Summary: A trend goes mainstream when it appears on the cover of the major weekly news magazines. So it is with the end of men. It’s a trend long in the making, now visible to all who care to see. But seeing the past tells us little about the future. What’s the effect of this trend on society? How will men respond to this new challenge? {2nd of 2 posts today.}
They talk about ‘a woman’s sphere’
As though it has a limit;
There’s not a spot on sea or shore,
In sanctum, office, shop or store,
Without a woman in it.
— Anonymous, from Jennie Day Haines’ Sovereign Woman Versus Mere Man(1905).
“The weaker sex”
The Economist, 30 May 2015.
AT FIRST glance the patriarchy appears to be thriving. More than 90% of presidents and prime ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate bosses. Men dominate finance, technology, films, sports, music and even stand-up comedy. In much of the world they still enjoy social and legal privileges simply because they have a Y chromosome.
Yet there is plenty of cause for concern. Men cluster at the bottom as well as the top. They are far more likely than women to be jailed, estranged from their children, or to kill themselves. They earn fewer university degrees than women. Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to flunk basic maths, reading and science entirely.
One group in particular is suffering (see article). Poorly educated men in rich countries have had difficulty coping with the enormous changes in the labour market and the home over the past half-century. As technology and trade have devalued brawn, less-educated men have struggled to find a role in the workplace.
Women, on the other hand, are surging into expanding sectors such as health care and education, helped by their superior skills. As education has become more important, boys have also fallen behind girls in school (except at the very top). Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects. …
This leader and the article tell the simple truth.
From my April post
Women have won the gender revolution.
In 2009 I wrote a series about the coming gender role reversal — women on top of men (links below). There were also others seeing this coming. This insight went mainstream with “The End of Men” by Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic of 8 June 2010:
Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way — and its vast cultural consequences.
The more interesting fact is that this was seen first on the street — the wisdom of crowds at work (emphasis added):
… In the ’90s, when {biologist Ronald Ericsson} looked into the numbers for the two dozen or so clinics that use his process {sex selection}, he discovered, to his surprise, that couples were requesting more girls than boys, a gap that has persisted … In some clinics the ratio is now as high as 2 to 1. … A newer method for sperm selection, called MicroSort, {has} girl requests … at about 75%.
… “It’s the women who are driving all the decisions,” he says — a change the MicroSort spokespeople I met with also mentioned. At first, Ericsson says, women who called his clinics would apologize and shyly explain that they already had two boys. “Now they just call and [say] outright, ‘I want a girl.’ These mothers look at their lives and think their daughters will have a bright future their mother and grandmother didn’t have, brighter than their sons, even, so why wouldn’t you choose a girl?”
Her article is well-stocked with data and logic, which I will not repeat here. Read it. Better yet read her book The End of Men: And the Rise of Women
The silver lining
“Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.”
— Attributed to General George Patton.
The Economist has a history of boldly extrapolating trends at the moment they change. As with their famous 4 March 1999 cover story announcing that oil — then $10/barrel — was going to $5. That prediction marked the the absolute low for oil prices.
Perhaps men will rise to the new challenge offered by women.
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about women and gender issues, especially these about the coming reversal of roles:
- Women dominating the ranks of college graduates – What’s the effect on America?
- A better answer to “why women outperform men in college?”
- The feminist revolutionaries have won. Insurgents have arisen to challenge the new order. As always, they’re outlaws.
- The revolution in gender roles reshapes society in ways too disturbing to see.
- A look ahead at the New America, after the gender wars.
- Books to help us see the strange new world following the revolution in gender roles.
- Women have won the gender revolution.