No future for men?
When I first started to take a professional interest in gender equality – back in the 1970s – the agenda was very clear indeed. We had only just left behind us the idea that it was lawful to pay men and women different rates of pay for the same job (outlawed only in 1974) and the notion that you could reserve posts for men or for women (outlawed in 1977). There were still large female ghettos and areas of male exclusivity: nurses and secretaries were all women, while engineers, senior managers, priests, architects – and frankly any other groups that had leadership status – were all men. The equality agenda was simple enough: get rid of all that disadvantage for women.
Thirty years on, some things have changed dramatically, others have not. The areas of apartheid are still there, though not necessarily the same areas, and while the glass ceiling has been broken for some women, it remains for others. But what has really changed is that we no longer have a clear consensus as to what the equality agenda now is. Alongside what I might call ‘traditional’ feminist concerns (with significant continuing validity) are now the male concerns – about loss of status and self-esteem, lack of parental rights, juvenile male under-achievement, anti-social conduct, and so forth. What is creeping in is the notion that women are on their way to being the privileged group, with men standing on the fringes hurling beer bottles at them on a Saturday night. Journalists and public commentators have made whole careers out of the call to soothe and caress these broken men so that they might feel respected again.
So what does it all mean? It certainly is not the case that women are now everywhere in key leadership positions. When I meet the other six Irish university Presidents there isn’t a woman in the room. If I look not just at those in leading positions in industry, the public service and education, but also at those one level below who will be the next generation of leaders, women are still wholly under-represented, and there isn’t even a trend in the opposite direction. On the other hand it is true that young men are woefully under-achieving in education, and in some professions – legal practice, for example – the next generation of superstars will be women.
An interesting analysis of all this was contained in yesterday’s Sunday Times, in an article by Sarah Carey (‘Safer jobs for ladies, higher risks and rewards for men‘). If I am summarising her position correctly, she states that the solution to our problems is not to make special provision for men (of a kind that we never made for women), but that we should relax and let nature take its course; we are unlikely to end up with a female-dominated society and a male underclass.
I agree with her assessment, by and large. I don’t believe we should allow law and policy to follow a half-though-out ‘male liberation’ agenda. However, if there is a problem the key to its solution lies in the environment we create for young people of either gender. There is the business about role models, and the difficulty in motivating young males when only women appear to be tackling their upbringing and education. There is the absence of a proper infrastructure for youth leisure; where are all the youth clubs and other meeting places today, that in the past would have taken juvenile males off streets corners and parks at night?
But in the end we cannot engineer equality for men any more than we succeeded in doing it for women. And more particularly, we should stop imagining that female equality of opportunity is no longer a priority subject because it has been achieved.
Sarah Carey also pursues some of these issues in her blog.
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University Blog 
July 14, 2008 at 8:35 pm
There is no time in modern history like the present for the study and redefintion of men. Society needs to evaluate and then re-evaluate their definitions of male versus masculinity, the roles of men in society – stereotype versus reality, and the parallel relationship between the women’s movement and the slow rumblings of the impending and inevitable men’s movement. We can all learn from the stories of men: their struggles, their experiences, their hopes, dreams and aspirations. These, like the tides fo time, have changed and have taken on new meaning and direction. It is time for all of society to stand up and take notice of men.
February 13, 2013 at 7:30 pm
“But in the end we cannot engineer equality for men any more than we succeeded in doing it for women.”
I think we not only have engineered equality for women but we have actually engineered superiority for women as well. There are so many opportunities awarded to women in the form of classes, workshops, scholarships, government programs, health care resources, affirmative action directives, reproductive freedom that are not even remotely offered to men.
When there is any perceived discrepancy in favor of men, there is a movement to end it. When there is any discrepancy in favor of women, it is seen as progress.
When Obama announced that a white man, John Kerry, would replace Hilary Clinton as the new Secretary of State, people accused the administration of “going backwards.”
Years ago, when studies showed that women achieved lower SAT scores on average than men did, a whole movement was created in order to deal with this unfair gender discrimination. More scholarships and workshops were offerered to women so that they could improve their SAT scores and attend college. Some even claimed that the SAT scores should be abolished because they discriminated against men.
Then the truth came out. Women on average didn’t do as well as men on the SAT because only men with high grades took the SAT while women with all kinds of grades took the SAT. Basically, women with low grades were still applying to college while men with low grades were not applying at all. So what was done about that? Nothing, in fact, some feminists just said that nothing can be done about stupid and unmotivated boys.
Well, what is going to happen in the future when there will be a lot of uneducated, unemployed men? If history is any indication, more civil unrest and even wars. You see that already in the Middle East and Africa. There are rebellions occurring in Europe and the U.S. (Wall Street movement).
Furthermore, do educated, successful women want to be with uneducated, poor men? No. The birth rate in many nations is declining. We already have a fatherless America and the trend is spreading throughout the Western nations. Are women happier? No. When compared with the 1950s, women are miserable. They are stressed out, taking medications for anxiety and depression and attempting suicide. Women are more likely to die from heart attacks, which used to be a male disease.
If we want to help women, we NEED to help men too. It’s funny how people just don’t see that.