Despite the heightened tensions caused by the teachers' strike earlier in the year, there really wasn't anything new about the Leaving Cert results of 2001. Every year seems to bring a best-ever set of results (causing an outbreak of anxiety as to whether or not marking is less rigorous than the year before) and every year the girls manage to outperform the boys (prompting a few pictures of studious-looking girls). Girls do better because girls are much more assiduous in their studies than boys.
This isn't an Irish phenomenon - the same is true in the UK. Following A-Level results which had the girls streets ahead of their male counterparts, a number of British educators have suggested that the current teaching structure unfairly favours girls and that boys are being disadvantaged by it. Boys can't concentrate for as long as girls, they told us, which means that they lose interest in what they are being taught.
Excuse me if I don't weep into my hanky for the boys who are possibly being disadvantaged by their short attention spans (although they show incredible powers of concentration when it comes to a whole 90 minutes of even the most mundane football match). Academic study is probably the only time in their entire lives that being male will be a disadvantage. Because, looking at this year's results, although a higher percentage of females achieved honours than males around the country, and although more males failed ordinary level subjects than females, once they leave the world of education and throw themselves into the world of commerce they'll find that it doesn't make all that much difference.
The wage gap between men and women may have narrowed over the past 30 years but, according to the Central Statistics Office's bulletin of December 1997, the ratio of male to female hourly earnings in all industries was 64 to 37. In other words, women were earning over 35 per cent less than men. So it doesn't look to me as though the boys are being disadvantaged in the value of their pay packet.
Even though women comprise about 40 per cent of the total workforce in Ireland, less than 3 per cent of the top executives are women. And where those women are in top executive positions, they're also earning less than their male counterparts. In fact a survey by Inbucon Ireland in 1998 showed that only 15 per cent of departmental heads or heads of functions in corporate enterprises were women. Male managing directors typically earned £80,442 while their female counterparts were on £60,133, a difference of 25 per cent. And at middle management levels males were earning £30,350 while the women were taking home £26,178.
Those girls who kept their minds on their studies and so accumulated enough points to do medicine this year might want to look at the 1996 Census, which showed that only 25 per cent of all consultants in Ireland are female, despite the fact that females make up around 60 per cent of undergraduates. Astonishingly, there seems to be little benefit in having a superior attention span and the ability for greater academic achievement when we discover that only 12 per cent of women comprise the three upper faculty ranks of professor, associate professor and senior lecturer in the medical faculties.
A few years ago, the Department of Finance produced a survey entitled "Equality of Opportunity in the Civil Service". It found that 82 per cent of clerical assistants were female. But the top job, Secretary, was held by 4 per cent of women. And in case you think that 4 per cent is quite good, it actually meant that just one woman held the job.
Much of the success of the economic boom over the last few years has been down to an increased participation of women in the workforce, but it hasn't meant that there has been equality between men and women in the workplace. Because the battlefield that is corporate Ireland and, in fact, the corporate world is still a male-dominated battlefield, and it's played by male-inspired rules. It's combative and aggressive, qualities possessed in abundance by those boys who don't want to spend more than 15 minutes studying physics.
Back when I was studying there was a lot of talk about how little the Leaving Cert prepared you for life. Then, as now, there were discussions about its relevance to your future career and its bias towards people who could retain and then regurgitate information. As it turned out, the subjects I took for my Leaving Cert had no real relevance at all as far as getting a job was concerned. But they did provide me with a thirst for more knowledge, an enjoyment of literature and an understanding of things outside the mere realm of earning a living.
When I discovered that male colleagues seemed to be on a faster track for promotion than many of my female counterparts, despite the fact that some of us had superior qualifications, I realised that results in themselves aren't everything. It's how you get on with things afterwards that counts. So far (attention spans of goldfish notwithstanding), men seem to be better at that than we are. That's something those hopeful girls who studied so assiduously should keep in mind when they finally put those results to work.
Mary Holland is on leave