The Atlantic recently ran an article about how the US economy is biased against men. My response? Please, please stop helping. You’re making the rest of us look bad.
It’s ridiculous to say “there are many programs to help women succeed” without saying why there are many programs to help women succeed: because for hundreds of years women have been systematically discriminated against, and in many occupations they still haven’t reached parity. It’s not like “if we didn’t have programs for girls in science, everything would be equal and awesome,” it’s like “if we didn’t have programs for girls in science, we would have even fewer female scientists.” That is a non-optimal situation.
Yes, there are careers in which men are far less likely to succeed, just like there are careers in which women are far less likely to succeed. But you know what the solution here is? Start programs to encourage boys to become home health aids, or nurses, or elementary-school teachers. Don’t get rid of the programs encouraging girls to go into business or science!
And, yes, men have higher unemployment. That’s because the fields men tend to work in, like construction and manufacturing, tend to go up during booms and down during recessions; in particular, construction was very hard-hit by the economic crisis and the housing bubble. Women are more likely to work in fields like healthcare and childcare and basically anything with “care” in the name, which are relatively resistant to recessions. You are never going to see a Newsweek cover article about The Babysitting Boom, but on the other hand kids will still need to be babysat in basically any conceivable situation.
Nemko also attempts to explain away the gender wage gap. He cites that favorite study of wage-gap denialists– the one that shows that childless women under 30 make more than men. Yes, if you leave out children, one of the major causes of the gender wage gap, there’s not going to be a gender wage gap. Shocker. And not only are childless women under 30 a tiny percentage of women, but they’re also much more educated than men are. Maybe, the same way men just happen to work more dangerous jobs than women, and they just happen to prioritize their children lower than women do, women just happen to get more education. See! No sexism! Everything is just happening according to the natural consequences of the people’s actions!
Of course, that argument is obviously fallacious. What you have to ask is why are men working more dangerous jobs, why are men prioritizing their children less, and why are women getting more education? And when you ask those questions, you have to consider that growing up in a society that deeply emphasizes the gender binary and shames anyone who doesn’t conform to it might possibly have something to do with this whole “men = dangerous job, men = children at lower priority, women = more education” thing. That is, the cause of the gender wage gap in either direction? Might just be sexism.
His theory presents a few other problems as well. First, there’s a significant difference between men’s and women’s wages, even controlling for occupation, education, experience, hours worked, age, marital status, children, etc. Second, the men working dangerous jobs are not necessarily the men getting paid huge sums; the argument that fishermen are likely to die so therefore CEOs should make millions is… well, it’s certainly an interesting argument, I’ll give it that. Third, it takes a certain great mind to argue “women make less money because they prefer shopping to taking advanced technical courses” when women are getting more education and you’re opposed to programs to get women into those aforementioned technical courses.
And now we find out that on-site child care, parental leave, programs to get parents back into the workforce, and policies that let parents leave early to take their kids out of school are all discriminatory against men. Because… men aren’t parents? Do humans reproduce via parthenogenesis and I had no idea? The second you want to see your kid’s soccer game you instantly switch from a man to a trans woman? What? I mean, yes, men are less likely to take advantage of these programs than women, but that doesn’t mean that these programs are biased against men, it means that sexism exists and is still perpetrating its Men = Breadwinner Woman = Housekeeper nonsense. The solution is not to end parental leave, it’s to get more men to take it!
Not content with merely making very stupid arguments, in the last few paragraphs of his article Nemko proceeds to perpetrate two anti-male sexist tropes himself.
The workplace cultural practices more often preferred by men have largely been replaced by approaches more often preferred by women. Individual initiative is now usually deemed inferior to teamwork, competition often replaced by collaboration, “push through to get the job done” with “process feelings,” decision-making by leader with decision-making by committee. Men are more likely than women to throw all of themselves into work than to demand worklife balance, for which they are often dubbed with pathologizing monikers such as “workaholic” and “unable to relax” rather than “heroic” for being so contributory, even if it costs them their life. Men die 5.2 years earlier than women, a major cause being stress-related illnesses such as heart attack and stroke.
