#i see how growing up around old-school expectations of marriage and gender roles may lead to internalised homophobia.

[plan-3-tmars]

My Theory on Kazui's Parent's.

Q: Is there a meaning behind your name?

A: It's cause I'm the eldest son. It seems like my father was also wishing I'd be "a strong man."

The wording of Kazui's answer here really makes me think. We know that Kazui is strong. He defended Fuuta against Kotoko and even talks about having "never gone up against a woman [like her]" in his VD, implying that he has gotten into fights before (most likely at work - either in the field or in training.)

It seems like, to me, Kazui has parents with very traditional views. Kazui's father wishing that he would turn out to be "a strong man" could imply that he places value on the old-style gender roles in family or society in general. Yes he most likely thinks that being strong physically is important, but also being strong mentally. A 'normal' man who doesn't cry, doesn't show emotain. A man who provides for his family and sticks to tradition, simple as. A son who does what's expected of him - that kind of strong.

~~~

I also think the way Kazui talks is linked to his family's old-school beliefs. Despite only being 39, Kazui always refers to himself as an "old man" and says things like "when your mature/older like me," etc. It's a bit odd, though it might be a cultural thing. Kazui does call himself immature though, so for a man who believes he has only grown up in terms of his age and not his mind, he puts an awful lot of weight on what it means to be an adult. Can you see where I'm going with this? Yup it's back to his strong man comment baby!!!

In that previous qoute Kazui says how his father was also wishing he'd be a strong man. I think the other person Kazui is referencing might very well be himself. I think if Kazui has been taught these old school gender-roles since he was a child, then he might hold alot of weight to them. He wouldn't know any different if that was all he heard about what it meant to be a man as a kid, and therefore wants to live up to that expectation his parents hold of him. He, however, quickly learns that he is not this way and internalises it as something being wrong with him, something that isn't normal that he must fix. Which brings me to my next point...

~~~

I think that Kazui's family are more important to understanding his crime then we may think based on what's been shown to us so far, and I'd even go so far as to say that their beliefs might've been a very big reason/the reason on why Kazui felt the need to lie and marry Hinako.

If we take a situation where Kazui has very traditional parents who want him to grow up quickly, get a nice job and settle down young, it might make sense on why he felt obligated to marry Hinako. In Half he talks about how he's confused on why he doesn't feel happiness in their relationship, as "isn't this what happiness is?" I believe these ideas came from Kazui's parent's. That perhaps they unknowingly (or full knowingly) drilled the idea into his head that a perfect looking couple such as he and Hinako is the ultimate true love, the true happiness, and that he should follow in those steps if he wants to be happy and successful as it in turn will also make them happy and proud of him.

#i left out how this could tie so fucking well to the gay theory because thats theory ON theory speculation aka. a seperate post #(that i will probably rant about once we learn more about kazui's family) #but just know that i see that comment about him being an embarrassment to his family. #i see how growing up around old-school expectations of marriage and gender roles may lead to internalised homophobia. #i see the connections. in these two theories. #any ee way sorry this is late its still technically posted 'tomorrow' though so!! ♡ (its 11pm) #i have a maths test tmr pray for me. also if u have any other thoughts on this topic pls lmk i am so curious about his god damn family #i wanna learn more so badly #GOODNIGHT!! #milgram #kazui mukuhara #milgram theory

[fluorescentpipedream]

A couple of new updates on older characters and one newer one. 

First we’ll start with the new one: 

