OT: “The End of Men”: Women dominating college/New Jobs, can’t find marriageable prospects

[equalizer]

Was asked about this provocative expose in the Atlantic (July 2010) that discusses the “End of Men”, so I took time out from my busy schedule drinking and rooting for the team to read it and pull out the main points for the guys.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/

Disclosure: Lest anyone get the wrong impression, let me disabuse anyone of the notion of any latent misogynistic thoughts here. If anything, just the idle rambling of an indolent misanthrope.

Nearly 60% of the bachelor degrees awarded in the USA this year were to females!
“Women now earn 60 percent of master’s degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees, and 42 percent of all M.B.A.s.
In 2003, a study by the economists Sandy Baum and Eban Goodstein found that among selective liberal-arts schools, being male raises the chance of college acceptance by 6.5 to 9 percentage points. (Colleges are using male quotas?!)

The well-paid lifetime union job has been disappearing for at least 30 years. Kansas City, for example, has shifted from steel manufacturing to pharmaceuticals and information technologies. “The economy isn’t as friendly to men as it once was,” says Jacqueline King, of the American Council on Education. “You would think men and women would go to these colleges at the same rate.” But they don’t.”

75% of the 8 million jobs lost were lost by men in the Great Recession of 2008-10. What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men? … what if the economics of the new era are better suited to women?

Earlier this year, for the first time in American history, the balance of the workforce tipped toward women, who now hold a majority of the nation’s jobs. women now hold 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs—up from 26.1 percent in 1980. They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45 percent of associates in law firms—and both those percentages are rising fast.

In 1970, women contributed 2 to 6 percent of the family income. Now the typical working wife brings home 42.2 percent, and four in 10 mothers—many of them single mothers—are the primary breadwinners in their families. In 1970, 84 percent of women ages 30 to 44 were married; now 60 percent are.

Men dominate just two of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most over the next decade: janitor and computer engineer. Women have everything else—nursing, home health assistance, child care, food preparation. Many of the new jobs, says Heather Boushey of the Center for American Progress, “replace the things that women used to do in the home for free.” None is especially high-paying. But the steady accumulation of these jobs adds up to an economy that, for the working class, has become more amenable to women than to men.

…the men, self-conscious about their diminished status, stand stiffly, their hands by their sides, as the women twirl away…. But Edin thinks the most compelling theory is that marriage has disappeared because women are setting the terms—and setting them too high for the men around them to reach. “I want that white-picket-fence dream,” one woman told Edin, and the men she knew just didn’t measure up, so she had become her own one-woman mother/father/nurturer/provider. The New York Times columnist Gail Collins recently wrote that the cougar phenomenon is beginning to look like it’s not about desperate women at all but about “desperate young American men who are latching on to an older woman who’s a good earner.”

(There may be at least one unexpected tangible societal good from the rise in females in management) : “Researchers have started looking into the relationship between testosterone and excessive risk, and wondering if groups of men, in some basic hormonal way, spur each other to make reckless decisions. The picture emerging is a mirror image of the traditional gender map: men and markets on the side of the irrational and overemotional, and women on the side of the cool and levelheaded.”
(Yeah, except for that little housing dream not shared by most men, would be happy in a 2 bd apt, while women generally seek the house with endless work to be done by the men).

I know the tough Piggington crowd will counter the “feminist feel good diatribe” of the author with obvious statement that men still dominate in the high paying industries while woman are gaining in low-paying service sector jobs. That may be true (yes, FLU), but you don’t think that likes of Meg Whitman and Carly won’t just outsource those pesky, overpaid male chauvinist high tech workers?
Emerging countries such as China and especially India are just entering the computer revolution. What is going to happen in 10 years when computers and high speed lines are ubiquitous in those emerging countries?

So is the lesson for our sons to find sugar ladies if Dr. House/Goldman Sachs path doesn’t work out?

PS
I pulled a few comments from readers below that are provide a counterpoint, though they may appear bitter, paranoid, delusional or misogynistic.

Dragnet20 : “A society with millions of rudderless and unproductive men unsocialized by marriage and children is an unstable society. These men will find ways to work and survive by means fair or foul. If you doubt this, please check the black urban underclass.”

