[View the story "The 'end of men'" on Storify ]The 'end of men' Arguing for a new era of matriarchy. Storified by The Stream · Wed, Oct 10 2012 09:15:10
In September, Hanna Rosin released a book titled "The End of Men: And the Rise of Women", a follow-up to her 2010 Atlantic
article of the same title. Both are excerpted below:
Man has been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. But for the first time in human history, that is changing—and with shocking speed. Cultural and economic changes always reinforce each other.The End of Men - Hanna Rosin - The Atlantic
In the past, men derived their advantage largely from size and strength, but the postindustrial economy is indifferent to brawn. A service and information economy rewards precisely the opposite qualities— the ones that can’t be easily replaced by a machine. These attributes— social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus— are, at a minimum, not predominantly the province of men. In fact, they seem to come more easily to womenExcerpt - Hanna Rosin
It may be happening slowly and unevenly, but it’s unmistakably happening: The modern economy is becoming a place where women hold the cards.Excerpt - Hanna Rosin
Rosin goes on to provide examples of the ascent of women as evidence of the 'end of men'. The number of females in dual-earning households who earn more than their male spouse has risen to near 30 per cent. As the graph below from the US Department of Education shows, women also lead men in higher education:
US Department of EducationAJstream
This graphic from
Visual.ly uses data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the US Department of Labor to project future college enrollment:
Visual.lyAJstream
Rosin
argues that both the
rise in single mothers and male unemployment in the US have contributed to an environment in which women "are learning by necessity to support themselves and their children". She writes from chapter three of her book:
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Columnist Daisy Hernandez took issue with this point when Rosin first made it in 2010:
Rosin, unfortunately, does what her supposedly now almost extinct male predecessors have done, laying out information about poor Black families as if they existed in a political vacuum.The “End of Men” Isn’t the End of Racism - COLORLINES
After the release of Rosin's book, others wanted to see a more nuanced picture of women's rise. Columnist Stephanie Coontz and University of Maryland sociologist Philip N. Cohen took specific issue with Rosin's claims that young, unmarried women in their twenties earned more than their male counterparts.
Visual.lyAJstream
Cohen and Coontz argue that when this specific group is controlled for
race or
education level , the results are less straightforward:
Among never-married, childless 22- to 30-year-old metropolitan-area workers with the same educational credentials, males out-earn females in every category,The Myth of Male Decline - NYTimes.com
Cohen's interpretation of the data shows, for different racial groups in the US, women are not always out-earning men:
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Some are concerned that a decline in male wages is the result of more men dropping out of the labour force, stagnating their total earnings. Rosin attributes this to the decline of 'male-dominated' industries and the success of 'female-dominated' ones, such as health care and education:
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In a September article, Derek Thompson
says that this dropout contributes to something "terrible": the stagnation of male-earned wages at 1970s levels.
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Critics of Rosin's argument say that the rise of 'female' industries doesn't mark a success for either men or women because it doesn't address the
persistence of job segregation between genders.
The graph below, linked in one of Coontz's
rebuttals to Rosin, shows that, though men lost a majority of jobs in the US recession, women lost a higher proportion of jobs and they have recovered those jobs at a slower rate:
Institute for Women's Policy ResearchAJstream
Critics also use the oft-cited statistic of women making 77 cents to every dollar a man earns to argue that equality is far from being reached:
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For dual-earning married couples, only between 27 and 38.1 per cent of working wives earn the same amount or more than their husbands, according to data
processed by the Center for American Progress (CAP). The graph below also factors for motherhood, age and education:
Center for American ProgressAJstream
Equity in income also appears to correspond with couples' economic class. CAP shows 67.7 per cent of women in the lowest economic bracket earning the same amount as or more than their spouses:
Center for American ProgressAJstream
Rosin argues that for some of these working-class families, women's higher - if not equitable - share in family income gives them more leadership in family decisions.
2010 Super Bowl XLIV Dodge Charger Man's last stand Commercialfcxendan
Others argue that just because incomes have changed, doesn't mean that the household chores has shifted or that patriarchy has vanished:
Woman's Last Stand - Superbowl Ad - Dodge Charger Commercial Spoof111evabella
Recently one of the world's twenty female heads of state, Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard, called out the opposition leader in her country for sexism and misogyny:
Gillard labels Abbott a misogynistnewsonabc
Domestic decision-making does not a matriarchy make. In a true matriarchy, women would sit at the head of more than a kitchen table.Dear Hanna Rosin: I'm Doing Fine! Love, the Patriarchy | The Nation
