

Apparently, new laws are needed because at colleges, sexual assault is "epidemic." Rape is so common that there is a "rape culture."

I hear that a lot.

It is utter exaggeration. Fortunately, AEI scholar Christina Hoff Sommers is around to reveal the truth.

"This idea of a rape culture was built on false statistics and twisted theories about toxic masculinity," she says.

No one denies that some men, especially when drunk, get violent and abusive. I saw nasty behavior when I was in college, and I assume there are places worse than Princeton. 

Sommers says, "I always make clear, rape is a very serious problem, (but) if you look at the best data ... it is not an epidemic. And we do not have a rape culture." 

Article here. Excerpt:

'Columnist George Will wrote about the “supposed campus epidemic of rape,” accusing schools of making “victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges,” while others chimed in to claim sexual violence on campus is a “false epidemic” and accused survivors of fabricating their assaults.

Rape is the most underreported crime in America, not a crime in which we see rampant false reporting or embellishment. An attack of this nature is often the most personally painful moment in a victim’s life. What’s truly harmful is not the voices of survivors coming out of the shadows — but rather disparaging rhetoric that makes reporting even more difficult. We can’t let that rhetoric distract from our work to combat these crimes.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Justin Dillon, former federal prosecutor and now a white collar defense lawyer, knows all too well the ways campus sexual abuse investigations can go wrong.

His litany of bizarrely skewed hearings is fraught with the potential for harm and tragic outcomes.

The college student brought up on charges of giving his girlfriend an unwanted kiss, more than a year after the relationship ended; an alleged rape victim who said friends had information the accused had raped others, but then declined to identify the friends; the hearing panel, composed of a librarian, a student dance major, and a professor of romance languages, whose job was to decide whether a sexual assault had occurred.

"It feels oftentimes that every new case I get is more absurd than the last. Sometimes you get people who are not old enough to drink, but are old enough to decide whether someone is a rapist," says the Harvard-trained lawyer, based in Washington.

Podcast page here.

'In recent years we’ve seen more and more people opposing circumcision around the world, but especially in America. Collectively they have become known as ‘intactivists.’ These people are the target audience of Foregen, an organization that not only lobbies against circumcision but also, as stated on its website, “promotes genital integrity through regenerative medicine.”

Eric Clopper, a spokesperson for Foregen, tells host Gilad Halpern that his organization refrains from politics, and its sole purpose is to help circumcised men enjoy sex as they should.'

Link here. Excerpt:

'Deputy Secretary Higginbottom will present 10 extraordinary women from 10 countries with the 2015 Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award on March 5 at 1:00 p.m. EST. First Lady Michelle Obama will join Deputy Secretary Higginbottom and the awardees as a special guest at the afternoon ceremony at the U.S. Department of State.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Anthony Crook's photo was on the front page of a local newspaper after being made public by Essex Police - but no charges were ever brought against him.

The publicity resulted in the 37-year-old losing his job and - in his words - becoming "unemployable".

He became depressed and began drinking heavily.

Judge Deborah Taylor ruled that police breached both data protection rules and Mr Crook's right to privacy.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'There’s not much to get excited about in the new version of the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, introduced last year in the Senate, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

The group praises small improvements in the new version, like removing the word “assailants” to refer to students accused of sexual assault, and notes that at least it doesn’t codify the “more likely than not” legal standard for guilt or “affirmative consent” regime.

But it’s thin on due-process protections, doing nothing to protect students whose schools have “inadequate” or “biased” institutional policies for adjudicating assault claims.

It gives “substantial resources” only to students who make accusations, including a “confidential advisor,” which “potentially” violates regulations implementing the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and even Department of Education guidance, FIRE says.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is teaming up with the makers of a new documentary to help pass her bill combating sex attacks on college campuses.

The New York Democrat and a bipartisan group of 11 other senators are rolling out legislation to coincide with the release of “The Hunting Ground,” which opens around the country later this month.

A day before the movie’s premiere in New York and Los Angeles, Gillibrand, who appears in the film, took in a Washington screening. The director and producer attended a press conference last week where the senators outlined their bill.

Lawmakers hope to use the reaction to the documentary 'The Hunting Ground' to push universities to step up action against sex assault.
...
The film has earned positive reviews but also has been slammed for its use of disputed statistics on the prevalence of college assaults and for condemning colleges across the board for failing to help victims.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A “Confronting Campus Rape” discussion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Monday night delved into the rights of the accused versus the rights of the accuser, a panel discussion during which participants suggested campus rape victims are largely mistreated and dismissed.

Some in the audience even suggested that the accused should not be innocent until proven guilty, and the emotionally charged talk included suggestions by UW-Madison professor Anne McClintock that “men on campus … are at greater risk of being assaulted on campus than they are of being falsely accused of a rape” and that “this university does expel students for plagiarism, but not for rape.”

A UW-Madison student on the panel who described herself as a rape survivor said she had, however, successfully gotten the first male student ever expelled from UW-Madison for rape.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Nationally, the percentage of men ages 25 to 54 who are not working has fallen over the past year, but it isn’t back to prerecession levels and remains far above where it was for past generations. As of January, 15.6% of men in that age group weren’t working. That’s a percentage point lower than a year ago, but above the less than 13% seen in late 2007 before the recession hit and not close to the 6% seen in the early 1970s.
...
Related reading:

More Men in Prime Working Ages Don’t Have Jobs*'

*To jump the login wall, Google the first paragraph text on the linked page and click the first search result link.

Press release here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON / March 3, 2015 – SAVE, a national organization working to end sexual assault, is criticizing the recently released movie The Hunting Ground for presenting false statistics, offering a one-side portrayal of the problem, and failing to call for greater police involvement in campus sex cases.

Produced by CNN Films, The Hunting Ground purports to be a documentary. In fact, the movie contains numerous factual errors and omits essential perspectives. The film does not attempt to verify the accuracy or completeness of persons’ accounts.

The film makes the claim that 20% of college women are sexually assaulted, even though the U.S. Department of Justice reports a woman’s risk is under one percent each year: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5176