Arthur Powell - Arthur was born with a cleft palette when he was an infant though after several corrective surgeries before the age of 4 he was relatively normal, aside from the scar on his upper lip. Arthur was the first born to David and Suzette Powell (guessing on the names, @fat-and-nerdygirl​ if you wanna change them, go for it) after Suzette’s husband died in a tragic car accident in New Orleans and she remarried Mr. Powell. She already had one son from the previous marriage, Rob, who decided to keep his father’s last name, Whittaker. It was never really a source of contention between him and Powell, since Robert still had a few memories of his father left and wanted to hold onto the name. Anyhow...Arthur was 9 years old when he was helping his older brother Rob, their father and his two younger brothers work on a tree house they were setting up in the yard when he lost his footing climbing down the wooden planks hammered into the tree to serve as a ladder and fell from several feet up. The fall -should- have killed him, however by some stroke of luck Arthur survived, though suffered a pretty traumatic brain injury. This caused Arthur to lose, among other things, control over his emotional reactions to situations and develop  Pseudobulbar affect, which causes him to randomly burst out in fits of uncontrollable laughing (or crying, though he seems to laugh more than anything). In the years following the accident, Arthur had to relearn most basic motor skills and ended up with the mental capacity of a younger child than he was. When he was 14, the Powells adopted Frankie into their lives and while it was a bit of an adjustment having a baby in the home, Arthur seemed to take over a very protective stance over his baby sister. 

Currently, Arthur is living in a semi-assisted living facility where he has most control over his own life but as he’s approaching 40, he’s looking to move out of the home and into an apartment building owned by his parents and currently being lived in by his little sister. He used to work in the local library but took a job shortly after managing to graduate a local art school program at his fathers’ office building where he mostly sorts mail and keeps the files organized. Arthur has a bit of a learning disability, which is to be expected, all things considered but the accident could have paralyzed him, so he’s doing much better now than most people would have given him credit for. He also has an emotional support dog named Isabella: 

He got her about two years ago to help him prepare for moving out of his facility. In addition to his medications he also has a medical marijuana card which he uses to buy pre-rolled cigarettes, they stimulate his appetite since a few of his meds usually leave him without a lot of desire to eat, and can sometimes calm the laughter when it gets too serious. 

-----

In looking for pictures of Arthur, we also wound up revisiting the Gotham-esque role play my wife and I came up with years ago and in doing so, brought in some of the old characters from it. I updated a few of them. 

The first, of course, is the Joker or Arthur Fleck. Following the death of Batman (supposedly at the hands of Superman but there’s some mystery around those circumstances), Fleck allowed himself to be captured, stating there was little need for him to continue as the Bat was gone and Gotham was ready to return to the state it had been in before he started terrorizing its citizens in the first place. Believing he had been the spark that had ignited the fire in the city (and who’s to say he wasn’t really?) he was willing to sit back and watch it burn. When Batman “comes back from the dead” he orchestrates a rather grand escape of himself and several of the other head villains, looking to maintain the current state of the city. “Who are either of us...the Bat and I, without one another?” From what I also know, Fleck was Bruce’s half-brother as well. 

Next up is Johnathan Crane, or the Scarecrow. A clinical psychologist and professor at Gotham University, Crane is slightly obsessed when it comes to the subject of fear as a control mechanism and of what fear does to the human body and mind. In the course of his studies he’s created a neurotoxin which when released into the air, or pushed through the waters can cause intense fear and hallucinations, often bringing an individual’s worst fears to the front and forcing them to deal with them. The effects only last a couple of hours but in that time people who have been exposed to it have often caused harm to themselves or others. Crane recently funded a so-called Psychological experiment using human test subjects where he studied the effects of his toxin on a group of 10 to 20 people, varying age and gender, to see what would happen. Each of the people involved were compensated for their time, and several had to be paid a bit more so as not to send up red flags to the University over what they experienced. 

Harvey Dent - former senator of Gotham City, he was horribly disfigured when a bomb set off by some of the Jokers’ men robbed a gala he was attending, following the “death” of the Bat (I think this was probably one of the reasons that Victoria Wayne took up her father’s mantle, seeing that the evil was still in the world, and without her father there to keep it under control it would run rampant and destroy perfectly good people’s lives) Of course, Dent wasn’t exactly a stand-up individual, having been into nuclear testing and toxic waste dumping all while having a kind smile and trusting face that lured in more people to follow his platform. He originally wanted to see the “monsters of Gotham” take responsibility for their actions and not just shove them away in Arkham Asylum but actually rid the world of them for good. When he awakens from the blast and discovers he is now a disfigured, scarred “freak” he is incensed and turns from the political side of things to a more nefarious direction, meaning to not just join the monsters he used to so fervently want to annihilate but to lead them. He and Fleck butt heads quite a bit, as he feels he is superior to Fleck, though the Joker has other things in mind for Two-Face. 

