Maternal Gatekeeping: Countless Studies Edition

Recently on F&F:

[T]he main people who “regard women as the default parent” are women themselves. Is she really unaware of the studies on maternal gatekeeping that examine the tendency of mothers to sideline fathers in childcare? Has she not seen the countless articles by women bemoaning their lack of children or wallowing in guilt for working too much and being apart from their kids or worst of all actually losing custody to the child’s father? It’s true that fathers tend to fall into line behind the Moms and play second fiddle in childcare. But it’s also true that they’re following the mothers’ lead. The decision-maker about who does what regarding the kids is usually Mom. And finally, it’s true that fathers are far more involved in childcare than they used to be, again as much social science shows.

So being me I wanted to look what studies did take a look at maternal gatekeeping:

Maternal Gatekeeping: Mothers' Belief and Behaviors That Inhibit Greater Father Involvement in Family Work - Sarah M. Allen & Allan J. Hawkins - Journal of Marriage and the Family 1999

Abstract: Maternal gatekeeping is conceptualized within the framework of the social construction of gender and is defined as having three dimensions: mothers' reluctance to relinquish responsibility over family matters by setting rigid standards, external validation of a mothering identity, and differentiated conceptions of family roles. These three conceptual dimensions of gatekeeping are operationalized with modest reliability and tested with a confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 622 dual-earner mothers. With cluster analyses, 21% of the mothers were classified as gatekeepers. Gatekeepers did 5 more hours of family work per week and had less equal divisions of labor than women classified as collaborators.

Although scholars have documented that many fathers want to increase the amount of time spent caring for their home and children (Daly, 1993; Lamb, 1997; Pleck, 1997), there are many structural, cultural, familial, and personal barriers to increased father involvement in family work. Daily child care and household tasks can provide an opportunity for both husbands and wives to be connected and committed to protecting, promoting, and nurturing the growth of their children (Hawkins, Chństiansen, Sargent, Hill, 1993). However, more needs to be known about the specific contextual factors that may mediate or regulate men’s involvement in family work. Specifically, how Women’s beliefs and behaviors toward men’s involvement affect actual levels of involvement needs more attention (De Luccie, 1995). Scholars have noted that Wives as well as husbands resist more collaborative arrangements of family Work (Coltrane, 1996; Dienhart & Daly, 1997; Thompson & Walker, 1989). One way women resist increased men’s involvement in family Work is by “gatekeeping” the domain of home and family.

McBride , B. A., Brown , G. L., Bost , K. K., Shin , N., Vaughn , B. and Korth, B. (2005), Paternal Identity, Maternal Gatekeeping, and Father Involvement. Family Relations, 54: 360–372. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2005.00323.x

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine whether mothers’ beliefs about the role of the father may contribute to mothers influencing the quantity of father involvement in their children's lives. Participants were 30 two-parent families with children between the ages of 2 and 3 years. A combination of self-report and interview data were collected from both mothers and fathers. Results from multiple regression analyses indicated that fathers’ perceived investments in their parental roles and actual levels of paternal involvement are moderated by mothers’ beliefs about the role of the father. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for future research on parenting identity and maternal gatekeeping as well as the development of parenting programs for fathers.

Maternal gatekeeping, coparenting quality, and fathering behavior in families with infants. - Schoppe-Sullivan, Sarah J.; Brown, Geoffrey L.; Cannon, Elizabeth A.; Mangelsdorf, Sarah C.; Sokolowski, Margaret Szewczyk Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 22(3), Jun 2008, 389-398. doi: 10.1037/0893-3200.22.3.389

The present study examined the role of maternal gatekeeping behavior in relation to fathers' relative involvement and competence in child care in 97 families with infant children. Parents' beliefs about fathers' roles were assessed prior to their infant's birth. Parents' perceptions of maternal gatekeeping behavior (encouragement and criticism) and coparenting relationship quality were assessed at 3.5 months postpartum. The authors assessed fathers' relative involvement and competence in child care using a combination of parent report and observational measures. Results suggest that even after accounting for parents' beliefs about the paternal role and the overall quality of the coparenting relationship, greater maternal encouragement was associated with higher parent-reported relative father involvement. Moreover, maternal encouragement mediated the association between coparenting quality and reported relative father involvement. With respect to fathers' observed behavior, fathers' beliefs and parents' perceptions of coparenting relationship quality were relevant only when mothers engaged in low levels of criticism and high levels of encouragement, respectively. These findings are consistent with the notion that mothers may shape father involvement through their roles as "gatekeepers."

