That’s how we fix the wealth gap! Brilliant! More CEOs become women, 60% is reached, the job loses status, it’s no longer a bidding war for “top talent”, the wage drops, the men in the “lower” positions decide that money should be theirs, their wage raises, it now takes months instead of hours for a CEO to earn the wage of a worker. Increased wealth means increased security and people’s minds turn from survival to enjoyment. Creativity flourishes. Quite a few more people now have the bandwidth to worry about the environment and the money to put where their mouth is. Long term survival (saving the planet) is now the focus, instead of day to day or paycheque to paycheque survival.
If trends continue, I believe Gen Z will have their day in Congress and we will see women at the forefront of the medical field, law, and business. Already women are taking a strong lead in opening small businesses and in entrepreneurship. Once women receive the same support that other developed nations enjoy for early childhood care and education and after school care, more women will choose not to interrupt their careers for motherhood and at the same time more businesses will learn to adapt to their greatest workforce by opening up more flexibility for working women. In this way women won't feel guilty when their lives have support and balance between professional and personal. And fewer women will choose to have biological children in order to pursue their goals. Meanwhile, the patriarchal forces that oppress women today will weaken as their supporters age, retire, and enter nursing homes. My guess is 15 years will be the tipping point for Congress. Gen X and Gen Y women (like AOC) will support and guide Gen Z women as mentors and financially to gain ground. CEO positions will follow in 20 or so years, although not in private corporations that maintain their dynasties.
Women have more work flexibility in Canada and fewer women choose to give birth here. But the result has been increased incentives for immigrants, not women. I think it will be similar in the US, though I imagine there will be small gains made with regard to things like ECE, maternity leave, etc., simply because America is a bit behind Canada and Europe.
It will take a while to undo horrible mess men have made. Let's pull together and hope against hope that we can force men out of positions of power and somehow fix their misogynistic mistskes.
Quite frankly, we cannot afford to have more women like The Squad in Congress. I would rather have an all-male Congress than one filled with Leftist stupidity.
ETA: The Leftist dipshit that wrote this post just blocked me. Nice.
Yeah! We ALL should have plenty of lead in the drinking water! Tax breaks should only go to the folks who don't need it, and wouldn't really notice. We need more pollution in this country, dammit. And get away from my Freedumb Stick sidearm.
Great article. I would bet a million dollars that male flight from college is also a big factor in the anti-intellectual/anti-science attitudes that have been increasing in the US in recent years.
White and male flight are not the same. Simply, race is a social construct based but gender is not.
That’s real conversation we don’t have: biology matters. Men and women are different. Hence both men and women prefer a male boss precisely for the reasons why. One of them is women’s covert psychodrama. Not really surprising that gay men don’t flee feminine spaces.
I’m a woman who works as a team coach in tech. I understand how women can change the atmosphere. Men can’t bond freely because they have to tiptoe around women’s greater toward neuroticism and propensity to involve authority into conflict like HR. Yes, I’ve definitely noticed this tendency.
I used to buy into the “men and women are interchangeable” narrative but 10+ years of coaching work teams (tech but also other fields) have changed my mind. It’s fascinating to see the differences between men and women at work. I’m a woman btw.
A quick Google search will confirm my position. The core reason why women prefer male bosses is female relational aggression. I have rarely seen a man go after other men or women with the I have seen women go after other women. Call it ruthless versus vicious. Men don’t try to destroy someone’s career because they’re younger and more attractive. That’s psychodrama.
I’ve observed that women have an innate equality bias. Perhaps as a way to ensure offspring get access to resources, they promote collaboration, consensus, and sharing more. Actually, the workplace push for hypercollaboration is precisely an aspect of feminization. In contrast, men prefer to order themselves within a hierarchy based on (perceived) merit and tend to want to work by themselves but that’s penalized now (also penalizes introverts of either gender).
Another Google search will show that women trend more neurotic and take things more personally. Also, more likely to involve authority in disputes like HR.
Many male employees fear of giving female workers developmental feedback because they fear being called sexist. It reflects one of the most corrosive social shifts: labeling anything less than praise as bias, if not discrimination, especially among younger female workers.
Earlier this year, a young female worker accused a male coworker of calling her stupid. I smelled Damsel manipulation vibes, so I asked her to repeat exactly what he said. Turns out, he didn’t call her stupid but she *felt* stupid and therefore it’s the same thing. For fucksake!
A quick Google search proves NOTHING. That’s not researh.
You are free to marry the first man who comes along and do the tradwife thing if you wish. Most of us have greater ambitions — and frankly, children do grow up! I’ve had an empty next for quite a while now. Even if I’d stayed home for much longer than I did (I was home with my kids until they were both in school all day) I’d still have had decades to do something with after they grew up.
Madam, the research can found via Google because it’s available digitally.
> You are free to marry the first man who comes along and do the tradwife thing if you wish.
Completely unfounded projection. As mentioned *twice*, I’m a professional workplace coach in tech. Moreover, ambition is not limited to goals that require a person to clock in/out of an institution. Also, there’s nothing wrong with being a “tradwife” whatever that means if a woman chooses to be.
The reason I preferred a male supervisor is because they were direct, consistent and had probably done the job they are supervising. It’s bad enough when you hire someone with no experience but much worse when it’s a person that could never actually do the work in the first place. It’s just a much better system to have the men work and the women stay home and raise children. That’s the natural order and this completely explains what has happened to wages in the Western world, every job has been turned into woman’s work. All labor has been devalued because we now have twice the labor pool. Why not go back to a traditional employment situation that yielded the highest standards of living we have ever had. I guess because it doesn’t fit the gay/trans/ single self centered attitude about why we are here. The most important part of being here is to have and raise children. All the education, work and money does nothing for the advancement of people if it’s all squandered on pets and thyself.