Bryce Isley - Only “son” of Pamela Isley, otherwise known as Poison Ivy. Bryce was actually created using her DNA, egg and Bane’s sperm during a testing period in order to create a hybrid metahuman. When Pamela found out what had happened to create him, she took the infant from the lab and took him to Bruce Wayne, begging her former employee to help her. Bryce already possessed powers similar to his mother’s and unimaginable intelligence like that of his father, and in an effort to give Ivy some relief at the end of her days, Bruce agreed to take the child. Until he was 15, Bryce grew up in Wayne manor, beside Bruce’s daughter Victoria, but when he started exhibiting his powers and his inability to properly control them, Bruce sent him to work with Diana Prince, so that she may help him hone his power and not use them for evil. Bryce returns to Gotham following Bruce Wayne’s death but is a completely different person from the one who had left the city. He found out the truth of his existence, that he’s not so much a human as a test subject and that’s sparked some anger in him. 

Jared Joachim - Jared always had a hunch that there was something more to Bruce Wayne and when he was about 12 or 13 he snuck down into the Bat Cave and found out the truth. Promising to keep the secret, he began pursuing a career in engineering and mechanics, wanting more than anything to work with Batman and make new gadgets for him. After his father’s unfortunate death in Wayne Manor, supposedly at the hands of Batman himself, Jared lost his way and instead started working to make himself weapons and things that he could use to take revenge on Batman. When he returns to the states from Japan where he had been training in order to become strong enough to carry out his plan he finds out that Bruce has been killed and his daughter is now in control of the family business. He assumes that she is also going to take up the mantle of Batman but since he always loved Victoria, he cannot bring himself to do it. 

Alfred Pennyworth - Alfred has been the butler for the Wayne family since Bruce was a young man and has watched him grow and change into the man he became, as well as watch over his daughter Victoria. He’s not just an “old man” as so many people believe but has been the mastermind behind the suit, the vehicles and most of the weapons, believing that it is still his mission to serve the family no matter how that turns out. When Jared rejoins them, Alfred begins using the younger man for his ideas and between the two of them, they prepare Victoria to deal with the villains “Collective” 

@musesnotebook​

#Tom Mison #Joaquin Phoenix #Joker #Two-face #Scarecrow #role play #Poison Ivy #Norman reedus #tom ellis #david tennant #jeremy irons #alfred pennyworth

[itmeansvictory]

❝ She did not need much, wanted very little. A kind word, sincerity, fresh air, clean water, a garden, kisses, books to read, sheltering arms, a cozy bed, and to love and be loved in return. ❞

BRIE LARSON? No, that’s actually VICTOIRE WEASLEY. Only TWENTY SIX years old, this HUFFLEPUFF alumni works as an CURSE-BREAKER and is sided with THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. SHE identifies as CIS FEMALE and is a HALFBLOOD ( ONE EIGTH VEELA ) who is known to be OVERPROTECTIVE, STUBBORN, and SELF-DEPRECATING but also CONSCIENTIOUS, NURTURING, and PRAGMATIC. { r, 27, mst, she/her/hers }

GENERAL

FULL NAME: Victoire Apolline Weasley NICKNAME(S): Vic, V, Tori, Tor AGE/DATE OF BIRTH: 26, 05/02/1997 OCCUPATION: Independently Contracted Curse-Breaker GENDER: Cis Female PRONOUNS: She/Her HOMETOWN: Tinworth, Cornwall, England CURRENT RESIDENCE: London, England POSITIVE TRAITS: Conscientious, Nurturing, Pragmatic, Loyal NEGATIVE TRAITS: Stubborn, Self-Deprecating, Overprotective, Moody

BIOGRAPHY

victoire apolline weasley - though you may know her as a number of monikers: blonde weasley, curse-breaking milf, mom friend™, whatever. she’s the eldest weasley cousin, part-veela, a mother, and yes she is a natural blonde. these are often the defining characteristics she is known by, but there’s a lot more than meets the eye.