…And of course the idea that men are all about the individual initiative, competition, pushing through to get the job done, leadership, and looking down upon worklife balance as if it’s for pussies bears absolutely no relation to the fact that men are more likely to get many stress-related illnesses. Nope. That’s crazy talk.
As you know, so many young men are often back living with their parents, often stoned and/or playing shoot-em-up video games, while the young women are launching their career.
Oh, it’s the “man up!” trope! I haven’t seen you for AGES, “man up!” trope! I have to admit, part of the reason I find this hilarious is because I am living with my parents at home and not working this summer (although I’m straightedge and prefer fantasy novels to video games), and yet I have a vagina, boobs, and a perfectly ordinary female hormone profile. Do we actually have any evidence that boys are more likely to live with their parents than women, or is it just “find three anecdotes and call it a night” time?
Are there ways in which American society is biased against men? Of course! Some of the things he talks about are legitimate issues, like the high rate of workplace injuries for men and the increased likelihood of women to graduate from college. But mixing it up with incorrect arguments and rank misandry is hardly going to help anyone.
P.S. The reason you didn’t get many results for “Take Your Daughter and Son to Work Day” is because it’s usually called “Take Your Child To Work Day” (which has a much more comparable 651,000 hits vs. 777,000, and besides much of the difference can be attributed to Take Your Daughter To Work Day being around longer). Christ.
About ozyfrantz
Start from a conclusion, work backwards to beat some evidence to fit it. Perhaps I’m naive, but I sort of expected better of the Atlantic.
Did you just discover the Atlantic then? It’s kind of a middlebrow Daily Mail and this is standard fare.
Working backwards is a pretty standard method for proof writing in some areas of mathematical analysis. It’s simple really, start with some basic fact such as “(x+1)^2 > 0″ for all x in the reals, then end with “the gender wage gap is an artifact of personal choice, which is the unassailable measure of what is right and wrong and renders all other interesting questions moot and pointless.”
Scratch work left to the reader of course :-p.
For me The Atlantic lost me with their “End of Men” article. After that I just couldn’t take them seriously.
“It’s simple really, start with some basic fact such as “(x+1)^2 > 0″ for all x in the reals,”
This is not true for x = -1.
Oh, the coding of these comments edits out fake html. My above post was made with full awareness of how pointlessly pedantic it was.
Yeah, I thought “greater than or equal to” but only typed “greater than” :-/.
My life for an edit button.
In all seriousness good catch. My faith in humanity’s ability to comprehend math just went up
.
There’s nothing wrong with starting from a conclusion and then proving or disproving it.
What is fallacious, however, is to start with an assumption and draw conclusions from it and claim they are anything other than assumptions. In general, anything that is deduced from an assumption is itself an assumption.
The author of this post does exactly that. He/She assumes that men and women would make the same choices if their circumstances where equal. Most of his/her statements rest upon that assumption.
The appropriate thing to do would have been to say outright that this is the assumption you’re working with.
Chances are high that the assumption is false given the current understanding of male/female behaviour. Here is some reasoning for that:
1) Men and women in the same environment have significantly different hormone levels
2) Hormone levels strongly influence people’s behaviour and coices
Conclusion:
Men and women will, on average, behave differently and make different choices under the same circumstances.
This is a great article, Ozy. This part especially bears repeating:
What you have to ask is why are men working more dangerous jobs, why are men prioritizing their children less, and why are women getting more education? And when you ask those questions, you have to consider that growing up in a society that deeply emphasizes the gender binary and shames anyone who doesn’t conform to it might possibly have something to do with this whole “men = dangerous job, men = children at lower priority, women = more education” thing. That is, the cause of the gender wage gap in either direction? Might just be sexism.
The idea that women should do most of the childcare needs to die, and so does that idea that men should sacrifice everything for their jobs.
“And now we find out that on-site child care, parental leave, programs to get parents back into the workforce, and policies that let parents leave early to take their kids out of school are all discriminatory against men. Because… men aren’t parents?”