Two news sources reported about a study that also seems to be interesting:

Kenney presented research she co-wrote at a meeting of the Population Association of America over the weekend. The study of 1,023 couples from 20 large cities in the USA found mothers were protective of their caregiving and educational engagement with the child but were less so for playtime activities that "were not considered threats to the mother's caregiving identity," the paper says. [...] Other gatekeeping research co-written by Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, an assistant professor of child development at Ohio State University in Columbus, is significant because it studied actual behaviors rather than just beliefs, and of the 97 couples participating, fathers were more involved in daily care of infants when they received active encouragement from the wife or partner. "This study provides perhaps the best evidence to date that the phenomenon of maternal gatekeeping exists and that, under some conditions, it may have the potential to affect fathering behavior," says the study, published last year in the Journal of Family Psychology.

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[F]athers' beliefs about how involved they should be in child care did not matter when mothers were highly critical of fathers' parenting. In other words, fathers didn't put their beliefs into practice when faced with a particularly judgmental mother.

"Mothers are in the driver's seat," said Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, co-author of the study and assistant professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University.[...]

"Mothers can be very encouraging to fathers, and open the gate to their involvement in child care, or be very critical, and close the gate.

"This is the first real evidence that mothers, through their behavior, act as gatekeepers by either fostering or curtailing how much fathers take part in caring for their baby."

Schoppe-Sullivan conducted the study with Elizabeth Cannon, a graduate student at Ohio State, along with Geoffrey Brown and Sarah Mangelsdorf of the University of Illinois, and Margaret Szewczyk Sokolowski. Their results appear in the June 2008 issue of the Journal of Family Psychology.

And on with more studies:

Maternal Gatekeeping: Do They See It The Way We Do? - Lauren E. Altenburger - 2012

Research on the importance of father-child relationships has increased because prior research has indicated that father engagement has a positive influence on the child’s social, behavioral, and psychological outcomes from infancy to adolescence (Pruett, Pruett, & Wong, 2009; Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid, & Bremberg, 2007). Higher levels of father engagement in child care have also produced positive effects on self-esteem in children and on the quality of the marital relationship (Pruett et al., 2009; Sarkadi et al., 2007). These discoveries have drawn attention to the external factors that encourage or discourage the father’s level of involvement in childrearing. Fathers are more likely to be positively engaged with their children when they have few symptoms of poor mental health, are securely attached to their own parents, communicate effectively with the child’s mother, and have more social support (Pruett et al., 2009). Research shows that one of the most significant influences on paternal quantity and quality of involvement in childrearing is the mother’s beliefs and behavior toward the father (Allen & Hawkins, 1999). The mother often acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ by controlling the father’s interaction with the child. Mothers may resist increased father involvement by attempting to exclude the father from child care, or support increased father involvement by encouraging fathers to become engaged in child care (Fagan & Barnett, 2003; Puhlman & Pasley, 2010). Specifically, maternal gatekeeping behavior is a set of conscious or unconscious behaviors the mother engages in that either support or discourage the father’s relationship with the child. [...]

In a study exploring predictors of father involvement during the first year of parenthood, researchers found that a variety of factors influence father involvement in dual-earner, working-class families. Mothers’ work hours and shift time were two characteristics that were central predictors of father involvement. Researchers found that parents who work opposite shifts are better able to share childcare responsibilities (Meteyer & Perry-Jenkins, 2010). Findings also indicated that the more hours mothers worked, the more highly involved fathers were in childcare, suggesting that when mothers work more hours they are more willing to accept the father’s help. Maternal gatekeeping was a significant predictor of father involvement at one year postpartum. The negative control gatekeepers engage in allows mothers to maintain a sense of “primacy” as mothers (Meteyer & Perry-Jenkins, 2010). [...]