born on may 2nd, 1997, almost two years after the fateful tri-wizard tournament where voldemort was defeated “once and for all”, she is the first child born to bill weasley and beauxbatons champion fleur delacour. the first of her generation; hers was a charmed childhood, only made more exciting by the arrival of two siblings and many cousins. seeing as she was older than most of them by a handful of years, victoire became somewhat of a “babysitter” for the family. she spent most of her formative years running after younger weasley-potters, patching up scrapes and kissing bruises as well as diffusing tense situations. from an early age she just naturally took on the role of “mom” among her social groups, the nurturing tendencies carry on even to her hogwarts years where her friends often teased her for being so overprotective of them and “babying” them.

at hogwarts she was sorted into hufflepuff - the first of her family to not be a gryffindor much to the changrin of several of her family members. while the hat had debated between the two houses, it was ultimately the pragmatic and sensible nature of the girl that lead her to being placed among the badgers. this turned out to be best suited to her traits. victoire’s easy going youth lead to her being soft and gentle but also incredibly empathetic and warm. aside from being the aforementioned “mom friend”, she was basically the poster child for hufflepuff - being dutiful, hard-working, trustworthy, loyal and fair. the one “weasley trait” that followed her was a deep love for quidditch, being a beater for the house team for a few years. but her true loves had been herbology, history of magic and charms; the girl spending most of her days studying old textbooks, hanging around the greenhouse, or learning new charms to advance her abilities.

due to a studious nature, she was usually in the favor of her professors and hadn’t found herself in detention like many of her family members might have. it was for this reason she was chosen as a prefect during her latter years, and head girl her seventh. she was responsible and organized in comparison to most of her peers, and actually took pride in being a role model. a side effect of being the oldest in her family - there were always eyes on her and victoire wanted to live up to their expectations.

following school, it was of little surprise when she announced she would be a curse-breaker in training under her father’s tutelage. she possessed much of her father’s qualities - she was an academic achiever as well as laid back in nature, while still managing to be serious when necessary. as a child she was a daddy’s girl and had a very keen interest in bill’s occupation. she used to pretend she was a curse-breaker, "disabling” curses and jinxes on teddy bears and various odd objects throughout the house. so when it came time to take her NEWT level classes, she made sure to structure her schedule around what classes would help her become a successful curse-breaker. it was a thrilling and adventure-filled career path, but her time with gringott’s would only last a few years before she opted to be an “independently contracted curse-breaker” - a choice made in order to continue the work she loved while being a single parent with full custody of her child.

before she began her apprenticeship, victoire spent the summer holiday after her seventh year in france with relatives. despite her claims she would come back “still very much the same victoire” the girl had returned from holiday a very different woman - a married one, actually. hardly one to make rash decisions, it was a shock to hear that after just four weeks of courtship victoire had married a beauxbatons alum she’d met while touring the french riviera. much of the family was opposed to the union, but victoire swore that she was happy and it was meant to be - and for a while that was true.

it turned into a tumultuous affair and would last all of four years before the ill-suited pair would inevitably call it quits - an embarrassing fact considering how adamant she had been that their love was “real” and that it would “work out just fine”. it turned out over time that the two were not exactly suitable and wanted very different things. for one, he wanted to live in france while victoire wanted to stay near her family in england. the only complication left after the marriage was a child that neither had originally planned for - a little girl named amélie whom victoire has full custody of. now her trips to france - via portkey every other weekend - are begrudgingly made in order to allow their daughter time to stay with her father, with whom she has remained (or has tried to remain) amicable and civil despite how poorly the relationship ended.

these days victoire is hardly around. contracted with many independent buyers and sellers of magical antiques and the like, the woman travels across the wizarding world in order to acquire such objects and to reverse whatever hexes have been placed on them as security measures. it’s become harder to balance this job with raising a child, and as such has made her home base in the UK in order to receive the support from her family. she was away on such trips when things began to escalate back home and has since taken on less jobs and has been spending more time in london and close to her relatives during what feels like the return of dark times.

joining the reinstated order of phoenix, victoire is at war with the impending fight. the young woman isn’t too eager to be part of another wizarding war. a little bit of a pacifist, victoire just wants to see a happy future again. having a young child, and seeing the aftereffects of her uncle’s death on his family, makes her worried to put herself in a position where she will no longer be able to take care of amelie. but she also knows that it is up to the order to put an end to the death eaters once and for all - choosing to ultimate put herself in harms way in order to make sure her daughter gets to grow in a safe and happy world like she herself did.

tbh i’ll probably be editing this as i go along.