Why don’t we women just stay home and have kids? Let me explain this to you.
First of all, I found motherhood very fulfilling, actually. I had my kids just as soon as I could — after I finished my degree, got married and started working. I really do love babies, baking, all that traditional mom stuff. I stayed home until my youngest was ready to start school.
But let me clue you in! SO MANY WOMEN HAVE BEEN FUCKED OVER SEVERELY FOR THIS CHOICE. Women who don’t have solid careers are stuck with men who beat them, belittle them, cheat on them, etc. When my first husband decided to leave the marriage, it meant my job — which I had seen as a supplement to the family and not as something I could afford to support myself and my children with — was not nearly enough. My kids are grown now and I’m STILL being punished by our system for having stayed home with my kids for many years and for not working on my career hard enough. I will never be able to afford to retire, because I was not prioritizing my financial wellbeing — I was prioritizing my children and allowing my then-husband to concentrate on his career, unencumbered by domestic concerns.
Now, not every woman wants to have babies and stay home, regardless. But some percentage of us wouldn’t have minded it a bit as long as we were treated with respect, not financially exploited, etc., etc. You can blame bad men for that. We’ve learned not to trust any of you.
Eventually, I ran the newsroom for a daily newspaper. I assure you I was better at it than the man who came before me and was fired. I’d been working in newspapers since my youngest started school. I knew what I was doing. I had a degree and years of experience and I’m really proud of what a good job I did as the editor of a newspaper.
Your claim that women aren’t as competent simply proves you’re sexist. And sexist men are not good people. They certainly are not good husbands or fathers.
Also -- what's with that weird mention of pets at the end? Let me guess -- you're a Vance follower who fixates on single women with cats. And "thyself"? What fucking century are you from, anyway?
You sound like an incel who hates women because you cannot attract one.
Your comments are sexist and filled with antimale hatred - Misandry. Not only are today's women far more sexist then men have ever been they are utterly worthless, unreliable and best to be avoided.
Having dwelt with the fall out from my mother's self centered choices since I was nine yrs old - for well over half a century. Endured abuse at the hands of two stepmothers and watched my father die from a Hep C infection deliberately given to him by one of my stepmothers. As well being married for well over four decades I've learned not to trust women and prefer to live alone now that my wife has passed away than dwell within the living hell of feminine emotional chaos.
I agree with you! Further, in my experience, Working for women, changed the concept of job well done, from actually accomplishing what was requested, to presenting the appearance of accomplishing what was requested.
Science is a process of question what is currently known. Assuming men are more likely to question the validity of COVID precautions is just as valuable as suggesting women aren't good at math. These sorts of stereotypes aren't really helping anyone.
THE SCIENCE. It's the immutable truth in a Big Book that you swear and oath on. THE SCIENCE,the Sacred Text of the contemporary angry Thunder and Lightning God.
Quite likely. And in my more suspicious moments, I wonder if it is also a factor in the use of AI to replace intellectual work. Remember that before the invention of the typewriter, secretaries were respected (and of course male).
I work in a pretty much male environment-construction. The government is trying to bribe women to take it up because it's a male environment, which apparently is not allowed.
I hadn't thought about it before, but if sizeable numbers of women started entering the workforce I would leave. You're spot on. Working with women isn't enjoyable, I like working with other men. I used to be a school teacher and I find the idea of going back to working with lots of women quite dispiriting. I don't want to oppress anyone or anything, I just want to be left to get on with it.
I don't think you're quite getting it though. Workplaces with large female cohorts are substantially different... I mean we're not doing the 'men and women are interchangeable' shtick are we?
Teaching is a completely different profession to what it once was when it was largely male dominated, as is university. Women are very good in pushing for their environment to be shaped to reflect their sensibilities, men are not so socially adept in comparison. Men don't really like the environments that women produce but they aren't able to push back against them, so instead they just opt out and go and do something else. The problem for a lot of men now is that western society has become so ubiquitously feminized (ie. there's nowhere else to go) that opting out basically means locking themselves away from everyone and everything and (probably) living in a resentful fantasy world.
Also.. at the risk of making people angry, have you considered that when all the men leave, things get a bit shit? That's the other side of the coin. Men's strength is that they're generally good at building things, technique and structure. It may be that things that men leave get devalued because they actually become less valuable. Educational outcomes since women started dominating the teaching profession, they're not the best. A lot of things seem to be not working properly anymore... Maybe it's unrelated but the correlation seems to be there.
I was going to say something to the same effect as you, but you put it better, so thanks!
I used to teach elementary school, but as my male colleagues retired or left, the environment changed and I ended up leaving as well. I generally like women, as individuals, but not so much in larger groups. I believe there is a dynamic in large groups of females that is detrimental (in my view) to the working environment. There seems to be less room for individualism, and a large pressure to conform in female dominated workspaces. Further, exchanges of ideas seems to be less welcome if they challenge the group cohesion.
i agree, there is an unspoken rule, that we all have to protect each others feelings, in stead of stating obvious facts that need addressing. people have always called me a rather masculine person, i just have no patience for feelings when things need getting done. this quality annoys me no end with other women, even those i know and love. They need approval, even if they are incompetent. No. If you have hand tremors, you cannot, CANNOT be a dental hygienist. The other person safety is more important than your feelings. (this was a true story by the way) she paid to take the program thinking she could work at it. no. I just tell them to join a religion or something else that makes them feel important. because that is what they deeply want.
Women compete socially differently than men. Women are much more likely to use Gossip, Shaming, Rallying (GSR) and other social techniques to get what they want. I think men prefer to compete directly and cooperate in a hierarchy based on the results of that competition; eg best on top, others following according to capabilities.
I think a lot of them do. In these conversations I take it as a given that the qualities of 'man' and 'woman' are bimodal. There's overlap and messiness.
