Download Men`s Lib! - Ira Silver

Richard V. Reeves and Isabel V. Sawhill, “Men’s Lib!” New York
Times, November 14, 2015.
SO far the gender revolution has been a one-sided effort. Women have
entered previously male precincts of economic and political life, and for the
most part they have succeeded. They can lead companies, fly fighter jets,
even run for president.
But along the way something crucial has been left out. We have not pushed
hard enough to put men in traditionally female roles — that is where our
priority should lie now. This is not just about gender equality. The stakes
are even higher. The jobs that many men used to do are gone or going
fast, and families need two engaged parents to share the task of raising
children.
As painful as it may be, men need to adapt to what a modern economy and
family life demand. There has been progress in recent years, but it hasn’t
been equal to the depth and urgency of the transformation we’re
undergoing. The old economy and the old model of masculinity are
obsolete. Women have learned to become more like men. Now men need
to learn to become more like women.
Will this transformation be good for men? In the long run, we think so. But
in any case they don’t really have a choice. Recent changes in women’s
status and in the economy aren’t going to be reversed. Men must either
adapt or be left behind.
Many men have felt a double whammy: a loss of economic status as jobs in
traditionally masculine sectors have disappeared and a loss of social status
as women have advanced. Male wages are stagnant and among the less
educated, they have fallen: Median earnings for men with only a high
school diploma have dropped in real terms by 28 percent since 1980.
These disturbing trends have led many observers to call on boys and men
to regain their competitive edge over women, so they can once again be
successful breadwinners and leaders. But that’s the wrong message.
Rather than trying to recreate a patriarchal past, men have to embrace a
more feminine future.
1
Instead, some men, especially those with the bleakest economic prospects,
are retreating into what some scholars have labeled “hyper-masculinity.” At
the extreme this leads to violence and misogyny, and may be a form of
compensation for low status or loss of respect.
But given their own limited prospects, these men are the very ones who
most need female partners, along with a partner’s paycheck, to survive in
today’s economy.
The male malaise starts in the classroom. Girls have overtaken boys at
every stage of education, with higher grades from the early years through
high school and college. Men are now a minority on college
campuses, accounting for 42 percent of graduates.
The greater success being enjoyed by girls results not from superior
intellect but from better study habits. Girls typically demonstrate more
focus, effort and self-discipline. Boys and young men are more likely to be
distracted by video games, or even derailed by drink or drugs.
Armed with a better education and more skills, women have also advanced
steadily in the workplace, and look set to continue to do so. This is not to
say that the gender gap has closed. America’s boardrooms and legislatures
are still male-dominated. Women stillearn, on average, $8 for every $10
that their male counterparts bring home. But the wage gap is shrinking
rapidly among younger workers.
The labor market is becoming steadily more female-friendly. Jobs are being
created as the economy recovers from the blow it received during the Great
Recession. The problem is that they are largely “women’s jobs,” so men
aren’t taking them. Women have moved into formerly all-male provinces
like law and business, but men have not made the reverse trek into health
and education.
LATELY, there has been a laudable push to get girls and women into jobs
that require STEM skills (science, technology, engineering and math). But it
is equally important to train and encourage men to take jobs that require
skills in health, education, administration and literacy, so-called HEAL jobs.
Right now, HEAL jobs are dominated by women. Men make up 20 percent
of elementary and middle-school teachers, 9 percent of nurses, 16 percent
of personal care aides and 6 percent of personal assistants.
2
Until men seize opportunities in these “pink collar” sectors, they will
continue to lose out in this dynamic area of the labor market. Women
currently dominate the sectors expected to produce the most jobs. Unless
the gender imbalance in the 30 fastest-growing occupations changes,
women will take up a million jobs that would otherwise have gone to men.
There are no legal obstacles to men becoming schoolteachers or nurses,
so this is largely a question of culture and attitude. We need to match the
campaigns to help girls and women see traditionally male jobs as
appropriate for them with equally effective efforts in the other direction.
Small messages can be powerful here. We know that girls are less likely to
apply to study science if they see boy-oriented posters, featuring “Star
Trek” or Harry Potter. Boys almost surely react the same way to images
and environments with a feminine feel.
“Stewardesses” have become flight attendants. Good. So why not call
nurses “health attendants” (if entry level) or “health associates” (if more
highly trained)? Getting more men into teaching would have two
advantages: widening male job prospects and at the same time providing
more diverse role models for boys in the classroom.
Men need to adapt on the home front, too. Women are now the primary
breadwinners in 40 percent of all households with children under 18,
according to the Pew Research Center. Most of these women are single
parents.
But the proportion of married mothers out-earning their husbands has also
risen, from 4 percent in 1960 to 17 percent in 2015. In half the families
where both parents work full time, the mother earns as much as or more
than the father.
Men are doing some more child care: 7.3 hours per week in 2011,
compared with 2.6 hours in 1985, but there has been no increase, and in
fact a slight decline, in their contribution to housework. There needs to be
much faster progress toward a more equal division of domestic labor.
Family leave policies can be designed to help here, though the frequency
with which they are relabeled “maternity leave” shows how far behind we
still are. Right now, the United States is the only advanced country without
a national paid leave policy.
3
There are some small signs of hope from the campaign trail. Hillary
Rodham Clinton proposes a national mandate requiring employers to offer
all new parents three months of paid time off. Senator Marco Rubio
suggests a 25 percent tax credit for companies that provide at least four
weeks of paid leave to employees.