MISC

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Demisexual ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Heteromantic LANGUAGES: English, French, Gobbledegook, Some German, Spanish and Chinese FAMILY: Bill Weasley (father), Fleur Weasley née Delacour (mother), Dominique Weasley (sister), Louis Weasley (brother), Amélie Weasley-Dufour (daughter), Bastien Dufour (ex-husband) PETS: Barn Owl named Athena, Kneazle named Pyewacket ZODIAC SIGN: Taurus MBTI: ISFJ AESTHETIC: black coffee forgotten and cooled to room temperature; books and files piled up on every surface; scuffed up doc marten’s, cracked brown leather jackets, vintage band tees; makeup-less face and messy buns; chipped black nail polish; teeth marks running along her wand; reading glasses sitting on the button of her nose, a finger shaped smudge on the right lens; world map with assorted pins and thread connecting cities across the globe; bleached shells, creased postcards, and faded photographs in a trinket box long forgotten in the far corner of the closet; freckles that only come out with the sun, sideways smirks and a mischievous twinkle in dark chocolate eyes; the cry of seagulls and the salty sea breeze; pressed flowers in leather bound notebooks lying e v e r y w h e r e, blue ink stains on hands; trinkets and odd little souvenirs from various countries and cities on every desk; finger paintings and crayon drawings with ‘i love mummy’ in the corners; bottomless bag with everything a mom ever needs; nights spent alone and welcoming the solitude

WANTED CONNECTIONS

THE SCHOOL FRIENDS (2) - a couple fellow hogwarts alums who would have attended at the same time as victoire, they have remained close friends since leaving school and regularly meet up for drinks and to catch up and reminisce. they are hufflepuffs and have their own trio kind of like harry/ron/hermione. bonus points if one is a death eater, 1/2 taken

THE RIVAL - a fellow curse-breaker or someone from victoire’s youth who she has never seen eye to eye with. perhaps its because of opposing ideals, a dislike for the weasley-potter family or whatever petty reason - these two just don’t get along and are constantly butting heads. bonus points for being rivals in the curse-breaking field, open

THE EX - self explanatory; victoire’s ex-husband and the father of her daughter. this is not meant to be a romantic connection. they weren’t very well suited for each other and instead insist upon being civil and amiable for the sake of their daughter. is french/a beauxbatons alumni and would be newly arrived in britain should you take up this role, npc

tbh i’m really bad at these; just hmu and we can brainstorm afheahpfieaihfeiafpieafea

#iidyintro #divorce tw #&& bio. #this is a hecking mess but ahfieahpfa here have my child victoire #and pls don't hesitate to mssg me about plots #i'm really bad at coming up with wcs >.<

[fidelityjobs]

“You can’t be what you can’t see”

By Lorna Martyn, SVP, Head of Technology, Fidelity Investments 

When I graduated from university in the 1990s, conversations around diversity and inclusion were very few.  Indeed, having graduated from a Computer Science program, where approximately 50% of the participants were female, it never occurred to me (or my contemporaries) that we would face a different situation in the workplace, where we might be a minority or our progression paths might differ from our male counterparts. Today, computer science graduating classes in Europe are usually 10-15% female, with overall female participation in STEM-oriented degrees at 25%. What has changed so dramatically in a couple of decades?   

I’m not sure I have a definitive answer to this question. While reams of research have been published in this space, in my opinion it boils down to three factors—career influencers, advocates and role models.     