But even if you favour a more masculine style, the problem is that the feminine version of social organisation outcompete the masculine one once violence and physical strength are not valuable traits. Even if you like the masculine style, you're still going to get the feminine where the two meet.
But it's unlikely that you like masculine organisation better because you share it as an impulse (just generally), you like it because it's nice. It's already had decades, maybe hundreds of years of regulation and civilizing. Men have generally learned to play well together in large groups. In it's most primitive elements men have been forced to organise into armies etc forever.
This is not to say 'women should never be in charge of anything', just that they need to be aware that they have a lot of stuff they need to get ahold of, just like men have to learn not to punch people in the face (and generally do learn from a very young age), women have to learn that their impulses are generally maladaptive in this weird modern world. I don't think we've had to deal with this much before, so we just haven't, and as a result the pathologies of femininity are poisoning our civilization.
i do, and i worked with many women who were amazing. but a degree does not make you that. it's just a piece of paper. Your character does. I have known women with great character. doulas midwifes, herbalists. ER nurses. they took initiative, and were just the kind of people you want by your side when life gets hard. karens, are the opposite of that. anyone can get a diploma. if they want one.
Agreed. I don't know how one would quantify it, but I'd wager women managers with a masculine style have statistically signficantly less employee turnover than male managers or women with a women's style.
To a certain extent I can understand what you are saying. But a problem with the male concept of a hierarchy built on the results of competition is that there are many men who do not care about the results of competition from women. We are invisible, or disliked for the same competitiveness that is admired in men, or only valued for looks/agreeability or other traditionally feminine traits.
I had the same thought reading this piece: obviously men prefer masculine environments, and given the choice they clearly opt for them. I don't think that invalidates the argument about prestige, but it has to be a factor in this.
Don't give us that— if women produce workplace cultures that are unpleasant for men, then clearly it's the women who are responsible, for creating such a hostile environment, not the men trying to get away from it.
You’re blaming women again. You’re taking it as a given that we are producing workplace cultures that are unpleasant for men. Don’t give me that bullshit. As if those poor men are just helpless and can’t get away from all the mean, powerful women … listen to yourself.
First, it is not a given that women produce toxic workplaces. I work with "powerful" women now. (They are my bosses; the ceo, and her second in command) I have no problem with them as women, or as my bosses.
Our team is small, five people, that lets us relate to each other as individuals rather than demographics. And we are responsible for different tasks and topics, with clear areas of responsibility.
Second, I have experienced the opposite as well, serving in the Air Force, we had a few women serving in our unit. Most of them left within the year. It could, of course be because of us lads "producing workplace cultures that were unpleasant for women", but their stated reason for leaving was that it just didn't work for them.
There still is a couple of men teaching at my old school, and some of the women in my unit stayed, but both places the majority (of the minority) left at some point. I'm not blaming anyone, but maybe men and women produce different workplace cultures, cultures that are less agreeable to the opposite sex?
I'm not refusing to work with women - I still work with women. My boss is a woman, her boss is a woman. We work together just fine. But at every workplace there is a woman like you, and the more women, the greater the chance of having several Karens!
When I got into law school and told my mom it was the first cohort that was over 50% female, she said she felt bad for all the men who didn’t get in that should have since there were so many women. When I said it had the highest LSAT and GPA averages of any cohort as well, she said it would have been even higher if more men were accepted. Additionally, she constantly says my husband should have gotten accepted to more medical schools and is worried he won’t match into a good residency because he’s a white man. Not only is college being seen as more feminine, but to justify women excelling in their fields, society feels the need to then put down their accomplishments and say men are still more talented and the only reason we aren’t seeing it is because of female preference. It’s also interesting that the narrative around college (an institution pushing the liberal agenda and brainwashing students) delegitimizes the opinions of educated people, specifically women. Now when women have a voice supported by evidence and education, men can say it’s simply a product of the establishment and that they are still more critical will less education.
Every institution that has admitted women enmass has had to lower its admission standards. When the military lowered the physical standards for women it was called Gender Norming.
Women are not entitled to status (not only does it not make them any more attractive it makes them arrogant and unfeminine) , nor are they entitled to be attractive, nor are they entitled to the company of men, still less to authority over them. Women are inferior to men and must be denied status or humanity will not replace itself. The perfect correlation of below-replacement birthrates and "education" for women is clear; there is no more effectively genocidal policy, neither it nor its proponens tcan be tolerated if humanity is to survive..
Very true in my experience. On my first day of PhD grad school, back in 1994, our older woman professor warned us that this would be happening. She said that by the time we finished our degrees the easy access to lifetime tenured jobs with high pay would be gone because women were finally outnumbering men in the PhD track. So true. When I finished my Ivy League PhD, there were so few 'real' jobs left. Most of my female cohort has had to make do with temporary jobs, adjunct positions and teaching outside of the traditional academy. When the women showed up, the jobs, pay and opportunities did not rise to meet the increased pool of highly qualified workers.
This kind of specious reasoning is a pretty good example of why some men prefer to avoid female-dominated environments. If there are not enough jobs for which your training is suitable, it’s not that “jobs, pay, and opportunities did not rise to meet supply” it’s that *there wasn’t enough demand for what you spent/wasted your time doing*.
That’s a hard truth but since our society conditions men to deal with their own problems, it’s the kind of truth you can say to a man without serious collateral damage. Meanwhile, it’s been 20+ years since you got your PhD and you’re still implying it was some misogynist conspiracy that tenure track slots at elite universities were kept from you.
No, dear, it's not about the number of teaching jobs. It's about the TYPES of teaching positions which CHANGED from full-time, tenure-track professorships to temporary adjunct roles. Before the 1990s, universities hired more tenure-track professors and a few adjuncts. Since 2000, universities have shifted to hiring hundreds of adjuncts and only a few full-time professors. The ratio is about 30% tenure-track professors to 70% adjuncts.
