Why do girls let the boys get away with it?

I still have to say, as someone who has tutored and mentored team development and team working for many years that the single biggest mistake made repetitively in teamwork. INCLUDING in graduate assessment centres is that the quieter, more seemingly uninvolved participants are the least engaged, least invested and leadt capable. I was forever coaching people in leadership roles to silence the talkers and ask for input from the quiet members or even work at strategies to get their input away from the group, and to focus on the significance of two or three word summaries from them and expand them. The LAST thing i would coach is encouraging introverts, observers, analysts and strategists to be called, or label themselves as 'lazy'. I would often explain at length how listening is as important an engagement as talking and illustrate often how talkers miss whats happening, even what they are actually saying, in the effort to be dominant. Trump is a great example.

One of the dangers of feminist parenting is to see dominance and leadership as the holy grail of social or work interactions. Good management and good femiinism is about much deeoer understanding in my view. Making the girls realise your DSs (godlike!) ability in the subject without them excluding him will be extremely difficult.

Be careful you arent teaching him to dumb down and hide himself just to get along.

Speak

I think OP meant the teacher and the group in question didn't see it as an issue.

However, as she doesn't want to bother the teacher with it, it's not clear how she knows this.

Of course people see it as an issue! But you are in a position to influence your son, not those girls. The one thing you could do is raise the issue of sexist group dynamics to the school and lobby for them to introduce some work on this area.

Because if he is white and straight, he is presumably thinking about himself challenging the behaviour of another white and/or straight person.

Here, it is his behaviour, and he is what? Presuming if it was terrible the other boy in the group would call it out just as he'd call out racism?

By racist, is he thinking of insults?

What if the group was 3 Asians, 2 Caucasians and the work pattern was the same? Would he challenge it then?

He would tackle racist and homophobic behaviour from others... Is he white and straight?

Is it really unacceptable to challenge sexism in schools these days?

I'd say of racism, homophobia and sexism, sexism is least likely to be challenged in general everywhere. And that's because so many women are people pleasers and raised to be from birth - as we see from the example in your OP. A lot of young women will immediately stamp on racism and homophobia, but laugh along with casual sexism to show they're not 'uptight'.

You really can't think of any reasons? And many students wouldn't challenge racist/homophobic stuff directly. It takes a fair amount of confidence to do that, particularly if the behaviour being challenged is seen to be tolerated.

The specific girls in this situation might not have felt confident enough, or felt it was too much hassle, etc etc. You can't influence those girls as you're not their parent or teacher. You can influence your son, and you can feed back to the teacher. It would be great if the girls could be encouraged to be more assertive, something the school could look into if you raise it perhaps.

I haven't read the full thread but perhaps the girls have learnt from their parents. How many women have to keep chasing up their husbands to do things? Perhaps the girls see the boys in this light and just gave them a simple job that doesn't really matter if it isn't completed. The boys attitude would somewhat support this theory.

I know so many women who do all the house work because nagging their partners for more hours than it would take to do it themselves isn't worth it.

Why is your son so lazy? Would you do nothing if your husband or colleagues "let" you get away it?

Did you let him get away with being such an entitled little chauvinist or did you tell him off?

I was a mature student, whenever we did group work myself and another woman (my friend) would basically do this (divide the work between the 2 of us giving the rest of the group little bits). The reason was we both left things to the last minute and didn't want an additional "deadline" from the rest of our group. We preferred doing the work in one of our homes with vodka to follow.

What this thread has made me notice is that most of the women we would group with would often be anxious about the unfair division and chase us constantly checking everything was okay. The men with grouped with never did, not once that I can remember.

I get feelings like that from time to time, Selkie.

I have a feeling growapear is not new round these parts, but has had a name change.

Grown man insulting a school girl, pear?

Stylish.

Perhaps boys are also keenly aware that they will be accused of taking over if the speak up?

Nothing in the OPs comments suggests that. She says that because the girls didn't actually give the boys directions on what to do, they don't feel they have to do anything. Girls generally won't have that attitude because they won't want to risk looking like dead weight.

But it's not like it's all disadvantage to the girls - they are working, researching, improving, learning, instead of vegging in front of YouTube. For A Levels that's not the end of the world, but it will be a very bad habit to carry through to degree level when self-discipline is very important.

You could tell him to at least offer to take on more work on the project. I doubt the parameters are so narrow that nothing extra could be added?

Well I was posting about a lot of what I've experienced but thanks for your sarcastic response.

I mean, what other explanation could there be ?

Oh, I'm sorry Amy. Boys are generally women hating entitled idiots who feel girls should take on menial tasks on their behalf. They are like this because they have no respect for girls and they think women's labour is for primarily for the benefit of men.

Was that better ?

It's quite a manipulative tactic to say "Oh, I wanted to say something, but I was afraid of how you'd react so I didn't say anything". Not sure I buy it. I'm sure there are individual boys too shy to speak up, and situations where that happens, but that is not what the OP is describing at all. It's not reticence if he maintains it's just not work he needs to do.

Not if they speak up in a sensible way that isn't accompanied by an unpleasant attitude, surely. It would be a shame to not do the right thing for fear of it being misinterpreted.