Here are 4 important men's health things we think you should know about...

From the Men's Health Information and Resource Centre at the University of Western Sydney.

2013 is shaping up to be a huge year for people working in male health. There's plenty on!

1. The eternal question: how do we get men to become involved in programs?

Not surprisingly, this is one of the most common questions as organisations consider how to meet the health needs of males. Engaging Men is an important training event to be held in Newcastle on March 14 and 15.

At just $400 for a full two-day program, you'll come away being a better worker with an improved ability to reach out to men and help them help themselves. It's the kind of event that will pay for itself just in improved attendance at your own events (think Men's Health Week)!

Find out the details >>

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The Boys at the Back - NYTimes.com

Illustration by Ben Javens

Boys score as well as or better than girls on most standardized tests, yet they are far less likely to get good grades, take advanced classes or attend college. Why? A study coming out this week in The Journal of Human Resources gives an important answer. Teachers of classes as early as kindergarten factor good behavior into grades — and girls, as a rule, comport themselves far better than boys.

The study’s authors analyzed data from more than 5,800 students from kindergarten through fifth grade and found that boys across all racial groups and in all major subject areas received lower grades than their test scores would have predicted.

The scholars attributed this “misalignment” to differences in “noncognitive skills”: attentiveness, persistence, eagerness to learn, the ability to sit still and work independently. As most parents know, girls tend to develop these skills earlier and more naturally than boys.

No previous study, to my knowledge, has demonstrated that the well-known gender gap in school grades begins so early and is almost entirely attributable to differences in behavior. The researchers found that teachers rated boys as less proficient even when the boys did just as well as the girls on tests of reading, math and science. (The teachers did not know the test scores in advance.) If the teachers had not accounted for classroom behavior, the boys’ grades, like the girls’, would have matched their test scores.

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SLIMS and the decline of partnering in Australia

This is an edited version of a research paper by Prof. Bob Birrell, Virgonia Rapson, and Clare Hourigan, of the Monash University Centre for Population and Urban Research for the Australian Family Association written in March 2004. Their insights are still very current today. 

Economic changes over the past 20 years have conspired to create a growing underclass of single low income males (SLIMs) without the financial resources to marry and support a family. Consequently, this study shows that primarily it is not the DINKs (dual income no-kids) behind the decline in Australia's fertility rate. Rather, the decline in marriage and fertility is largely among the SLIMs. In 1986 most women were partnered by their late twenties. By 2001 only a bare majority, 53%, were partnered. In 1986, 71% of men had partnered by their mid thirties, but by 2001 this had shrunk to 59%. 

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EMALE Issue 118 (January 2013)

In this month's issue:

is being a bit overweight all that bad for you?

keeping your mind young and alert

engaging men national training seminar

SLIMS and the decline of partnering in Australia

The Real Reason Men Die Sooner and Live Sicker

news briefs

• New Diabetes Counselling Service
• World Cancer Day 4 February 2013

future events

• Men behaving creatively March 6 - 27 Roleystone WA

Education system is biased towards girls, yet we do nothing

The Weekend Australian, Saturday December 22, 2012

Australia’s feminised curriculum puts boys at a significant disadvantage

ANGELA SHANAHAN

IT is an experience I have relived eight times, the stomach churning anticipation as we wait in agony for the tertiary entrance results. But today the boy, my last at school, is not like that. No one waits for the post, twisting their hanky and muttering Hail Marys any more.

He screeches down the driveway with a cheery wave, P plates askew, posse of friends in tow, to collect the ATAR score. He already has a pretty good idea of his marks. Flunking is no problem these days because there are numerous ways to overcome that, and he won’t.

Anyway, he informs me, he is doing a gap year to get away from the "stress". Although the source of this stress was not obvious to his mother and father, since the ACT doesn’t even have a public exam.

So education isn’t what it used to be. At least it isn’t for a lot of my son’s male contemporaries. Was it a big shock when you read that Australia is scoring very badly in international tests? It should not have been.

Australian children have been subject to haphazard experiments in reading and writing for a very long time. And not just reading and writing, but in all aspects of pedagogy and curriculum. The ones who have really suffered from all this are the boys.

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