A year ago, employment prospects for men were bleak. The economy’s nosedive had affected a disproportionate number of men, eliminating millions of jobs in the finance, manufacturing, and construction sectors, all male-dominated areas. Meanwhile, demand for nurturing professions like nursing and childcare increased.
The respective decline and growth in male and female employment prompted fear that men may never bounce back. In “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin dissected the gender shift in employment and higher education:
What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men? For a long time, evolutionary psychologists have claimed that we are all imprinted with adaptive imperatives from a distant past: men are faster and stronger and hardwired to fight for scarce resources, and that shows up now as a drive to win on Wall Street; women are programmed to find good providers and to care for their offspring, and that is manifested in more-nurturing and more-flexible behavior, ordaining them to domesticity. This kind of thinking frames our sense of the natural order. But what if men and women were fulfilling not biological imperatives but social roles, based on what was more efficient throughout a long era of human history? What if that era has now come to an end? More to the point, what if the economics of the new era are better suited to women?
Rosin goes on to explain that men dominate only two of the 15 job categories (janitorial work and computer engineering) that researchers have projected to grow over the next 10 years. Women, however, dominate the other categories, including nursing, home health assistance, childcare, and food preparation.
But then 2010 happened, and men saw an uptick in employment as the manufacturing sector recovered. Women, comparatively, gained very few jobs last year.
In a new piece for Time, Rana Foroohar asks, “Is this the end of the mancession?” Not necessarily, the writer argues, while cautioning that the gains for men in 2010 don’t mean that women will now find themselves facing severe unemployment, too. The male-dominated workforce may have experienced a temporary upswing, but ultimately, women are more poised for long-term employment success:
The macro-economic trend lines throughout the world simply support more female employment. In many countries, including the U.S. and a number of emerging markets, women are better educated than men and hold more college degrees. They start businesses at a faster rate, and given that new business creates the majority of jobs in this country, female employers are in a good position to hire other women.
The updated numbers reflecting male gains in employment last year are encouraging. But they understate an important part of the bigger picture: Men didn’t gain those jobs in the more nurturing, projected-to-grow industries. They gained the jobs in areas where they’ve always dominated—manufacturing and construction. As Foroohar points out, construction and manufacturing work is cyclical, and the 2010 upturn isn’t a reliable predictor for future years. If men are going to resist employment trends, they’re going to have to stop resisting jobs more traditionally held by women. Rosin:
Many professions that started out as the province of men are now filled mostly with women—secretary and teacher come to mind. Yet I’m not aware of any that have gone the opposite way. Nursing schools have tried hard to recruit men in the past few years, with minimal success. Teaching schools, eager to recruit male role models, are having a similarly hard time. The range of acceptable masculine roles has changed comparatively little, and has perhaps even narrowed as men have shied away from some careers women have entered.
Whether it’s a result of gender stereotyping that says men don’t belong in nurturing and caregiving roles or a biological disadvantage to thrive in those nurturing roles, men should work to overcome these hang-ups and pursue employment that strays from traditionally masculine professions. That way men can work toward a more sustainable future, where their employment success and longevity aren’t overshadowed by that of women.
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Sociologists used to think that men in female-typed professions were discriminated against. However, they were shocked to find out that male nurses, social workers, librarians and elementary school teachers made more money and got more respect than their female counterparts. There’s a fascinating book, “Still a Man’s World: Men Who Do ‘Women’s’ Work.” The author analyzed enormous amounts of data and conducted numerous interviews and concluded that men in “female” professions are whisked on glass escalators.
Most men hate to admit it, but our culture does consider men superior to women, even when they do “women’s” work.
Childcare jobs are probably not an option:
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/seeing-all-men-as-predators/
“They start businesses at a faster rate, and given that new business creates the majority of jobs in this country, female employers are in a good position to hire other women.”
This appears to suggest that they are hiring other women just because they are women. Surely this is sexist and just as bad as if the roles were reversed…
To the author of this article, particularly this paragraph excerpt: “Whether it’s a result of gender stereotyping that says men don’t belong in nurturing and caregiving roles or a biological disadvantage to thrive in those nurturing roles, men should work to overcome these hang-ups and pursue employment that strays from traditionally masculine professions. That way men can work toward a more sustainable future, where their employment success and longevity aren’t overshadowed by that of women” I submit to you a rebuttal in the form of an article from the Guardian in the United Kingdom: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jun/19/gender.childprotection Summation: A man gives his… Read more »
Edit: Yes, it’s an old article from 2005. But still pertinent to the topic at hand.
This is politically correct nonsense though.
All men are no more suited to nurturing than all women are.
As others have pointed out, there is an extreme discrimination against men working with children – this was socially constructed by the politically correct feminist movement.
Women are refusing to work in lower order male dominated professions.
