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Opinion    
Anti-Male Sentiments on the Rise  

�She Works, He doesn�t� read the cover page of the famous American magazine Newsweek sometime back in 2002-03.  It seemed like it was a moment of rejoice for Newsweek magazine that since many of the technology-related jobs were being outsourced to India and China, thousands of people, primarily men were being laid off from their jobs in America. All over the world, men hold a majority of the technical and engineering jobs, so it wasn�t surprising that the majority of the employees being laid off from work in the United States were men. This left the women as the major bread-earners in these families (temporarily in most cases, until the men found other jobs). As if it was not enough for these men to lose their jobs and feel low on life, Newsweek found it amusing to mock them by telling them that they were now the �weaker sex�. This is not the only case of anti-male bias that largely pervades the culture of the west, there plenty more to follow:

• There is a day called �Take your daughters to work day� in the US which emphasizes that parents must use the opportunity by taking their daughters to their work place on a day designated by the founders of the organization to expose the young women of the various career choices available to them. When the founders were asked why only daughters, why should not sons be included as well, they stated that sons do not need to be exposed to such opportunities. The founders suggested that sons should spend a Sunday helping with the house work, cooking and household chores, and the founders of �Take your daughters to work day� would be happy to designate such a day for all sons to follow.

• At one school in California, United States, it is mandatory for boys to attend a "Women's Assembly" in which women are celebrated and men are defamed.

• It has been noticed that boys are better than girls at math and science all over the world, and that girls are better than boys at reading and writing. The National Science Foundation in America allots millions of dollars each year to offer science and math programs for girls, so that girls can close the gender gap in these two subjects. Meanwhile, such organizations for English are yet to come up with programs for reading and writing for boys so that they, too, can close the gender gap in these subjects as well.

• The Department of Health and Human Services in the United States cannot be a feminist organization, can it be? No, it is not, it is rather a public department that is responsible for maintaining the Healthcare services of the USA. In 1997, this organization started a program called "Girl Power" for girls of ages 9-14 to help the young girls use their adolescence wisely and emerge as confident women. HHS has no such program for boys.

These are only a few of examples of the anti-male sentiments that are rooted into the western culture. Anti-male bias is growing in Asian countries too, primarily South Asia, and it is only a matter of time when verbal male-bashing would become the number one sport of many countries. The saddest thing is that man-hating goes as far as degrading little boys.   

� Pradeep Sharma
March 28, 2004

Pradeep Sharma is 16 years old.

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