If boys’ schools had adopted a non cane policy in similar numbers as girls’ schools did, it may have shown boys, just as responsive to other forms of punishment similar to girls’ schools where the cane was absent. Co-ed schools using CP might have drawn on a positive comparison for boys, reducing number of canings for boys significantly in number to those received by girls.
A few decades back, the timing may have varied a bit in different countries, before women`s liberation and effective birth control, many people considered boys and girls almost as different species. I can recall no objections to the cane being for boys only when I was in high school. Boys were far naughtier and only they committed the offences that were punished by caning. The top scholars and high achievers were boys. In my last year at high school there was only one girl in the class. She went on to become a mathematician.
