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The New Gender Gap: What Went Wrong? By: Wiens, Kathryn, Journal of Education, 00220574, 2005, Vol. 186, Issue 3

INFLUENCE OF CULTURE
Society has a profound impact on those living within it. Like girls, men and boys( n1) conceptualize their identities in response to cultural ideals, which are influenced by their homes, their schools, and the media. Boys embrace the messages that appeal to them and emulate the cultural norms they observe (Harris, 1995; Pajares, 2002). The difference between the masculinization of boys and the feminization of girls lies in the models and expectations society provides for each gender. Currently, society presents girls with models of success, sending the message that girls can do anything they want--the "girl power"( n2) movement is going strong. For boys, the message is very different. As a teenage boy in Iowa recently reported, "society says we [boys] can't be trusted" (Conlin, 2003, p. 5).

For boys, fathers are the most powerful models and transmitters of cultural norms of male behavior. When fathers are absent, boys' peers and the media fill the gap (Harris, 1995). The problems that may arise as a result of conflict in gender socialization are often referred to in the literature as "gender role conflict" (Watts and Borders, 2005). Gender role conflict and the problems it describes have been applied to the study of both boys and girls of every racial and ethnic group. Experiences that fall into the category of gender role conflict are negatively attached to several maladaptive behaviors, one being a poor academic self-concept (Reichert and Kuriloff, 2001).

While success in school has become a more gender-neutral than male-identified trait in most socioeconomic groups, it continues to be sex-typed as female among poor and working-class populations (Salamone, 2005). It seems the ability of boys, especially poor and working-class boys, to adapt to their school's social landscape has a marked effect on the way they feel about themselves, which in turn correlates with their educational success (Reichert and Kuriloff, 2004). Because the transition from boyhood to manhood is a result of responding to "situational demand and social pressures" (Harris, 2005, p. 9), boys in poor and working-class populations are at an immediate disadvantage in school. Black boys are at an even greater disadvantage, says Hooks (2004), who supposes that "…many black males in our society embrace the notion that they are victims, that racism, The Man, treacherous black women, bitches of all colors and so forth are all making it hard for them to get ahead" (p. 5). Hooks (2004) extends the victimization of black boys to those black families who have attained an education:
Anti-intellectualism in black communities is often a weapon used in the class warfare between those black folks who feel condemned to a narrow existence because they are not educated and therefore unable to be upwardly mobile and educated black folks who are striving to be among the professional managerial class. (p. 43)

It seems that, in almost every sphere, the construction of the black male involves the rejection of norms set by whites, which, some have suggested, can help explain black boys' deliberate underachievement in school (Reese, 2004). The result is that young black men who have put effort into school and put their intelligence to use have "been called sissies, among other names" by their black classmates (Reese, 2004, p. 68). The problem is not limited to black boys or poor boys; the definition of manhood, in general, has changed over the last three decades and, in many cases, the definition does not include academic achievement. As a result, it seems, boys have developed defenses that hide their effort and motivation or discourage effort altogether.