Mothers high on gatekeeping were characterized by low self-esteem, a strong feminine gender orientation, and a prominent maternal identity. Gaunt also found that the stronger the mother’s religiosity, the fewer her work hours, the less importance she attached to her work, and the lower her income and education level, the more she tended to resist father’s participation in family work (2008).

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: Maternal Gatekeeping after Divorce - Marsha Kline Pruett, Lauren A. Arthur, Rachel Ebling - 2007

[T]he power of maternal gatekeeping within the family lies in large part in the consistently demonstrated dynamic that fathers' participation in their children's life is heavily impacted by maternal influences.18 Said another way, the father-child relationship is more highly connected to the quality of the co-parental relationship than is the mother-child relationship, which is more independent of the couple. 19 One suggested rationale for this triadic aspect of fathering includes the greater clarity of mothers' family responsibilities as compared to fathers', since fathers have a less clear "job description" in relation to parenting and family work 20 thus requiring negotiations about a fathers' role between partners. 21

There is much evidence that mothers actively facilitate and promote the father-child relationship. 22 In their exploration of the role of maternal attitudes on paternal involvement, Beitel and Parke23 found that when mothers perceived their partners as motivated to engage in child care responsibilities and, to a lesser extent, as competent to do so, fathers were more involved in childcare. Mothers may passively hinder father-child relationships by behaving in ways that impact how fathers feel about their paternal role. [...]

The importance of mothers' attitudes in gatekeeping is further evident from research showing that sixty to eighty percent of mothers do not want their husbands more involved in childrearing, as such involvement would change the balance of power in the marriage and the important role mothers ascribe to themselves. 25 It is important to note that these studies were conducted over a decade ago; women's and men's roles in family-related work are converging 26 as women's extensive involvement in the workforce requires a re-equilibration of family roles with men contributing more at home. [...]

Divorce can provide myriad opportunities for maternal gatekeeping, and the anger and conflict that often characterize the divorcing period often produces more restrictive gatekeeping. 33 More restrictive gatekeeping occurs in about one-quarter of the married couples that have been studied,34 and it occurs more often in divorced contexts even if the nonresidential fathers are as involved as those living with their children are. 5 It may occur even more often among non-married, separating couples, as these fathers report more obstacles to access posed by their ex-partners than do their married-but-divorcing counterparts. 36 [...]

Results from the few studies of gatekeeping with divorced populations converge on findings that mothers' support is key to father involvement after divorce, 39 and that his non-residential status along with her perceptions of his competence lead to more restrictive maternal gatekeeping. 40

Women in America or arguments for a council on men and boys

This is about the following report:

WOMEN IN AMERICA Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being - March 2011 - Prepared by U. S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration
and Executive Office of the President Office of Management and Budget

This report is kind of big thing not only because of the sheer size but also:

In cooperation with Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, National Center for Education Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics for White House Council on Women and Girls

White House Council on Women and Girl. Like my title states this is going to be an argument that a council for men and boys is also needed. (I am not saying there are no issues facing girls and women, there are many)

So I read through that report and copied the headlines (and sometimes further explanations as the headline in this context here can sometimes be misleading) for points a council for men and boys might also be interested in. Here we go:

While the populations of both men and women are aging, women continue to outnumber men at older ages.

Most adults live in households headed by married couples; single mother households are more common than single-father households. [Father's rights / divorce]

Women’s gains in educational attainment have significantly outpaced those of men over the last 40 years.

Female students score higher than males on reading assessments and lower than males on mathematics assessments. [...] The percentage of both boys and girls proficient
in math has increased significantly since 1990, although girls are still slightly less likely than boys to be proficient in math.

Higher percentages of women than men age 25–34 have earned a college degree.

More women than men have received a graduate education.

Higher percentages of women than men participate in adult education.