From commenter Craig

“Women looked up and saw men at the top and said “We wants that”. What they did not do is look at the bottom where again men dominate. They only wanted to share in the nice, glitzy, glamorous work, not the grunge work that makes a society function. So women voted themselves a fascist police state and pushed men away at the mid level and now are coming to take over the top of the crust too. The end result of this for women to be “equal” is that women are to be equally represented in all the jobs THEY WANT while not being equally represented in places where they don’t. …Populate the prisons, sewers, and scary construction jobs and shut up that you can’t get promoted to management because that’s reserved so some woman can feel “equal” while making power points. Right. Perfect “fairness” there. …The women are demanding more cream from the cow so the men are doing much less and now there’s no milk for anyone. This makes modern women unhappy because then she can’t as effectively marry up. Boo hoo”

[no_such_reality]

As a reply, I point to the following: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/04/business/la-fi-phd-blues-20100604

Draw your own conclusions…

[no_such_reality]

As a reply, I point to the following: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/04/business/la-fi-phd-blues-20100604

Draw your own conclusions…

[no_such_reality]

As a reply, I point to the following: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/04/business/la-fi-phd-blues-20100604

Draw your own conclusions…

[no_such_reality]

As a reply, I point to the following: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/04/business/la-fi-phd-blues-20100604

Draw your own conclusions…

[no_such_reality]

As a reply, I point to the following: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/04/business/la-fi-phd-blues-20100604

Draw your own conclusions…

[34f3f3f]

Women do better as school, and are smarter. They have more developed communications skills, can multi-task better, and drink less beer. But men produce more geniuses. I say let ’em take over, and if they want to sexually abuse me, that’s OK too!

[34f3f3f]

Women do better as school, and are smarter. They have more developed communications skills, can multi-task better, and drink less beer. But men produce more geniuses. I say let ’em take over, and if they want to sexually abuse me, that’s OK too!

[34f3f3f]

Women do better as school, and are smarter. They have more developed communications skills, can multi-task better, and drink less beer. But men produce more geniuses. I say let ’em take over, and if they want to sexually abuse me, that’s OK too!

[34f3f3f]

Women do better as school, and are smarter. They have more developed communications skills, can multi-task better, and drink less beer. But men produce more geniuses. I say let ’em take over, and if they want to sexually abuse me, that’s OK too!

[34f3f3f]

Women do better as school, and are smarter. They have more developed communications skills, can multi-task better, and drink less beer. But men produce more geniuses. I say let ’em take over, and if they want to sexually abuse me, that’s OK too!

[bearishgurl]

[quote=no_such_reality]As a reply, I point to the following: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/04/business/la-fi-phd-blues-20100604

Draw your own conclusions…[/quote]

So true, no_such_reality. I’ve known so many people over the years with J.D.’s (whether or not they’ve passed the State Bar, they can’t fund their own malpractice ins) attempting to do the same work I am (I have a “certificate” – no bachelor degree). It’s sad, because they really DID put themselves in debt for school, many for well over $100K.

You can’t get the experience I have from school. It only comes from experience. CA law schools prepare you to take the bar exam in any state. They don’t teach you CA law, the CA Rules of Court, the SD “local” rules of court, or even Judge BLANK’s rules. This knowledge only comes from experience. The “trenches” is the only way to get it.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=no_such_reality]As a reply, I point to the following: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/04/business/la-fi-phd-blues-20100604

Draw your own conclusions…[/quote]

So true, no_such_reality. I’ve known so many people over the years with J.D.’s (whether or not they’ve passed the State Bar, they can’t fund their own malpractice ins) attempting to do the same work I am (I have a “certificate” – no bachelor degree). It’s sad, because they really DID put themselves in debt for school, many for well over $100K.

You can’t get the experience I have from school. It only comes from experience. CA law schools prepare you to take the bar exam in any state. They don’t teach you CA law, the CA Rules of Court, the SD “local” rules of court, or even Judge BLANK’s rules. This knowledge only comes from experience. The “trenches” is the only way to get it.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=no_such_reality]As a reply, I point to the following: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/04/business/la-fi-phd-blues-20100604

Draw your own conclusions…[/quote]

So true, no_such_reality. I’ve known so many people over the years with J.D.’s (whether or not they’ve passed the State Bar, they can’t fund their own malpractice ins) attempting to do the same work I am (I have a “certificate” – no bachelor degree). It’s sad, because they really DID put themselves in debt for school, many for well over $100K.

You can’t get the experience I have from school. It only comes from experience. CA law schools prepare you to take the bar exam in any state. They don’t teach you CA law, the CA Rules of Court, the SD “local” rules of court, or even Judge BLANK’s rules. This knowledge only comes from experience. The “trenches” is the only way to get it.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=no_such_reality]As a reply, I point to the following: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/04/business/la-fi-phd-blues-20100604

Draw your own conclusions…[/quote]

So true, no_such_reality. I’ve known so many people over the years with J.D.’s (whether or not they’ve passed the State Bar, they can’t fund their own malpractice ins) attempting to do the same work I am (I have a “certificate” – no bachelor degree). It’s sad, because they really DID put themselves in debt for school, many for well over $100K.

You can’t get the experience I have from school. It only comes from experience. CA law schools prepare you to take the bar exam in any state. They don’t teach you CA law, the CA Rules of Court, the SD “local” rules of court, or even Judge BLANK’s rules. This knowledge only comes from experience. The “trenches” is the only way to get it.

[Author]

Posts