We should go further, and institute leave rights specifically and solely for
fathers. Policy is usually built on the assumption that if there is a father in
the picture, he should either be earning or paying child support; his role as
a potential caretaker is typically ignored or stigmatized.
Sweden and Germany have already successfully introduced this kind of
“use it or lose it” leave policy (in other words, only the father can make use
of it), and a similar program in Quebec demonstrates what can be
accomplished. Since 2006, parents in the province have been offered a
generous benefit of 70 percent income replacement for a year. A critical
feature of the policy is that five weeks of leave are reserved for fathers.
As a result, the proportion of fathers taking time off from work jumped from
21 to 75 percent. The amount of time these fathers took off also increased,
by an average of three weeks. The father-only element of the policy may
have helped to de-stigmatize men who stayed home, according to
research by the economist Ankita Patnaik.
The effects lasted, too. In the three years following the leave, mothers and
fathers continued to pursue a more egalitarian division of both domestic
and market work. There is an important message here. Policies deliberately
aimed at helping fathers to take on a bigger role at home can have
profound and rapid effects on gender roles.
MORE symmetry in gender roles will also reshape (and is already
reshaping) what economists unromantically label “marriage markets.” The
old model of the marriage contract was lopsided; women would marry men
who were more educated, more successful and older than they were.
(Social scientists, even less romantically, call this hypergamy.)
But the idea that men will be the “senior partner” in a marriage is no longer
realistic; soon, there will be as many successful women as men. This
means men need to get used to the idea of “marrying up” — and women to
4
the idea of “marrying down.” This seems to be happening to some extent
already: In 2012, 27 percent of newlywed men married “up” educationally.
More men ought to be doing what women did historically: improving their
economic prospects by marrying well. With apologies to Jane Austen, even
a man who is not in possession of a fortune will still be in want of a wife —
ideally one who has a fortune of her own.
The problem is that many men and women, disoriented by the shake-up of
gender roles, are not marrying at all — less-educated adults, especially —
resulting in a class-based marriage gap. Marriage rates among men under
35 have dropped by 23 percentage points since 1980.
Outdated ideas are doing some damage here. Too many men and women
are holding out for a traditional marriage when the traditional conditions that
supported it have largely disappeared. Men with poor job prospects do not
see themselves as husband material. Many of the women they know agree
with them.
More educated couples are meanwhile reshaping marriage into a more
symmetrical and egalitarian institution. Married men seem to be adapting
more quickly, probably because they are more educated and more
economically secure.
In feminist thought, marriage is typically seen as a patriarchal institution.
Twenty-first-century marriage seems in fact to be providing fertile ground
for a renegotiation of gender roles in an egalitarian direction.
But rather than encouraging the transition to these more equal marriages,
public policies are too often formulated, framed or communicated in a way
that reinforces, rather than replaces, outdated gender stereotypes.
There is, for example, a growing desire among some policy mavens to
create more “marriageable men” by providing them with the kinds of
apprenticeships and wage subsidies that will enhance their marriage
prospects. This whole enterprise is shot through with a breadwinner-male
definition of marriage that is well past its sell-by date.
None of this is to say that better wages and more skills aren’t needed for
men: They are, desperately. But it is just as important to keep lifting up
women’s skills, earnings and incomes. We don’t want a world in which men
5
can get better jobs than women simply because they are men. Nor are we
going to restore marriages based on the superior earning power of men.
Resistance to these kinds of changes in familial roles is often based on
assumptions about innate biological differences. There is little doubt that
evolutionary differences exist. But it is hard to say how much they influence
the adoption of certain roles under current cultural conditions. We suspect
beliefs about innate differences are often an excuse for preserving the
status quo. If the role of biology is exaggerated, society will suffer.
Cultural recalibration to the new economic and social realities certainly
won’t happen overnight. Think how easily the terms “working mother” and
“career woman” still trip off the tongue, by comparison with “working father”
or “career man.” About a third of adults in the United States still agree that
“it is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside
the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.”
This is a clear improvement over the 1970s, when more than half
concurred: But attitudes have shifted most slowly among men and women
with the least education. Among those without a high school diploma, a
majority still believe in the sole-breadwinner model (even the women split
50-50 on the question).
It has been clear for a long time that cramped gender roles are bad for
women. It is becoming obvious that now they are hurting men, too. So a
transformation of our ideas of male roles and masculinity is required, if
many of the economic and social shifts described above are actually going
to occur.
This kind of cultural change is hard, of course. But it can happen;
sometimes quickly. Think of the gains that women have made in the last 50
years, or changing attitudes toward gay rights, and interracial marriage.
America now seems to be experiencing a renewed bout of cultural
turbulence over what it means to be a woman, or a wife; a man, or a
husband. Gay marriage, even after legalization, sharply divides opinion.
Women’s reproductive freedom is being curtailed. The growing confidence
and strengthening rights of the transgender community are causing wildly
disproportionate anxiety.
6
The way forward, we believe, is for men to embrace and adapt to the new,
more androgynous world. There is no point in harking back. The world in
which high-paid manufacturing jobs could support a family, and where
women were expected to focus only on being wives and mothers is gone.
Women have shown they are ready for this transition. But what about men?
Richard V. Reeves and Isabel V. Sawhill are senior fellows at the
Brookings Institution; Ms. Sawhill’s most recent book is “Generation
Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage.”
7