Unemployment rates for women have risen less than for men in recent recessions.

The above are fairly obvious, the next is a bit tricky.

In families where both husband and wife are employed, employed wives spend more time in household activities than do employed husbands. [...] On an average workday in 2009, employed married women spent 1.6 hours in household activities and an additional hour caring for household members. In contrast, employed married men spent nearly one hour in household activities and about 40 minutes caring for household members. [...] Employed married men spent more time in labor market work and related activities (including commuting) on an average workday in 2009 than did employed married women 8.8 hours and 7.6 hours, respectively.

Some math:
Employed wives: 1.6 + 1 + 7.6 = 10.2
Employed husbands: 1 + 0.67 + 8.8 = 10.47

It is the usual stuff, the headline makes it look like husbands do less than wives yet when you add up the numbers, there is almost equality. They also add the men have more leisure time statistic, but when you look at the graph, as women sleep more and do more other activities it seems to even out.

Women have longer life expectancy than men, but the gap is decreasing. [as if that is a bad thing]

More women than men report having a chronic medical condition. [...] Women report a higher prevalence of asthma, chronic bronchitis and emphysema, cancer, and arthritis. Men report a higher prevalence of heart disease and diabetes.

Females age 12 and older are more likely than males to report experiencing depression. [...] At all ages, females experience higher rates of depression than males. In any two-week period, 8 percent of women and girls report experiencing clinically significant depression, compared to 5 percent for men and boys. [Gap is not that big and I assume depression is underreported in men]

More than one-third of all women age 20 and older are obese. The proportions of women and men age 20 and older who are obese are similar.

The share of women age 18–64 without health insurance has increased. [...] Less than half of all women meet the Federal physical activity guidelines for aerobic activity. [...] Overall, 43 percent of women age 25 and older met the Federal aerobic physical activity guidelines in 2009, compared to 51 percent of
men. [Gap is not that big]

Many women do not receive specific recommended preventive care. [...] Only 53 percent of women age 50 and older have ever received a sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy. Men are somewhat more likely to report ever having these treatments (56 percent) than women in this age group. [...] Women age 50 and older are somewhat more
likely than men to have obtained an influenza immunization in the last year (53 percent compared to 49 percent) but the shares of women and men age 65 and older having ever received a pneumococcal immunization were similar. [...] Women age 18 and older are more likely to have had their blood cholesterol checked in the last 5 years than men (78 percent and 73 percent, respectively).

The share of women age 18–64 without health insurance has increased. [...] In 2009, 18 percent of nonelderly women (age 18–64) lacked health insurance, compared to 13 percent in 1984. For men, the percentage of uninsured rose from 16 percent to 24 percent.

One out of seven women age 18–64 has no usual source of health care. [...] Approximately 15 percent of women and 26 percent of men age 18–64 have no usual
source of health care.

Nonfatal violent crimes against women declined between 1993 and 2008. [...] The nonfatal violent victimization rate for women fell from 43 per 1,000 women in 1993
to 18 per 1,000 in 2008. During the same period, the rate of nonfatal violent victimization of men declined from 64 to 22 per 1,000 men.

Homicides of females declined between 1993 and 2008. [...] In 2008, 3,541 females and 12,731 males were victims of homicide.

The imprisonment rate for females has increased significantly. [...] The imprisonment rate for females quadrupled between 1985 and 2008, from 0.17 per 1,000
females to 0.68 per 1,000 females. The 2008 rate was much greater for males (9.52 per 1,000 men) than for females.

There are a whole lot of issues men and boys face. It is time to take a closer look at them.

Mate poaching...

Pretty interesting:

Noting that single women often complain that “all the good men are taken,” the psychologists (Melissa Burkley and Jessica Parker of Oklahoma State University) wondered if “this perception is really based on the fact that taken men are perceived as good.”

[...E]ach of the experimental subjects was told that he or she had been matched by a computer with a like-minded partner, and each was shown a photo of an attractive person of the opposite sex. (All the women saw the same photo, as did all the men.) Half of the subjects were told that their match was already romantically involved with someone else, while the other half were told that their match was unattached. Then the subjects were all asked how interested they were in their match.

