The boy child crisis
Sharon Mathala - Lewanika Timothy | Thursday July 31, 2025 11:02
Societies power structure have traditionally been skewed to favour men, with the means of production, and the economic artefacts of society in favour of patriarchal norms of society that place men at the forefront, to the disadvantage of their female counterparts.
While in the past years, society has made progressive efforts to improve the conditions of the girl child, it is becoming strikingly clear thaT the boy child also remains in the margins of society catching hell like their female counterparts.
A recently published World Bank Gender Report has shed light on this growing crisis, revealing a string of alarming indicators that show boys struggling across multiple domains, ranging from education and health to labour and identity, as males go through different life cycles.
The report has also revealed that gender parity has largely been achieved in Botswana with the country making positive strides towards progressive efforts to bridge the gap between the genders.
However in the early years of childhood, a worrying trend begins to emerge, particularly in primary and secondary school enrolment, as boys lag behind girls in both retention and learning outcomes.
“While, on average, gender parity has been achieved or surpassed in gross enrolment at both primary and secondary school levels, in earlier grades boys begin lagging behind girls in both learning outcomes and retention, which then continues through the remaining years of schooling,” the report noted. “In upper years, girls and boys start dropping out of school for different reasons: boys are often pressured to engage in income generation, while high rates of adolescent pregnancy lead many girls to drop out of school.” This trend worsens over time, with boys performing worse across nearly all subjects and exhibiting higher dropout and repetition rates.
At the end of primary school, 78% of girls achieve a grade C or better compared to just 63% of boys, according to the report.
By the time students reach junior secondary, only 25% of boys attain a grade C or better, compared to 40% of girls. The major reason identified by the report for worsening conditions for the boy child were poverty.
“Boys generally perform worse on test scores and are more likely to repeat grades than girls. At secondary school, as dropout rates increase, gender dynamics start coming into focus more clearly, with adolescent pregnancy being a significant driver of girls’ dropout rates, while many boys, especially those from poor households, leave school to contribute to the family’s income,” the report noted
In Botswana most households are female-led, which may prompt the boy child to fill the missing father gap early, forcing many of them to leave school in a bid to support their families. These gaps reflect more than academic outcomes; they point to deeper social and psychological disengagement.
It was also identified that learning environments were hostile to males as compared to females. Boys are often labelled disruptive and subjected to harsher disciplinary measures like corporal punishment, which only further erodes their confidence and motivation to excel. Many eventually leave school altogether, pressured to contribute to household income, particularly in low-income families.
“Student and teacher perceptions of boys’ and girls’ aptitude for school tended to disfavour boys. “Participants explained that boys were more disruptive in class and subsequently subjected to harsher discipline (corporal punishment)”. “Boys in turn expressed less confidence and motivation to excel in school and reported that teachers favoured girls,” the study revealed
Unlike their female peers, whose school dropout is largely driven by adolescent pregnancy and regressive re-entry policies, boys are pushed out by a complex mix of poverty, underachievement, and societal expectations to “be providers”.
But the problem dates from way back: the study has identified that even from infancy, boys face structural disadvantages, with Botswana’s under five mortality rate for boys at 42.3 per 1,000 live births, significantly higher than the 35.1 for girls, and above the average for upper middle-income countries.
This early vulnerability is often invisible in gender policy debates, which tend to focus on female positive discrimination alone.
As the two genders progress from childhood and school and mature to the labour market, it has been found that men seem to hold the upper hand, but the foundation beneath them is eroding.
While women have made significant gains in tertiary education comprising 27.1% of gross enrolment compared to just 16.6% for men, men are increasingly excluded from the knowledge-led economy, especially in a job market where skills, qualifications, and innovation matter now more than ever.
Ironically, women with higher education levels still face wage discrimination and limited leadership roles, but the growing gap in educational attainment suggests that young men may soon face their own employment crisis, particularly as the informal sector becomes more precarious and competitive.
The World Bank report evidently shows that the challenges facing boys in Botswana are not incidental but rather systemic, and they are escalating. Yet policy responses remain gender-asymmetric, often failing to address the unique vulnerabilities of boys while attempting to uplift girls.