The research tells us that parents and particularly mothers are primary influencers of the subjects selected in school and courses of study at university. When I was applying for college in the pre-internet days (yes, I was around then!) and growing up as an only girl with five brothers, I wasn’t aware of any barriers—my brothers studied Physics and Maths, so it didn’t strike me as unusual that I would take these courses. But the real catalyst for a career in technology for me was at age 12 when my mother enrolled me in a summer coding class. I genuinely think she didn’t even know what she was signing me up for—she just wanted her bored near teenage daughter out from under her feet during the summer holidays. For a woman who gave up work upon marriage (which was the norm at that time), she was determined that each of her children would have equal opportunities. She didn’t believe that there were male careers and female careers—just careers. I didn’t appreciate it at the time but in hindsight, her open-mindedness gave me confidence.   

The importance of advocates cannot be underestimated. A number of my female peers left the industry because their peers and managers did not advocate for them, and they felt frustrated by the glass ceilings for women in many organizations.  Again, I have been fortunate in this regard and have experienced the benefit of male and female advocates in the course of my career.  That doesn’t mean it has been all plain sailing. I’ve worked hard, taken a few detours and made more lateral than upward moves to gain experience.  However, I appreciate the doors that advocates have opened for me and feel obligated to advocate for others.     

While I didn’t have any female role model for careers in technology before embarking on my degree program, I had an uncle who worked in the technology sector, and so I had some appreciation of the opportunities it presented.  Fortunately, in my very first job, there was a woman on the leadership team who took me under her wing.  Today, since the paths to careers in technology and the diversity of roles continue to evolve, one might expect this in itself would lead to greater diversity, right?  Unfortunately not. Despite most teenagers being exposed to more information via the internet than I ever had at their age, the saying “You can’t be what you can’t see” seems to be the reality.  Therefore, role models are more important than ever to counteract some of the pervasive stereotypes. 

Having worked at several companies and across different business domains prior to joining Fidelity, I am proud to work for an organization focused on inclusion and diversity.  The Women’s Leadership Group (WLG) and Women in Technology Special Interest Group (WITSIG) are great examples of how Fidelity supports our associates in reaching their full potential.  These employee-driven groups are doing fantastic work across the globe to influence and advocate inclusion efforts, and we are fortunate to have some exceptional role models in them.       

The full gambit of WLG/WITSIG activities is far too broad to outline here but some great examples this year include the ‘Wit-a-thon’, an internal hackathon event organized by WITSIG.  We had the second edition last year, which saw teams participating from across Ireland and India.  It was great to see women taking the lead to drive innovation; but it was equally impressive that there was gender balance on most of the teams, reflecting the future state goal. Our male colleagues who participated did so because they genuinely want to support WITSIG, and so many commented that they were participating because they have daughters or sisters whom they would like to support in considering careers in technology.     

Other examples include ‘Bring your Child to Work’ or ‘Bring your Daughter to Work’ days that are running globally. These are high-octane but very enjoyable events, and so many children walk away with an appreciation of Fidelity as a workplace, and many parents become ‘cool’ in their children’s eyes once they see what mom or dad does at work.   

At Fidelity Ireland, we were incredibly privileged to win the inaugural Technology Ireland ‘Women in Technology Company Award’.  Technology Ireland is an industry body with participants from over 200 technology companies.  The award recognizes the work Fidelity is doing to promote technology careers in schools and universities, support alternative pipelines including RESUME (the Fidelity program that offers professionals who have taken a break in their career an opportunity to return to the workforce) and apprenticeships, in addition to the focus internally on supporting our employee development and retention (an area where WLG contributes significantly).       

So, back to influencers, advocates and role models. I genuinely believe that to make any significant progress, we all need to be cognizant of how we can influence greater participation, retention and progression of women at the workplace, especially in leadership roles.   

I’d like to encourage our Fidelity women to speak up more about their careers. You may not see yourself as a role model, but if you can encourage even one person to consider a career, that is a win!     

Finally, I would urge one and all to be brave and advocate for others. Think of those who did the same for you and, as we say in Fidelity, “Pay IT Forward!” As the old Irish saying goes, “Níor bhris focal maith fiacail riamh”, or as the English translation goes, “A kind word never broke a tooth.” 