To the men in the experiment, and to the women who were already in relationships, it didn’t make a significant difference whether their match was single or attached. But single women showed a distinct preference for mate poaching. When the man was described as unattached, 59 percent of the single women were interested in pursuing him. When that same man was described as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent were interested.

According to a recent poll, most women who engage in mate poaching do not think the attached status of the target played a role in their poaching decision, but our study shows this belief to be false. Single women in this study were significantly more interested in the target when he was attached. This may be because an attached man has demonstrated his ability to commit and in some ways his qualities have already been ‘‘pre-screened” by another woman.

There was also this study:

Are all the taken men good? An indirect examination of mate-choice copying in humans - Kevin W. Eva, Timothy J. Wood - 2006

Across many species, females are typically the more choosy of the 2 sexes because female-specific investment (e.g., gestation and lactation) constrains the number of offspring a female can produce, whereas the main constraint in this regard for males is simply access to females.2 As a result, poor mate choices harm a female's reproductive value to a greater extent than they do a male's. Evolutionary theory predicts that such pressures will lead females to rely on cues from their environment that can aid them in determining the reproductive value of a potential mate. One cue shown to be used by female Japanese quail and numerous other species is the choice behaviour of other females.3 If a female has deemed a male worthy of mating, that provides information to other females about the value of that male. Whether or not human females are sensitive to such social information (mate-choice copying) is, therefore, an interesting empirical question. [...]

Females were simply asked to rate the attractiveness of males who were presented in head-and-shoulder photographs. Each male was presented to half of the participants as “married” and to half as “single.” Analysis of covariance revealed that males were rated as more attractive when labelled “married,” thereby suggesting that human females are indeed sensitive to information provided by the choices of other females, despite the minimalist nature of the intervention used in this experiment.

Sentencing: Sex Offenders edition

Interesting study:

Female sex offenders receive lighter sentences for the same crimes than males says a study recently published in Feminist Criminology, a SAGE journal and the official journal of the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology.

Embry and Lyons looked at the sentences that male and female sex offenders received for specific sex offenses and found that even after the implementation of sentencing guidelines to ensure equality in sentencing, on average male sentences were between 6% and 31% longer than female sentences for the same or similar crimes.

"It appears as if the criminal justice system actually treats women more leniently than men," wrote Randa Embry and Phillip M. Lyons, Jr., authors of the study. [...] "This leads to the supposition that women, regardless of the departure from social and gender norms committed in concurrence with the offense for which they are being sentenced, continue to be viewed as individuals who should be protected by the justice system," wrote the researchers. "Obviously, as a social institution, the criminal justice system is reluctant to break those social norms and gender roles in response to atypical gendered behavior."

As I skimmed through the Original, which is

Sex-Based Sentencing: Sentencing Discrepancies Between Male and Female Sex Offenders - Randa Embry and Phillip M. Lyons, Jr. - Feminist Criminology - 2012 7: 146


As previously stated, the prevailing number of studies that address gender differences in sentencing overwhelmingly find women receive more lenient sentences (Blackwell, Holleran, & Finn, 1998; Curry et al., 2004; Daly & Bordt, 1995; Daly & Tonry, 1997; Farnsworth & Teske, 1995; Jeffries et al., 2003; Koons-Witt, 2002; Spohn & Beichner, 2000). Although research has shown that gender does impact sentencing decisions, further exploration has found these differences can be mediated by extralegal factors such as having children and family responsibilities (Koons-Witt, 2002). Koons-Witt found that after accounting for personal characteristics of offenders based on gender roles, such as responsibility for child care (having children), the impact of gender on sentencing decisions of whether or not to incarcerate is diminished. These findings suggest that the chivalry hypothesis does not apply to all women but to those who most closely follow stereotypical gender roles as a parent. This then indirectly may provide support for the selective chivalry hypothesis by way of harsher sentences for those women who do not take on typical gender roles. In an effort to replicate the findings of Koons-Witt’s study in Minnesota, sentencing decisions were evaluated in Ohio to identify possible changes in sentence disparity after implementation of determinate sentencing structures (Griffin & Wooldredge, 2006). Unlike the findings of Koons-Witt, this study found reductions in sentencing disparities after the guidelines were implemented. More important, Griffin and Wooldredge found no support for the chivalry hypothesis and focal concerns model when it comes to extralegal factors such as having a dependent child. No significant differences were found for those women being sentenced who had children versus those who did not have children.[...]