That assumes a two parent traditional family. There is a bias against men in family court, but even if the sexism of family court is addressed, women often times reproduce without men via sperm donation. Some men may also be resentful that women have the added option of abortion (granted it’s not a perfect option, but it is there). That’s not to say that these programs/laws are not desirable, but don’t assume that the disparity of use is simply men’s choice or men taking a lesser role in parenting.
Right you are John Anderson! While all these Family Leave type programs might be ‘Gender Nutreal’ in theory,reality is a little different. The soceity we live in demans 2 basic things of men if they are to be considered ‘Good Men’, PROTECT and PROVIDE! Men are still judged by what they do for a living (when your introduced to someone at a social gathering ,”This is so and so and he’s in … Fill in the occupation. And how much they make doing whatever they do (You should see their vacation home!) The pressure is always on to PROTECT and PROVIDE!
Ozy, while I agree with many of the positions you mention in your article, you make a number of incorrect arguments yourself here.
Actually, no, there isn’t. The most comprehensive study of gender and income — the CONSAD study — found that women make a minimum of 93% to 95% of what men make once you control for all the factors involved. Now, it’s very important to be clear about what they’re saying. They’re NOT saying that women make ‘only’ 93% to 95% of what men make. They’re saying that all but a small fraction of the difference in men’s and women’s wages can be explained by factors other than the gender of the employee. The remainder is unexplained and is, in fact, unexplainable statistically because the combination of longitudinal and latitudinal data does not exist which would allow for more precise measurement. (They actually found that, by one approach, women made more than men when you control for all the factors, but discounted this because that approach incorporated overlapping variables.) In short, we don’t know — can’t know — whether women as a group make 93%, 95%, or 107% of what men of the same experience and qualifications make.
Now, I completely agree that we should structure jobs so that everyone can more flexibly take care of dependents (whether those dependents are children, parents, or others). I also appreciate your acknowledging that sexism against men may be driving some of the different career occupation preferences of men and women. And I strongly agree that no one should be marginalized in a career path just because of their gender. But I would not be so quick as you to discount the possibility that one powerful reason promoting different gender distributions in different careers may in fact be the preferences of the people involved in those careers.
I talk a little more about this here among other places.
OK, the only reason “Take your daughter to work day” yields more results on google than “Take your daughter and son to work day” is because “take your daughter to work day” has less WORDS. How can this guy not know how search engines work?
No, it’s because (in my school district at least)’ take your Daughter to work’ day has been around for almost 20 years while ‘Take your CHILD to work’ day has been around for 5 years or so. When my son was in High School, even though it had just become ‘Take your child to work day’, I was told that he would be charged with an absence if I did that. Only Females were given permission (not charged with an absence).
1. This is why i think more than ever we need a new movement possibly with a new name. As it stands guys who notice the ways sexism hurts men have few options. They can learn about gender studies and feminism, where they are often greeted with suspicion or outright scorn. Once there, they’re confronted with all the negative things men have done. I know you’re not like this, Ozy, but feminists as a whole do not have a good track record on hearing out mens issues (of course you know it, its in the name of your blog!)
The other options for men are to join the MRM or fall back on traditionalism whether religious (Rick Warren et al) or secular (Maxm/SpikeTV/whatever).
2. I think that men are in a stage women were in 40 years ago. People snicker at “consciousness raising”, but it served a purpose. It wasn’t that women were oblivious to their problems, it was that they couldn’t name their source. The mythopoetic mens movement tried something like this, but they put too much blame on feminism and practiced their own kind of essentialism.
I think that the fact that there is a lot of pushback on men who challenge this shows that there is something there, because thats what the Second Wave feminists were met with: “man up” is the new “go back to the kitchen.” this comes from traditional men, but there is also some female chauvinism at work.
3.i think that the problem many men have with remedies for sexism in the workplace (full disclosure: I have struggled with this a lot) is that a) the redress of imbalances seem to be permanent and b) they feel, rightly or wrongly, like they are carrying the burden for something they had nothing to do with. (it also doesn’t help that when men are in traditional female jobs they get pushback from all sides. Male nurses are either effeminate or abuse patients, and male schoolteachers are not to be trusted with our kids. This is something that many feminists and traditionalists agree upon.)