#FidelityAssociate #FidelityIreland #womenintech #STEM #womeninstem #tech #technology #financial services #finance #fidelityjobs #fidelity #fidelity investments

[usnewsaggregator-blog]

The Brother-Sister Divide

New Post has been published on https://usnewsaggregator.com/the-brother-sister-divide/

The Brother-Sister Divide

MERCED, California—Nita Vue’s parents, refugees from Laos, wanted all nine of their children go to college. But Nita, now 20, is the only one of her brothers and sisters who is going to get a degree. A few of her sisters began college, and one nearly completed nursing school, she told me. Her brothers were less interested. “The way I grew up, the girls were more into schooling,” she said. “Women tended to have higher expectations than men did.”

This is not unusual. Across socioeconomic classes, women are increasingly enrolling and completing postsecondary education, while, even as opportunities for people without a college education shrink, men’s rates of graduation remain relatively stagnant. In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, 72.5 percent of females who had recently graduated high school were enrolled in a two-year or four-year college, compared to 65.8 percent of men. That’s a big difference from 1967, when 57 percent of recent male high-school grads were in college, compared to 47.2 percent of women.

Women from low-income and minority families especially have made great strides in recent decades. Just 12.4 percent of men from low-income families who were high-school sophomores in 2002 had received a bachelor’s degree by 2013, compared to 17.6 percent of women. And in 2016, 22 percent of Hispanic women ages 25 to 29 had a bachelor’s degree, compared to 16 percent of Hispanic men.

(While poor women are outpacing poor men, it is important to note that in the big picture, poor women are nevertheless far behind their richer counterparts. About 70 percent of women from a high socioeconomic status who were high school sophomores in 2002 had gotten bachelor’s degrees by 2013, compared to 17.6 percent of women from low socioeconomic status.)

This gender gap in college completion has been a long time in the making. In the early 1900s, when some elite colleges started opening up to women, women quickly got better grades than men, according to Claudia Buchmann, a professor of sociology at Ohio State and the co-author of The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What it Means for American Schools. In the 1970s, as more women started attending college, they started graduating at higher and higher rates, while men’s enrollment and graduation rates remained relatively flat. But until recently, the women attending college were mostly from elite families. Now, women from lower-income families are increasingly attending college.

Percentage of American 25-to-29-Year-Olds With a Bachelor’s Degree or Higher

Steven Johnson / The Atlantic

This is a positive development for women, because a college education is increasingly important in today’s economy. Out of the 11.6 million jobs created after the recession, 8.4 million of those went to those with at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown. But while women across socioeconomic classes are embracing the idea that education is important and are pursuing postsecondary degrees, many men from lower-income households are not. “The puzzle is—why don’t boys get it? There’s all this talk that we hear constantly, about the benefits of a college degree,” said Buchmann.  

Some of the problem is that boys from low-income families appear to struggle more in school than girls do. They lag behind as early as kindergarten even though health tests show that, at the time of birth, they are just as healthy and cognitively able to learn as their sisters, a recent paper found. This is partly because they appear to be more affected by poverty and stress than girls are. “Boys are differentially sensitive to negative environments in general,” one of the paper’s authors, Northwestern professor David Figlio, told me. These findings dovetail with much-cited research out of the Equality of Opportunity Project that finds that childhood disadvantage is especially harmful for boys.

School quality is also more important for boys than for girls, Figlio said, and since many low-income families attend poor-quality schools, their sons, who are already lagging behind their daughters, fall even further behind. The paper found that lower-income boys often do worse in elementary and middle school than their sisters, and have more behavioral problems, which can lead them to disengage with school entirely or get kicked out.

Nita Vue told me she was always set on college, even when she was in grade school. Neither of her parents has a college education, and neither has worked recently, but they encouraged all of their children to focus on school. Nita, who is now a junior at the University of California-Merced, would come home from school and read while her siblings were listening to music. She always had good grades, and graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade point average. In general, her sisters did better academically than her brothers did, her mother, Mai Kao Vue, told me. “The girls were more into schooling, and the boys were more outgoing,” she said.