Even after the implementation of determinate sentencing, it appears judges are more apt to consider extralegal factors for women when making sentencing decisions (Williams, 1999). By examining adult felony case files in Florida, Williams observed that judges were more likely to consider only legally relevant factors such as criminal history or offense and case-based factors for men, whereas extralegal determinations were taken into consideration to determine penalties of female offenders, allowing a downward departure from sentencing guidelines put in place in the state of Florida.[...]

However, it can be argued that the most compelling case for the selective chivalry hypothesis or evil woman theory stems from the examination of more specific behaviors as they apply to traditional gender roles. Unfortunately, those studies that examine sentencing differences between male and female offenders have typically found little to no support for the theory (Farnsworth & Teske, 1995; Mustard, 2001; Rodriguez et al., 2006; Steffensmeier, Kramer, & Streifel, 1993).

[...]

When all variables, sex, sentence length, and offense category, were considered, a significant difference was recognized in sentence length, and mean sentence length for men was longer, indicating a harsher penalty for the same or similar offense. Standardized scores for length of sentence with regard to sex offenses in general showed a mean of 8.42 for men as opposed to 7.92 for women. In addition, those specific offenses, which found a significant difference in sentence length, rape, child sexual assault, and forcible sodomy, showed a mean standardized sentence length of 9.38, 7.88, and 9.04 for men, as opposed to 8.83, 7.41, and most notably, 6.23, respectively (Table 2). In no instance were women sentenced to longer or more severe sentences with regard to any sex offense.

Sexual Misconduct in Schools

From Study to Study. Toy Soldiers pointed me to an interesting article:

A 2004 report mandated by Congress estimated that 4.5 million, or 9.6 percent, of America’s public-school students are victims of educator sexual misconduct by the time they reach 12th grade. Of those cases, 30 percent are boys abused by women working in schools, according report author and Virginia Commonwealth University professor Charol Shakeshaft, the nation’s leading researcher in what she calls “educator sexual misconduct.”

That sounded somewhat similar to the numbers I have heard before to cite from a CDC source:

Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance - 2007 - Page 47 Table 11

Percentage of high school students who experienced dating violence and who were ever physically forced to have sexual intercourse
Male 11% raped 4.5%
Female 8.8% raped 11.3%

The report itself was pretty interesting, too:

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature - Charol Shakeshaft - 2004

Although I identified nearly 900 citations in the literature that discussed educator sexual misconduct in some format, there were only 14 U.S. and five Canadian or UK empirical studies on educator sexual misconduct. Of the U.S. studies, only one (Shakeshaft, 1994, 1995) received federal funding (U.S. Department of Education). None of these studies—either singly or as a group—answers all of the reasonable questions that parents, students, educators, and the public ask about educator sexual misconduct, and they certainly do not provide information at a level of reliability and validity appropriate to the gravity of these offenses. [...] Four studies include survey data from national samples, but only the American Association of University Women (AAUW) studies are based upon data from a representative national sample (AAUW, 1993; 2001; Cameron et al., 1986; Stein, Marshall, and Tropp, 1993; SESAME, 1997). [...] The AAUW Hostile Hallways surveys, administered to a nationwide sample of 8th to 11th-grade students in 1993 and again in 2000, are the only studies that provide reliable nationwide U.S. data on educator misconduct. The purpose of these two studies was not specifically to document educator sexual misconduct. Peer sexual harassment is the primary focus of the surveys and the reports. However, the data from these studies were subjected to a secondary reanalysis which focused only on educator sexual misconduct (Shakeshaft, 2003). [...] As a group, these studies present a wide range of estimates of the percentage of U.S. students subject to sexual misconduct by school staff and vary from 3.7 to 50.3 percent (Table 5). Because of its carefully drawn sample and survey methodology, the AAUW report that nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career presents the most accurate data available at this time.

