A New York Times series called "The New Gender Divide," which premiered yesterday, will attempt to shed light on, as the paper puts it "what has happened several decades after the womens movement began.

As has been mentioned ever so previously on this blog, the NYTs examinations of the effects of the womens movement usually come to a few predictable conclusions: one, that todays modern (read: white, straight, upper-middle class, and well-married) gal has no need for pesky discussions of feminisms merits, because shes too busy opting out of the workforce; two, that anything detrimental to men and boys is a direct result of the feminist movement and the overachieving women who populate/perpetuate it.

So its mildly and pleasantly surprising to find that "At Colleges, Women are Leaving Men in the Dust", the first piece in the series, is evenhanded and well-researched; unlike past "reporting"� on women and feminism, author Tamar Lewin relies on hard facts, rather than anecdotal evidence. And she acknowledges head-on the zero-sum game that almost always ensures that news of womens achievement, particularly in education, will invariably be used to invoke a "war on boys"

[S]ome scholars say the new emphasis on young men's problems "" recent magazine covers and talk shows describing a "boy crisis" " is misguided in a world where men still dominate the math-science axis, earn more money and wield more power than women.

"People keep asking me why this is such a hot topic, and I think it does go back to the ideas people carry in their heads," said Sara Mead, the author of a report for Education Sector, a Washington policy center, that concluded that boys, especially young ones, were making progress on many measures. It suggested that the heightened concern might in part reflect some people's nervousness about women's achievement.

"The idea that girls could be ahead is so shocking that they think it must be a crisis for boys," Ms. Mead said. "I'm troubled by this tone of crisis. Even if you control for the field they're in, boys right out of college make more money than girls, so at the end of the day, is it grades and honors that matter, or something else the boys may be doing?"

I and all women can only hope that the rest of the series will be as thoughtful. I have always advocated that women have always that women are at the very least more sophisticated if not superior to men, in a variety of ways and this is a small vindication of it. Just imagine if we had a matriarchal form of govenment instead of our current failure of a patriarchal one.

Fred Astaire was a prolific dancer, but Ginger Rogers matched him step for step backwards and wearing elegant high heels! That was in the days where there were little oppurtunities for women just imagine it in this day and age...is it possible that Ginger would have out-performed Fred? Who knows, you be the judge