What is it about girls? The differences start young: Girls enter kindergarten more prepared than boys, and derive more satisfaction from pleasing parents and teachers than boys do, according to Buchmann. In one study, 62 percent of eighth-grade girls said that good grades were “very important,” compared to 50 percent of boys, according to Buchmann and her co-author Thomas DiPrete. Girls also have more of the social and behavioral skills that are important for succeeding in school from an early age, Buchmann said.

Boys often feel pressured to act “masculine,” which can lead them to eschew school —one study showed that boys put a lot of effort into school are often labeled as “gay” or “pussies.” Yet boys who don’t buy into those stereotypes and participate in music, dance, or art, do better than other boys academically in eighth grade, according to Buchmann and DiPrete. Those different levels of engagement can make a difference for college attendance: students who reported getting mostly As in middle school have a 70 percent chance of completing college by age 25, while those who get mostly Cs have only a 10 percent chance.

How parents raise children can exacerbate these dynamics. Pressures to be “masculine” are often stronger in lower-income or working-class families, Buchmann says. “The notion of what it means to be a boy and a man, especially among lower working-class boys, makes it such that they see doing well in school as something that girls and women do, and they don’t want any part of it,” Buchmann told me. This is especially true if boys see male role models like fathers or older family members working physical, blue-collar jobs that don’t require an education. They may assume that they’ll be able to work those jobs too, even if they’re disappearing, and think that doing anything else is too “girly.” By contrast, if boys have role models that are educated, they do better in school. Better-educated parents often teach their children a different concept of masculinity in which academic achievement is important. Moreover, they are more likely to know men in careers that require an education, and to have those men as their role models.

Percentage of Black and Hispanic American 25-to-29-Year-Olds With a Bachelor’s Degree or Higher, by Gender

Steven Johnson / The Atlantic

Nita’s brother, Por Vue, who is now 28, told me he thought he was deeply affected by his family’s lack of knowledge about the educational system. He actually applied to and was accepted into Cal State Monterey Bay, but his parents advised him to instead go to a junior college closer to home, he told me. But the junior college was overcrowded and he couldn’t get into many of the classes he wanted, so had to change his major. Then, while he was in college, he started a family, and later dropped out so he could support his wife and kids. He’s now a manager at PetSmart, where he makes around $13 an hour. “I think if I’d had a better family background, I would have had knowledge that other people had, and I would have been able to go further,” he told me.

Boys may also be more susceptible to short-term instant gratification than girls are, Buchmann told me. Boys may have a harder time slogging away at a college degree and paying for it when they know there are jobs available where they could get paid a decent wage, even if that job might not be a long-term proposition. I talked to a 31-year-old in Merced named Edward Vasquez who was one-and-a-half years into a two-year nursing program when he dropped out to take a job as a certified nursing assistant that paid $17.50 an hour. He’s since lost his job and is looking for work.

This is not to say that men can’t succeed if they don’t have a college education. I talked to a woman named Olga Jimenez who was raised by a single mother, and who went to college when her brothers didn’t. But her brother has still made a good career as a real-estate agent, and has a license and his own office, she told me. Meanwhile, Olga had to work three jobs at once while she attended Whittier College and is still paying off her college debt.

Yet Jimenez’s brother is the exception, not the rule. People with just a high-school diploma make, on average, $692 a week, compared to $1,156 for those with a bachelor’s degree. And the returns of a college education have grown over time. People with a bachelor’s degree or higher earn 14 percent more than they did in 1979, on average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics; people with a high school degree earn 12 percent less.

As the gender gap grows, there are wider implications for society. People are more likely to pair with others who have a similar educational background; as more women get postsecondary degrees than men, women will increasingly find their marriage prospects dimming. This is already happening in some areas of the country—I wrote in May about a town in Ohio where the women complained that all the men were on drugs or unemployed, while the women held down steady jobs. Their daughters will face a similar future, unless they can get their sons to succeed at—and care about—school.

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