Yes, that’s what happens when labor supply outstrips demand: compensation falls. Tenure protections being a significant component of total compensation for an academic.
This may shock and appall you, but men are subject to the cruel vagaries of labor markets as well.
Maybe the coal mines in West Virginia were shut down and the manufacturing in the rust belt was offshored as part of a grand misandrist conspiracy? (/s)
It's called the law of supply and demand. When women flooded the labor market the price of labor went down causing men's wages to fall. In the exact same way that today's college graduates flooded the white collar job market causing the price of labor based on a college degree to fall. Because of the oversupply of workers with college degrees today's employers can be picky in whom they hire and pay far less.
The shift from full-time to adjunct faculty began long before 1994, and actually the 2010s/20s are the first period during our lifetimes during which that trend has been reversed.
Per the US Department of Education, the percentage of full-time faculty at colleges and universities was as follows.
"From fall 2011 to fall 2022, the number of full-time faculty increased by 11 percent (from 762,100 to 842,400) while the number of part-time faculty decreased by 13 percent (from 762,400 to 665,200)."
Should they have created more jobs to accomodate more qualified people or should they have created more people qualified for positions that were in need of thos people?
The shift from full-time to adjunct faculty began long before 1994, and actually the 2010s/20s are the first period during our lifetimes during which that trend has been reversed.
Per the US Department of Education, the percentage of full-time faculty at colleges and universities was as follows.
"From fall 2011 to fall 2022, the number of full-time faculty increased by 11 percent (from 762,100 to 842,400) while the number of part-time faculty decreased by 13 percent (from 762,400 to 665,200)."
just being a woman entitles your to human respect. being a great person, developing you character, skill at communication, logic and reason, creative problem solving, depth of understanding(knowing a bit of history) negotiations are things all women Should, be good at. I wish i could tell those women at a glance. They still all go to the ladies room together. they want consensus thinking. perhaps they need it. they love bureaucracy. there may be a time and place for that, say in the judiciary, but in real life. real time. this makes a living hell. Like at the Department of motor vehicles, to get paperwork or something. and they can never admit their mistakes or take responsibility. I was just doing my job.
What a weird line of reasoning. You doubled the supply of people trying to fill these positions and expected the number of them available to also just magically double to match that increase in supply? Perhaps your PhD should've been in economics, although you'd only need to take Econ 101 to understand the error in your thinking here.
Thanks for bringing awareness to this. Seems like male flight could be very subconscious for many. So many men don’t even know why “they don’t feel like it”. I know this is my straight son’s experience. He is “embarrassed” to be enrolled in college right now and didn’t want me to tell people or announce it. And my gay son is enrolling into college and specifically in the medical field starting January with no embarrassment and is excited for something to be working towards. It’s a social phenomenon that keeps happening in all our institutions. I see it in religion too: We can’t let more women speak, pray, teach, lead etc… because then the men will leave. If it looks like half the leadership is female, the men will stop listening and will leave “cause they don’t feel like staying”. As a society, it seems we keep centering the male perspective and experience as if it’s the “better, smarter way”. Even though the statistics show that women are leaving religion….and men are dominating, we still can’t add more women to the leadership of churches because the men will leave. And we just can’t have that.
Fascinating about your sons Jamee! So crazy how much the perception of college has changed in just a few decades- it used to be embarrassing not to go to college
And a feminised church is boring so then the hot females start going to the church where the charismatic male preacher looks like he's got a Bad Boy spark in him (charisma is both a gift and a curse).
“Betty Holberton, Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas, programmed the ENIAC to perform calculations for ballistics trajectories electronically for the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory.”
I don’t know, man, the first six of six computer programmers were women.
This is fascinating. Hopefully the same trend continues in other fields as well for more of a “the dynamic changes because most people don’t like to work with all the opposite sex” rather than “men won’t pursue powerful jobs and they’ll all just become more unhappy”
Ok hang on. Women are 60/40 receiving college degrees and the reason is…oppression by men? Oppression by men evidently can’t be falsified. And what does it mean when a hypothesis can’t be falsified? It means it likewise can’t be proven.
Here’s an alternate hypothesis, offered by a lowly individual with a lived experience in both male-dominated and female-dominated environments: the more women in positions of power, the more toxic the environment becomes.
One very small point to add -- an outcome of the devaluing of college because it is becoming feminized is that our government is also defunding it. We are investing less money in universities as a society -- I'll bet that the decrease in funding aligns very neatly with the increasing percentage of women students. Just like the increasing percentage of women in a (formerly male) profession leads inexorably to a decrease in the wages in that profession and a decrease in the perceived value of that expertise.
The last thing the education system needs is more money. Before they get a dime, they should get of the majority of administrators. Get rid of DEI. Stop pushing political agendas.
Why does anyone want to be in school after the age of 14 anyway. I've only ever seen USA high schools and colleges (what we used to call University but now call Uni,in Aussie fashion)in films or tv shows (I'm in UK) and it seems like Americans go to school until theyre pushing 40. Ha ha. Thats because the actors playing the school kids tend to be well mature. But the other day on the radio a young woman was saying how she'd done her degree at University,then she'd done a post-graduate degree,and she said,and ingenuously,I honestly don't think she realized WHAT she was saying ,I'm now starting a research degree (can't remember the exact name but that's what it was) so by the time I graduate from that I'll be just over 40 years old. And when the radio host asked her what sort of job her education would qualify her for she replied,oh I expect I'll do another degree. So I know learning is stimulating and fun but this long drawn out education seemed an end in itself. As for money,she was of an Asian family so of course did not need to work as they supported her.
