“Man is no longer victor in the duel of the sexes… the enormous superiority of Woman’s natural position is telling with greater and greater force.”

The 21^st century may be proving George Bernard Shaw right. All over the world female students are outpacing males. In Britain this year girls outperformed boys in GCSE A-levels. In 1973 roughly the same number of American boys and girls took high school Advanced Placement exams - by 1998 boys had fallen well behind. American boys today are less likely than girls to complete high school, to attend college, and to stay out of jail. They read and write less well and do less homework. Except for sports, they participate less frequently in extracurricular activities. In areas like math and science where boys still hold an edge, the gap is fast narrowing. In areas where girls are in front, it is widening.

But nowhere are females more academically dominant than Jamaica, the only country on earth with significantly more illiterate men than women. Girls outclass boys from common entrance to spelling bee, and over 73% of last year’s graduates at the University of the West Indies at Mona were female.

Yet according to a recent UNDP study males account for between 70% and 86% of the top leadership positions in the island’s major companies, statutory organisations, trade unions and political parties. Now clearly there is still “glass ceiling” sexism in the boardroom, as many dinosaurs refuse to accept the fact that women are capable of doing almost anything men can, and often better. But male chauvinism is only part of the story.

According to Helena Cronin, author of “The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection, “Those who demand a 50:50 representation of men and women everywhere - universities, workplace, politics, sport, childcare - deny the reality that there are innate sex differences between men and women. Whether or not sexism is operating, evolved sex differences in dispositions, skills, interests, and ambitions certainly will be. Humankind is not androgynous.”

There is always some overlap between the sexes, she says, but the degree depends on the characteristic. In pitching missiles boys outdo girls every time, while 9 out of 10 men do worse than women in fluency of speech.

The distribution curves for most male-female disparities also differ. Males are far more variable than females and are over-represented at both the top of the heap and the bottom of the barrel. Fewer women are likely to be dunces or geniuses. So while there is a significant overlap of men’s and women’s jobs in middle management and though some women are higher up than the average man, most top executives will continue to be men. As will most menial labourers.

Differences in disposition and interests count as well as abilities. Being competitive, status-conscious and single-minded are crucial qualities for success, and men are far more likely to possess them, often in overabundance. Women in traditionally male professions respond to challenges with a characteristically ‘male’ high adrenaline charge. But it seems their job choice follows disposition rather than vice versa. Such tendencies might be related to hormonal makeup. For example with 3D rotation - being able to imagine rotating objects in space - women exposed in the womb to high levels of androgen perform far better than normal women and almost as well as men.

To Ms. Cronin sex-blind social policy isn’t impartial and more fair, it’s less so. Girls and boys do not always learn in the same way. Boys’ advantage in maths - where academic sex differences are most extreme - apparently rests on their innate superiority in mechanical and 3D thinking. Girls can improve considerably if they’re taught in ways that circumvent this. That’s the kind of thing a fair education policy should be concerned with. And the same goes for laws, the workplace, economic planning and every other social field.

Fair policies incorporate an understanding of both female and male nature. Unemployment, for instance, impacts very differently on men and women. For a woman, unemployment means loss of a job. For a man, it means loss of status. And this combines with other sex differences to take women and men down very different pathways once the workplace door closes. A low-status man is a low-status mate. He will have more difficulty finding and keeping a partner. Couples in which the wife earns more than the husband are more likely to divorce.

Much domestic violence originates in sexual jealousy, to which low status men are especially prone. And for good reason - misattributed paternity is as minimal as 1% among very high-status American males but up to 30% among unemployed, deprived, inner-city men. Low hierarchy men also have more health problems. So when the future looks inauspicious, males are more likely to take risks.

All of this brings into sharper focus the high rates of domestic violence in Jamaica’s ghettos and the noted propensity of our uneducated, unemployed young men for guns – to be feared is to be respected. And it has implications for our policy-makers. If you want to change behaviour, you have to change the environment appropriately.

One upon a time our women were treated as second class citizens and it was girls whose expectations needed to be liberated. But times have changed. And if we want to create a peaceful and prosperous Jamaica we must urgently address the increasing marginalization of our young men. For this is where our crime problems begin.

Now it is hardly likely that boys have suddenly become intellectually inferior. Their academic failure must trace to missing or excessive factors in their socialization.

In “Marginalization of the Black Male” Professor Errol Miller controversially attributed the female domination of the teaching profession in Jamaica to “the intention of those holding central positions of power… to limit the upward social mobility of black men”.

One does not have to agree with everything he says to wonder if the alarming manifestations of illiteracy and indiscipline among our young men are related to the overwhelming female preponderance among Jamaican social workers and childhood teachers. Females after all naturally approach matters from a female perspective. But what's suitable for girls is not necessarily so for boys. Might our young men’s troubles partially originate in inappropriate teaching and counselling approaches? It is a question that must be addressed. changkob@hotmail.com