I know this is off topic but I don’t want anyone’s kids coming to work. Sons or daughters. It’s disruptive. I’m there to get my work done, not to deal with a bunch of other people ‘s kids. That is all. Now get off my lawn!
I don’t think it’s off topic. The topic is work, right? What are you showing oyur child about the world of work when everybody brings their kids ot work on the same day and it makes the place look like soem kind of aged-out daycare center. it’s unfiar to the kids and hard on the co-workers.
Sarah: that reminds me of one of my all time favorite episodes of Arrested Development.
I really liked your piece, Ozy, but something made me grumble:
“And not only are childless women under 30 a tiny percentage of women, but they’re also much more educated than men are. Maybe, the same way men just happen to work more dangerous jobs than women, and they just happen to prioritize their children lower than women do, women just happen to get more education. See! No sexism! Everything is just happening according to the natural consequences of the people’s actions!
Of course, that argument is obviously fallacious. What you have to ask is why are men working more dangerous jobs, why are men prioritizing their children less, and why are women getting more education?
”
It’s not fair to say men are prioritizing their children less than women are. Children need to eat, be clothed, and be sheltered. Men often work long hours at jobs they don’t want for their children, all the while feeling the pain that comes with missing a child’s developmental milestones. That bit really didn’t make sense to me at all.
Well said, being the primary earner is just as needed and important as being the primary carer.
“It’s not fair to say men are prioritizing their children less than women are. Children need to eat, be clothed, and be sheltered. Men often work long hours at jobs they don’t want for their children.”
In the standard narrative “prioritizing your childen” translates to being the one who stays home with them. It’s gynonormative. Gynonormativity as a barrier to men doing more direct childcare and less indirect – working long hours – takes the form of mommy-blocking, the suspicion of pedophilia, the Real Man discourse and othr things we can all name. Even when it’s men insisting that other men work those long hours or be replaced, that is gynonormative too with respect to rasiing children.
“Nemko also attempts to explain away the gender wage gap. He cites that favorite study of wage-gap denialists– the one that shows that childless women under 30 make more than men. Yes, if you leave out children, one of the major causes of the gender wage gap, there’s not going to be a gender wage gap. Shocker. And not only are childless women under 30 a tiny percentage of women, but they’re also much more educated than men are. Maybe, the same way men just happen to work more dangerous jobs than women, and they just happen to prioritize their children lower than women do, women just happen to get more education. See! No sexism! Everything is just happening according to the natural consequences of the people’s actions!”
I haven’t read the article you’re talking about, but I think those points are important ones to make. If the big decider in wage difference is whether or not the person in question has children and whether or not they’re their primary carer then it does contradict the assumption that it’s actually the product of a sexist glass ceiling.
If women earned less than men despite working the same hours, in the same field and taking the same amount of time off then, yes, the answer might be positive discrimination or something similar. As it stands, the answer is to encourage men and women to consider roles they might not have before. For instance there’s an excellant law in Sweden which provides tax breaks to couples who take equal parental leave following birth.
It’s a very important conclusion to come to and shouldn’t be dismissed.
Google results…
Take Your Daughter To Work Day…782,000
Take Your Son To Work Day…38,000
“Well said, being the primary earner is just as needed and important as being the primary carer.”
This would mean reinforcing traditional family patterns and imposing traditional roles on men and women. Is this what the MRM wants? Is this why feminism is so evil and feminists are so nasty? Because they demand that tasks are split, because they threaten the man’s role as provider/protector?
What is wrong with propagating a system where men and women can take an equal share in child care and being providers? I have a lot of family and friends in northern Europe (where I come from) and the ones where both parents take parental leaves, where both partners work part-time and share work AND child care tasks are very happy with their life. The fathers are able to have much better bonds with their kids and I haven’t heard any of them complain about that. My female friends/family also are much more balanced because they are less frustrated and happier because they also contribute to the household income.
My uncle encouraged my aunt to go back to work full-time because for him it was a burden to be the sole provider and he once said that since they both earn the family income together he is less stressed, sleeps better and their family life improved so much.