When I taught K-12 in one of the largest school systems in the US a constant half-joking philosophical question was this: The school district has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars. It does NOT go toward building maintenance, instructional materials, or teachers' salaries. So where does it go?
Do you know I think what we need is a good old fashioned World War. I don't suppose anyone else,like any people with political and financial power has thought of that.
I spotted a news article recently that straight men aren't reading novels anymore, but gay men and women are. Same issue? Probably. Methinks you hit the nail on the head.
Fantastic essay. It's like the elementary school playground for adults. The girls have cooties! Run away! I was at the emergency vet with my puppy last month and was looking around at the open floor plan ER where all the providers were in one room, and noticed that it was 100% women. This explains why. Publishing is another industry that used to be aggressively male-dominated and now is majority female. I transcribed an interview with the literary agent Maxine Groffsky years ago where she talked about how she became an agent because at the time, in the 1960s, only men were allowed to be editors, while women were relegated to support roles. Starting her own literary agency was her only way forward. Sidebar: I'm not surprised that the Freakonomics episode missed the main story here. Michael Hobbes has a great takedown of Freakonomics on his podcast, If Books Could Kill.
Yes!😊 Anything Michael Hobbes does is great, plus the wonderful and varied co-hosts. I had heard the freakonomics episode on IBCK a while ago, and I actually caught most of the broadcast last Sunday on Freakonomics regarding men’s college rates dropping. I was going crazy while they circled around the issue, but never quite got to the heart of it (sometimes they were so close!). I couldn’t put my own finger on what was so agitating, but it really just felt like they had weird blinders on. It was so nice to see Celeste’s essay in my inbox. Right on time 👍🏻
Bingo. Thanks for saying out loud what I've been observing for years. Happened in ordained ministry as well -- as women came to be ordained, they took the small, part-time positions while men got the big, prestigious church positions, and when that generation died out, fewer men wanted to go into ministry.
I have read about the same (Non Jewish white) male flight from a number of professions in NYC post WW2 when significant numbers of Jewish men entered them, such as teaching. Similar flight from a profession populated by those considered “lesser”.
Hahaha “Obedience…is a feminine trait.” Jeez, I shoulda thrown that out to my drill instructors in USMC boot camp! What a load of self-indulgent, self-serving crap. A channel catering to incel’s. Nice…
Looking inside HR I have noticed an incredible disproportion of women in the lowest ranks, that changes as you move into upper ranks. I now wonder if I will see a “male flight” or will this trend continue.
Great article. One additional consideration in the workforce is that people receiving college degrees now outpace job postings requiring a college degree. The biggest needs in the workforce in coming years will be in areas not needing degrees including male-dominated areas such as construction but also female-dominated areas such as home healthcare. Anecdotally, I see why women are still pursuing degrees because of a need to be taken seriously in the workforce. But it will be interesting to see how this overabundance of college degrees and competitiveness for desk jobs shifts things for women in the future.
How quickly do you think we could reach the tipping point for Congress and CEOs?
🏃♀️🏃♀️🏃♀️📈📈📈🤞🤞🤞
That’s how we fix the wealth gap! Brilliant! More CEOs become women, 60% is reached, the job loses status, it’s no longer a bidding war for “top talent”, the wage drops, the men in the “lower” positions decide that money should be theirs, their wage raises, it now takes months instead of hours for a CEO to earn the wage of a worker. Increased wealth means increased security and people’s minds turn from survival to enjoyment. Creativity flourishes. Quite a few more people now have the bandwidth to worry about the environment and the money to put where their mouth is. Long term survival (saving the planet) is now the focus, instead of day to day or paycheque to paycheque survival.
Damn, white flight could be very helpful indeed!
An even tricker one—church clergy
How quickly do *you* think?
If trends continue, I believe Gen Z will have their day in Congress and we will see women at the forefront of the medical field, law, and business. Already women are taking a strong lead in opening small businesses and in entrepreneurship. Once women receive the same support that other developed nations enjoy for early childhood care and education and after school care, more women will choose not to interrupt their careers for motherhood and at the same time more businesses will learn to adapt to their greatest workforce by opening up more flexibility for working women. In this way women won't feel guilty when their lives have support and balance between professional and personal. And fewer women will choose to have biological children in order to pursue their goals. Meanwhile, the patriarchal forces that oppress women today will weaken as their supporters age, retire, and enter nursing homes. My guess is 15 years will be the tipping point for Congress. Gen X and Gen Y women (like AOC) will support and guide Gen Z women as mentors and financially to gain ground. CEO positions will follow in 20 or so years, although not in private corporations that maintain their dynasties.
Women have more work flexibility in Canada and fewer women choose to give birth here. But the result has been increased incentives for immigrants, not women. I think it will be similar in the US, though I imagine there will be small gains made with regard to things like ECE, maternity leave, etc., simply because America is a bit behind Canada and Europe.
It will take a while to undo horrible mess men have made. Let's pull together and hope against hope that we can force men out of positions of power and somehow fix their misogynistic mistskes.
😅🤣😂🥲
Quite frankly, we cannot afford to have more women like The Squad in Congress. I would rather have an all-male Congress than one filled with Leftist stupidity.
ETA: The Leftist dipshit that wrote this post just blocked me. Nice.
Yeah! We ALL should have plenty of lead in the drinking water! Tax breaks should only go to the folks who don't need it, and wouldn't really notice. We need more pollution in this country, dammit. And get away from my Freedumb Stick sidearm.
Great article. I would bet a million dollars that male flight from college is also a big factor in the anti-intellectual/anti-science attitudes that have been increasing in the US in recent years.
Yes great link! I think we are going to be seeing more of this
https://www.louiseperry.co.uk/p/the-feminisation-of-public-life-cory?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
White and male flight are not the same. Simply, race is a social construct based but gender is not.