Whether it’s a result of gender stereotyping that says men don’t belong in nurturing and caregiving roles or a biological disadvantage to thrive in those nurturing roles, men should work to overcome these hang-ups and pursue employment that strays from traditionally masculine professions. I understand that men have to get into other fields but this sounds like the only reason men aren’t a larger presence in caregiving or nuturing roles is because men themselves avoid them. This is just as untrue as saying the only reason women aren’t a larger presence in engineering is because they avoid it. In fact… Read more »
They didn’t merely limit them. They outright forbade men from working in the daycare, claiming they wanted to prevent child sexual assault as much as possible. Give me a break!
I do agree with the comments that this article makes it sound like men are the reason behind their lack of employment when the truth is, companies and organizations are not making much of an effort to recruit them. It reminds me of how feminists say that feminism is good for men because it encourages them to be more open and in touch with their feelings, then turn around and call them pussies for opening up or telling them that they need to man up and grow a pair. I know plenty of guys who would teach, or become nurses… Read more »
Exactly. It’s incentives. There are hardly any incentives for men to work in those fields, just as there are hardly any incentives for women to work in jobs deemed dangerous.
I’m not exactly a diehard union man, but I would note that most of the job growth in “feminine” work areas is in jobs without any collective bargaining or virtually no history of any organized labor representation. (Teachers would be the big exception here.) These are jobs often with little job security, no unions, limited benefits, etc. Many men looking for “traditionally male” fields are looking for solid union jobs, which are a decreasing percentage of the workforce. Part of this supposedly new gendered employment trend is a much older trend that has been unfortunate for both men and women… Read more »
P.S. This may be just an unfounded sexist stereotype, but I have the sense that if I wanted to hire obedient “good workers” who would be less likely to rock the boat, less likely to unionize, less likely to ask for a raise, less likely to go over my head, less likely to complain when I piled on extra work, I would hire women over men. I am NOT saying that as a misandrist or feminist comment. If women are willing to put up with more crap on a job than men are (or are forced to put up with… Read more »
I not only work at a unionized hotel job, I’ve also worked with and for unions for many years. There’s something to what you say. It can be harder to convince women that any particular organizing drive has a chance to succeed. If you’ve got kids and there are only so many hotels, motels and family-style restaurants in your area, you may be less likely to sign that authorization card. But sadly, there seems to be a new form of resistance to unionization afoot. More opportunity for women means more women identify with the boss, particularly younger women. I live… Read more »
Wait a minute. Most new union members these days are women. In my experience, most men are very anti-union and several women are very pro-union. However, many of them have had bad experiences with male chauvinistic union men.
Perhaps Women should attempt to engage in more “Masculine” jobs, to keep men out of the Gutter, but look at the statistics the twenty LOWEST paying jobs in the states are all Male Dominated, because of the Glass basement, the jobs that are so utterly bad/risky that Women refuse to engage in them, we don’t need to Feminise they need to Masculise and we’ll readdress the balance when we are no longer being forced into the gutter just to maintain our employment.
It has to do with incentives, sorry. Of course no one wants to work low-paying jobs. If you could work a high-paying job, why not go for it? Women are going for high-paying jobs. There are far more incentives with high-paying jobs than low-paying jobs. Because men, whether through stereotyping or what, don’t want to bother with jobs like nursing or teaching grade schools or daycare, they’re the ones likely working those basement-level jobs. If women can get high-paying jobs, they’re going to get high-paying jobs. The same with men. Since, statistically speaking, more women on average are graduating with… Read more »
Amber- “Because men, whether through stereotyping or what, don’t want to bother with jobs like nursing or teaching grade schools or daycare, they’re the ones likely working those basement-level jobs.” The work environment at most schools is so thoroughly anti-male and politically correct that men are literally afraid to apply for fear of being charged at some point in their careers with a sexual harassment claim. Thanks to radical feminism, which dehumanizes men and paints all males as potential rapists, a male who is a grade school teacher is as rare as a dodo bird. A female teacher could hug… Read more »
Sure. Try being a guy and applying to a daycare. Or even better, starting a home daycare. I believe there have been articles on this very topic at the GMP and elsewhere recently. Some women were not shy about stating—in no uncertain terms—they would not hire a man or send their kids to a place to be cared for by a man. Even though they admitted the men were qualified and seemed like good candidates, they gave the job to a woman. It’s just important to note that men can start signing up for these “nurturing” jobs, but they’re not… Read more »
I agree. If there are “hang-ups” that are in the way of men finding employment, it’s not all internal male hang-ups about working at “feminine” jobs. This article seems to suggest that the employers themselves don’t really care whether men or women work there, but men are self-selecting themselves out of a job prospect. In some cases, that argument sounds a bit like blaming the person being discriminated against. I’m uncomfortable with that argument, for the same reason that I would be uncomfortable only blaming women for being under-represented in some fields. (By this same logic, women don’t get to… Read more »