This week, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announced the recipients of the 2024 Joan Donaldson CBC News Scholarship. Of the 11 recipients, only two are men. This is not an anomaly. Over the prior three years, just 10 of the 37 recipients were men.
The prestigious scholarship offers recent graduates of select journalism programs a 16-week paid internship at one or more CBC locations. Scholars often go on to earn employment as CBC journalists, the CBC’s website notes. In an industry where employment opportunities are few and far between, the scholarship is thus an important pathway to career success.
The CBC asserts that “attracting a diversified talent pool” is a priority, with strong consideration given to candidates who are Black, Indigenous, people of colour or disabled. Ensuring that the class is gender balanced seems to be less of a priority.
If the CBC, a predominantly government-funded organization, consistently selected far more male candidates than female ones, there would be an outcry. But academic institutions, employers and the public seem to be increasingly comfortable with a lack of gender balance when it goes the other way.
There is a school of thought that argues a disproportionate number of women in educational or professional fields is only fair. Historically, men dominated in almost all fields. It’s now women’s turn to do the same, the argument goes.
But new wrongs cannot correct historical wrongs. They only lead to wrongs of a different kind — wrongs that in this case are deleterious to boys and men, women and society at large.
For boys and men, the consequences are clear. Men now account for a minority of graduates in most professional programs across the country, according to Statistics Canada. The labour force participation rate for men declined by seven percentage points since 1990, the agency’s data also shows. Men who aren’t in school or the workforce are at risk of social marginalization. This is likely one reason Canadian men are at increased risk for suicide, addiction and death by overdose.
But when men suffer, women can also suffer too. For one thing, many women want to find partners who are of equal or higher social status, which is often evaluated by reference to a man’s income, earning potential and professional status. If the number of men and women obtaining degrees and employment falls into disequilibrium, many women will necessarily struggle to enter satisfying partnerships or any partnerships at all.
There are broad societal implications as well. A recent Financial Times article explored the widespread and growing divergence in political outlooks of young generations of men and women around the world, with women becoming more liberal and men more conservative. In South Korea, where this trend is particularly extreme, “the marriage rate has plummeted, and birth rate has fallen precipitously.”
So what can be done about it? The solution does not rest with any one institution. In the case of the Donaldson scholarship, for example, candidates need to be nominated by their journalism programs to even be considered. Journalism programs in Canada are now dominated by women. It is possible that the journalism programs, acting independently, nominated the most meritorious candidates from their ranks and that most of these candidates were women.
Most organizations must hire — and do hire — the most meritorious candidates, regardless of their gender, race or other identity characteristics. So the fix has to come upstream of the employment stage: it has to start in primary and secondary schools and vocational programs.
In 2023, Richard Reeves, author of Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, established The American Institute for Boys & Men. The institute produces nonpartisan research that informs policy aimed at enhancing the wellbeing of boys and men. The institute recognizes that many of the challenges facing boys and men “are structural and demand evidence-based policy solutions.”
In the institute’s introductory video, Reeves makes three recommendations: that boys start school a year later than girls because their brains develop later; that the US educational system prioritize training male educators, since men and women respond differently to boy and girl behaviours within schools; and that the US invest more in vocational education and training.
These prescriptions may or may not be applicable in Canada. What Canada needs is its own organization dedicated to conducting nonpartisan research on this topic and formulating evidence-based policy recommendations in response.
To get there, Canada must begin by recognizing that gender issues do not have to be a zero-sum game. We can prioritize the advancement of girls and women while also promoting the advancement of boys and men. Helping one group does not have to come at the expense of the other.
Your editorial concerning attitudes towards gender imbalances is very welcome. There was a time when the pursuit of gender equity (a la Germaine Greer) could have proceeded on the basis that stereotypes about men and women are hurtful and unjust and should both be contested. It did not. Rather, the women’s movement and its academic enablers beneath the rubric patriarchy built a theoretical edifice based on women as victims and men as oppressors. To be sure, there were and still are many real world examples of women being disadvantaged and men appearing to be the agents of the wrong – intimate partner violence being one of the clearest and most troubling. Your editorial makes the point that there would be public outrage if programs meant to assist journalists assisted mainly men. Similarly, if only women had been subject to legal and social military conscription and women had embraced the notion that because they were women they were particularly suited to combat roles, pictures of their bodies rotting in muddy fields would be a powerful component of feminist scholarship. Perhaps the tide is turning. It didn’t turn in time for Ann Cools. Let us hope that the tide does not turn into a contest about whose victimhood is greater or more deserving of redress. Identity politics can be powerful forces for galvanizing responses to injustice. The women’s movement and the gay rights movement come to mind. Identity politics can also be lynch politics. The recent treatment of Egerton Ryerson comes to mind.