That’s real conversation we don’t have: biology matters. Men and women are different. Hence both men and women prefer a male boss precisely for the reasons why. One of them is women’s covert psychodrama. Not really surprising that gay men don’t flee feminine spaces.
I’m a woman who works as a team coach in tech. I understand how women can change the atmosphere. Men can’t bond freely because they have to tiptoe around women’s greater toward neuroticism and propensity to involve authority into conflict like HR. Yes, I’ve definitely noticed this tendency.
Who the hell prefers a male boss! What?
I don’t appreciate your claim of “women?/ covert psychodrama.”
I used to buy into the “men and women are interchangeable” narrative but 10+ years of coaching work teams (tech but also other fields) have changed my mind. It’s fascinating to see the differences between men and women at work. I’m a woman btw.
A quick Google search will confirm my position. The core reason why women prefer male bosses is female relational aggression. I have rarely seen a man go after other men or women with the I have seen women go after other women. Call it ruthless versus vicious. Men don’t try to destroy someone’s career because they’re younger and more attractive. That’s psychodrama.
I’ve observed that women have an innate equality bias. Perhaps as a way to ensure offspring get access to resources, they promote collaboration, consensus, and sharing more. Actually, the workplace push for hypercollaboration is precisely an aspect of feminization. In contrast, men prefer to order themselves within a hierarchy based on (perceived) merit and tend to want to work by themselves but that’s penalized now (also penalizes introverts of either gender).
Another Google search will show that women trend more neurotic and take things more personally. Also, more likely to involve authority in disputes like HR.
Many male employees fear of giving female workers developmental feedback because they fear being called sexist. It reflects one of the most corrosive social shifts: labeling anything less than praise as bias, if not discrimination, especially among younger female workers.
Earlier this year, a young female worker accused a male coworker of calling her stupid. I smelled Damsel manipulation vibes, so I asked her to repeat exactly what he said. Turns out, he didn’t call her stupid but she *felt* stupid and therefore it’s the same thing. For fucksake!
A quick Google search proves NOTHING. That’s not researh.
You are free to marry the first man who comes along and do the tradwife thing if you wish. Most of us have greater ambitions — and frankly, children do grow up! I’ve had an empty next for quite a while now. Even if I’d stayed home for much longer than I did (I was home with my kids until they were both in school all day) I’d still have had decades to do something with after they grew up.
Madam, the research can found via Google because it’s available digitally.
> You are free to marry the first man who comes along and do the tradwife thing if you wish.
Completely unfounded projection. As mentioned *twice*, I’m a professional workplace coach in tech. Moreover, ambition is not limited to goals that require a person to clock in/out of an institution. Also, there’s nothing wrong with being a “tradwife” whatever that means if a woman chooses to be.
If you’re a woman with a career, why are you shitting on the idea of women having careers?
The reason I preferred a male supervisor is because they were direct, consistent and had probably done the job they are supervising. It’s bad enough when you hire someone with no experience but much worse when it’s a person that could never actually do the work in the first place. It’s just a much better system to have the men work and the women stay home and raise children. That’s the natural order and this completely explains what has happened to wages in the Western world, every job has been turned into woman’s work. All labor has been devalued because we now have twice the labor pool. Why not go back to a traditional employment situation that yielded the highest standards of living we have ever had. I guess because it doesn’t fit the gay/trans/ single self centered attitude about why we are here. The most important part of being here is to have and raise children. All the education, work and money does nothing for the advancement of people if it’s all squandered on pets and thyself.
Why don’t we women just stay home and have kids? Let me explain this to you.
First of all, I found motherhood very fulfilling, actually. I had my kids just as soon as I could — after I finished my degree, got married and started working. I really do love babies, baking, all that traditional mom stuff. I stayed home until my youngest was ready to start school.
But let me clue you in! SO MANY WOMEN HAVE BEEN FUCKED OVER SEVERELY FOR THIS CHOICE. Women who don’t have solid careers are stuck with men who beat them, belittle them, cheat on them, etc. When my first husband decided to leave the marriage, it meant my job — which I had seen as a supplement to the family and not as something I could afford to support myself and my children with — was not nearly enough. My kids are grown now and I’m STILL being punished by our system for having stayed home with my kids for many years and for not working on my career hard enough. I will never be able to afford to retire, because I was not prioritizing my financial wellbeing — I was prioritizing my children and allowing my then-husband to concentrate on his career, unencumbered by domestic concerns.
Now, not every woman wants to have babies and stay home, regardless. But some percentage of us wouldn’t have minded it a bit as long as we were treated with respect, not financially exploited, etc., etc. You can blame bad men for that. We’ve learned not to trust any of you.
Eventually, I ran the newsroom for a daily newspaper. I assure you I was better at it than the man who came before me and was fired. I’d been working in newspapers since my youngest started school. I knew what I was doing. I had a degree and years of experience and I’m really proud of what a good job I did as the editor of a newspaper.
Your claim that women aren’t as competent simply proves you’re sexist. And sexist men are not good people. They certainly are not good husbands or fathers.
A sexist man is worthless in every way.
Also -- what's with that weird mention of pets at the end? Let me guess -- you're a Vance follower who fixates on single women with cats. And "thyself"? What fucking century are you from, anyway?
You sound like an incel who hates women because you cannot attract one.
Your comments are sexist and filled with antimale hatred - Misandry. Not only are today's women far more sexist then men have ever been they are utterly worthless, unreliable and best to be avoided.
Having dwelt with the fall out from my mother's self centered choices since I was nine yrs old - for well over half a century. Endured abuse at the hands of two stepmothers and watched my father die from a Hep C infection deliberately given to him by one of my stepmothers. As well being married for well over four decades I've learned not to trust women and prefer to live alone now that my wife has passed away than dwell within the living hell of feminine emotional chaos.
😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣
Indeed. At least half of the disruptively dramatic people I met in the workforce were men.
Equality! Men and women can be equally disruptively dramatic.
That said, I had some truly wonderful colleagues and bosses of both persuasions. 😁
I was born in 1965. When I worked in software tech support and technical writing in the 90s, I much preferred my female managers.
Sure. Individuals preferences vary. Out of curiosity, why do you prefer female managers?
People who prefer to get real work done prefer a male boss.
Enough sexism for today, buddy.
Race is not a social construct.
Race is not a social construct in the slightest. The biological differences between races are as immutable as those between the sexes.
I agree with you! Further, in my experience, Working for women, changed the concept of job well done, from actually accomplishing what was requested, to presenting the appearance of accomplishing what was requested.
🙄😂🤣
Bull. Shit.
I can speak and act freely around men or women but toxic pathetic whining males are free to lie and make excuses
Came to say this. Now that being informed is gay, apparently, suddenly it’s cool to make up your own facts.
This “anti-science” trend you speak of affects men in my area! Because if Covid taught us anything, it’s that SCIENCE can’t be questioned.
Science is a process of question what is currently known. Assuming men are more likely to question the validity of COVID precautions is just as valuable as suggesting women aren't good at math. These sorts of stereotypes aren't really helping anyone.
But women actually aren’t as good at math as men are, on average
Because men like to question everything and in my experience at least,women don't fucking care. Or maybe that's just my neighbourhood.
THE SCIENCE. It's the immutable truth in a Big Book that you swear and oath on. THE SCIENCE,the Sacred Text of the contemporary angry Thunder and Lightning God.
It's also a big factor in the rise in anti-intellectual and anti-science attitudes at colleges.
Quite likely. And in my more suspicious moments, I wonder if it is also a factor in the use of AI to replace intellectual work. Remember that before the invention of the typewriter, secretaries were respected (and of course male).
I had the same thought.
I work in a pretty much male environment-construction. The government is trying to bribe women to take it up because it's a male environment, which apparently is not allowed.
I hadn't thought about it before, but if sizeable numbers of women started entering the workforce I would leave. You're spot on. Working with women isn't enjoyable, I like working with other men. I used to be a school teacher and I find the idea of going back to working with lots of women quite dispiriting. I don't want to oppress anyone or anything, I just want to be left to get on with it.
I don't think you're quite getting it though. Workplaces with large female cohorts are substantially different... I mean we're not doing the 'men and women are interchangeable' shtick are we?
Teaching is a completely different profession to what it once was when it was largely male dominated, as is university. Women are very good in pushing for their environment to be shaped to reflect their sensibilities, men are not so socially adept in comparison. Men don't really like the environments that women produce but they aren't able to push back against them, so instead they just opt out and go and do something else. The problem for a lot of men now is that western society has become so ubiquitously feminized (ie. there's nowhere else to go) that opting out basically means locking themselves away from everyone and everything and (probably) living in a resentful fantasy world.
Also.. at the risk of making people angry, have you considered that when all the men leave, things get a bit shit? That's the other side of the coin. Men's strength is that they're generally good at building things, technique and structure. It may be that things that men leave get devalued because they actually become less valuable. Educational outcomes since women started dominating the teaching profession, they're not the best. A lot of things seem to be not working properly anymore... Maybe it's unrelated but the correlation seems to be there.
I was going to say something to the same effect as you, but you put it better, so thanks!
I used to teach elementary school, but as my male colleagues retired or left, the environment changed and I ended up leaving as well. I generally like women, as individuals, but not so much in larger groups. I believe there is a dynamic in large groups of females that is detrimental (in my view) to the working environment. There seems to be less room for individualism, and a large pressure to conform in female dominated workspaces. Further, exchanges of ideas seems to be less welcome if they challenge the group cohesion.
Misogyny much?
You forgot to mention Patriarchy!
Knee jerk, much?
Careful deary your MISANDRY is showing.
i agree, there is an unspoken rule, that we all have to protect each others feelings, in stead of stating obvious facts that need addressing. people have always called me a rather masculine person, i just have no patience for feelings when things need getting done. this quality annoys me no end with other women, even those i know and love. They need approval, even if they are incompetent. No. If you have hand tremors, you cannot, CANNOT be a dental hygienist. The other person safety is more important than your feelings. (this was a true story by the way) she paid to take the program thinking she could work at it. no. I just tell them to join a religion or something else that makes them feel important. because that is what they deeply want.
Women compete socially differently than men. Women are much more likely to use Gossip, Shaming, Rallying (GSR) and other social techniques to get what they want. I think men prefer to compete directly and cooperate in a hierarchy based on the results of that competition; eg best on top, others following according to capabilities.
Some women prefer the masculine style.
I think a lot of them do. In these conversations I take it as a given that the qualities of 'man' and 'woman' are bimodal. There's overlap and messiness.
But even if you favour a more masculine style, the problem is that the feminine version of social organisation outcompete the masculine one once violence and physical strength are not valuable traits. Even if you like the masculine style, you're still going to get the feminine where the two meet.
But it's unlikely that you like masculine organisation better because you share it as an impulse (just generally), you like it because it's nice. It's already had decades, maybe hundreds of years of regulation and civilizing. Men have generally learned to play well together in large groups. In it's most primitive elements men have been forced to organise into armies etc forever.
This is not to say 'women should never be in charge of anything', just that they need to be aware that they have a lot of stuff they need to get ahold of, just like men have to learn not to punch people in the face (and generally do learn from a very young age), women have to learn that their impulses are generally maladaptive in this weird modern world. I don't think we've had to deal with this much before, so we just haven't, and as a result the pathologies of femininity are poisoning our civilization.
i do, and i worked with many women who were amazing. but a degree does not make you that. it's just a piece of paper. Your character does. I have known women with great character. doulas midwifes, herbalists. ER nurses. they took initiative, and were just the kind of people you want by your side when life gets hard. karens, are the opposite of that. anyone can get a diploma. if they want one.