Reading the above, I will focus on the AAUW studies.

Table 8. Sex of Offenders
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AAUW and Shakeshaft secondary analysis (2003)
Male: 57.2% Female: 42.8%

Cameron et al. (1985)
Male: 57% Female: 43%
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Table 9. Same-Sex Misconduct
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AAUW and Shakeshaft secondary analysis (2003)
Male-Male: 15.2% Female-Female: 13.1% Same Sex: 28.3%

Cameron et al. (1985)
Male-Male: 8.9% Female-Female: 8.9% Same Sex: 17.8%
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Table 11. Targets by Sex
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AAUW and Shakeshaft secondary analysis (2003)
Male: 44% Female: 56%

Cameron et al. (1985)
Male: 43% Female: 57%
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The AAUW study was also available online and gives us a lot of details:

Hostile Hallways: Bullying, Teasing, and Sexual Harassment in School - AAUW - 2001

Major Findings:

Significant numbers of students are afraid of being hurt or bothered in their school lives. [...] Girls and boys are almost equally likely to feel this way [...] Girls are more likely than boys to experience sexual harassment ever (83 percent vs. 79 percent) or often (30 percent vs. 24 percent).

Would You Complain to a School Employee If
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Another Student Harassed You? (% Saying Yes)
Boys: 29% Girls: 52%

a School Employee Harassed You? (% Saying Yes)
Boys: 67% Girls: 76%
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How Often Do You Experience Sexual Harassment?
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Often, occasionally, rarely:
Boys: 79% Girls: 83%

Often, occasionally:
Boys: 56% Girls: 63%

Often:
Boys: 24% Girls: 30%
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Personal Experiences of Nonphysical Harassment
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Target of sexual comments, jokes, gestures, or looks
Boys: 59% Girls: 73%

Target of sexual rumors:
Boys: 32% Girls: 39%

Target to be flashed or “mooned”:
Boys: 39% Girls: 32%

Being Called gay/lesbian:
Boys: 42% Girls: 29%

showed, gave, or left them sexual photographs,
illustrations, messages, or notes
Boys: 35% Girls: 28%
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Personal Experiences of Physical Harassment
-----------------------------------------------------
Touched, grabbed, or pinched in a sexual way
Boys: 42% Girls: 57%

Intentionally brushed up against in a sexual way
Boys: 42% Girls: 53%

Clothing pulled at in a sexual way
Boys: 28% Girls: 34%

Blocked or cornered in a sexual way
Boys: 23% Girls: 34%

Forced to kiss someone
Boys: 7% Girls: 7%

Clothes pulled down
Boys: 19% Girls: 12%

Forced them to do something sexual other than kissing
Boys: 12% Girls: 9%
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Who did you tell
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No one (Nonphysical Harassment)
Boys: 24% Girls: 17%

No one (Physical Harassment)
Boys: 27% Girls: 14%
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Judging by the above boys are not that rarely victims of sexual harassment, rape and educator sexual misconduct. Who would have thought? (Besides my educated readers of course)

Another wage gap tidbit....

How I hate it when an article does not give sources:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics looked at weekly wages instead of annual salaries, and determined that women earn 81 percent what men earn. That gap narrows to 86 cents on the dollar when hourly wages are examined.

And hourly wages among those with college degrees are at parity: The BLS figures show there is no gap between men and women.

So I looked up what the BLS had to say:

Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2010 - U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - July 2011

Women earned 81 percent of the median weekly earnings of their male counterparts [...] Sixty-two percent of women and 56 percent of men employed in wage and salary jobs were paid by the hour in 2010. Women who were paid hourly rates had median hourly earnings of $11.83, 86 percent of the median for men paid by the hour ($13.76). (See tables 9, 10, and 18–21.)

That is where the first 2 are from, even though I am not sure if "people who were paid hourly rates" = "when hourly wages are examined". The last fact, I could not find in the statistics. Table 9 tells us that the gap by people who were paid by the hour for "Some college or associate's degree" is 83.4% while for "Bachelor's degree and higher" it is 96.9% which also isn't exactly parity but close.

These other tidbits were also interesting:

Earnings differences between women and men were widest for Whites and for Asians. White women earned 81 percent as much as their male counterparts in 2010, while Asian women earned 83 percent as much as their male counterparts. By comparison, Hispanic women had earnings that were 91 percent of those of their male counterparts, while Black women earned 94 percent as much as Black men. (See tables 1 and 14.)

Among younger workers, the earnings differences between women and men were not as great. Women earned 91 percent of what men earned among workers 25 to 34 years old and 95 percent as much as men among 16- to 24-year-olds. (See table 1.)

Among full-time workers (that is, those working 35 hours or more per week in their sole or principal job), men were more likely than women to have a longer workweek. In 2010, 25 percent of men in full-time jobs worked 41 or more hours per week, while 14 percent of females in full-time jobs worked the same number of hours. Women were more likely than men to work 35 to 39 hours per week: 13 percent as opposed to 5 percent. A large majority of both male and female full-time workers had a 40-hour workweek; among these workers, women earned 87 percent as much as men earned. (See table 5.)

The solution to figure out the wage gap usually is to keep in mind that the main reason is often women, going out of the work force due to childbirth / taking care of family obligation. Which of course correlates with younger workers who have a lower gap and men that work more hours to support their family. I looked into the data and tried to figure out if marriage rate and race could explain the racial wage gap (the idea is that if a fewer percentage of black women are married than white women this might explain the gap) but this didn't really work out.

And finally a summary of two tables in the BLS report of items where the gap is lower than 10%

Table 1. Median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers, by selected characteristics, 2010 annual averages - Women's earnings as percent of men's

16 to 19 years                   94.6
20 to 24 years                   93.8
25 to 34 years                   90.8

Black or African American        92.1
Hispanic or Latino ethnicity     90.7

Never married                    97.2

Table 9. Median hourly earnings of wage and salary workers paid hourly rates, by selected characteristics, 2010 annual averages - Women's earnings as percent of men's

16 to 19 years                   97.8
20 to 24 years                   91.7
25 to 34 years                   91.9
65 years and older               93.8

Black or African American        92.1

Never married                    95.1

Bachelor's degree and higher     96.9

Start Strong, a teen dating violence survey....

...that slightly disappoints me as there is not breakdown in sex in their results. The last CDC study tell us that about 1/3 of rape victims in that age group are male as are more than half of dating violence victims. What the study tells us, is that there is plenty of violence:

The Start Strong evaluation is one of the few studies looking in-depth at dating violence behaviors and risk factors among 7th-grade students.

75% of students report ever having a boyfriend or girlfriend

More than 1 in 3 (37%) students surveyed report being a victim of psychological dating violence in the last 6 months

Nearly 1 in 6 (15%) students surveyed report being a victim of physical dating violence in the last 6 months

Nearly 1 in 3 (31%) students surveyed report being a victim of electronic dating aggression in the last 6 months

Nearly half (49%) report being a victim of sexual harassment in the past six months, such as being touched, grabbed, or pinched in a sexual way. or that someone made sexual jokes about you.

The reason I cite that study is the next statement where we get data on sex. Does that mean that sexual harassment / violence was roughly equal in their sample? Who knows. Anyhow:

Half of students strongly agreed that it was okay for a girl to hit her boyfriend under certain circumstances, such as a boy who makes his girlfriend jealous on purpose.

7% of students strongly agreed that it was okay for a boy to hit his girlfriend under certain circumstances, such as a girl who makes her boyfriend jealous on purpose.

Is it fair to say that violence against boys is normalized? Well maybe compared to violence against girls.

Maybe we get a better breakdown on the data once the other waves of date get analyzed. Here is the mainpage btw.