@Grape Soda
Agreed. I don't know how one would quantify it, but I'd wager women managers with a masculine style have statistically signficantly less employee turnover than male managers or women with a women's style.
To a certain extent I can understand what you are saying. But a problem with the male concept of a hierarchy built on the results of competition is that there are many men who do not care about the results of competition from women. We are invisible, or disliked for the same competitiveness that is admired in men, or only valued for looks/agreeability or other traditionally feminine traits.
I had the same thought reading this piece: obviously men prefer masculine environments, and given the choice they clearly opt for them. I don't think that invalidates the argument about prestige, but it has to be a factor in this.
Men like you are the problem— refusing to work with women.
Don't give us that— if women produce workplace cultures that are unpleasant for men, then clearly it's the women who are responsible, for creating such a hostile environment, not the men trying to get away from it.
I think we’ve seen a lot of hostility directed at men. It’s hurt both men and women.
Thank you.
Boo hoo.
You are the problem.
You’re blaming women again. You’re taking it as a given that we are producing workplace cultures that are unpleasant for men. Don’t give me that bullshit. As if those poor men are just helpless and can’t get away from all the mean, powerful women … listen to yourself.
Women absolutely dominate HR, which produces workplace cultures.
Accountability isn't blame.
First, it is not a given that women produce toxic workplaces. I work with "powerful" women now. (They are my bosses; the ceo, and her second in command) I have no problem with them as women, or as my bosses.
Our team is small, five people, that lets us relate to each other as individuals rather than demographics. And we are responsible for different tasks and topics, with clear areas of responsibility.
Second, I have experienced the opposite as well, serving in the Air Force, we had a few women serving in our unit. Most of them left within the year. It could, of course be because of us lads "producing workplace cultures that were unpleasant for women", but their stated reason for leaving was that it just didn't work for them.
There still is a couple of men teaching at my old school, and some of the women in my unit stayed, but both places the majority (of the minority) left at some point. I'm not blaming anyone, but maybe men and women produce different workplace cultures, cultures that are less agreeable to the opposite sex?
Misandry much?
I'm not refusing to work with women - I still work with women. My boss is a woman, her boss is a woman. We work together just fine. But at every workplace there is a woman like you, and the more women, the greater the chance of having several Karens!
Especially ugly ones.
An underrated component of the vibe that education is daycare is that it’s so female dominated
🤣😂🤣😂
When I got into law school and told my mom it was the first cohort that was over 50% female, she said she felt bad for all the men who didn’t get in that should have since there were so many women. When I said it had the highest LSAT and GPA averages of any cohort as well, she said it would have been even higher if more men were accepted. Additionally, she constantly says my husband should have gotten accepted to more medical schools and is worried he won’t match into a good residency because he’s a white man. Not only is college being seen as more feminine, but to justify women excelling in their fields, society feels the need to then put down their accomplishments and say men are still more talented and the only reason we aren’t seeing it is because of female preference. It’s also interesting that the narrative around college (an institution pushing the liberal agenda and brainwashing students) delegitimizes the opinions of educated people, specifically women. Now when women have a voice supported by evidence and education, men can say it’s simply a product of the establishment and that they are still more critical will less education.
I wonder what role the relaxation of entry standards discussed below by Amy Wax has to do with the observed changes.
https://x.com/richardhanania/status/1842716757871522056?s=46&t=U7laPY1hHEa798qtlcpDpA
Wax offers zero real-life evidence of that though, she's just hand-waving.
Every institution that has admitted women enmass has had to lower its admission standards. When the military lowered the physical standards for women it was called Gender Norming.
Welcome to my mute list, troll. Bye
Never fear you will not be missed.
😔😔😔
Gee it’s almost like lower standards and preferential treatment aren’t good for anyone.
You'd be surprised how easy it is to run circles around so called educated and narcissistic women who have no common sense whatsoever.
Women are not entitled to status (not only does it not make them any more attractive it makes them arrogant and unfeminine) , nor are they entitled to be attractive, nor are they entitled to the company of men, still less to authority over them. Women are inferior to men and must be denied status or humanity will not replace itself. The perfect correlation of below-replacement birthrates and "education" for women is clear; there is no more effectively genocidal policy, neither it nor its proponens tcan be tolerated if humanity is to survive..
"Meteor strike imminent; women and minorities most affected"
Sounds an awful lot like “it’s rigged!”
Very true in my experience. On my first day of PhD grad school, back in 1994, our older woman professor warned us that this would be happening. She said that by the time we finished our degrees the easy access to lifetime tenured jobs with high pay would be gone because women were finally outnumbering men in the PhD track. So true. When I finished my Ivy League PhD, there were so few 'real' jobs left. Most of my female cohort has had to make do with temporary jobs, adjunct positions and teaching outside of the traditional academy. When the women showed up, the jobs, pay and opportunities did not rise to meet the increased pool of highly qualified workers.
This kind of specious reasoning is a pretty good example of why some men prefer to avoid female-dominated environments. If there are not enough jobs for which your training is suitable, it’s not that “jobs, pay, and opportunities did not rise to meet supply” it’s that *there wasn’t enough demand for what you spent/wasted your time doing*.
That’s a hard truth but since our society conditions men to deal with their own problems, it’s the kind of truth you can say to a man without serious collateral damage. Meanwhile, it’s been 20+ years since you got your PhD and you’re still implying it was some misogynist conspiracy that tenure track slots at elite universities were kept from you.
No, dear, it's not about the number of teaching jobs. It's about the TYPES of teaching positions which CHANGED from full-time, tenure-track professorships to temporary adjunct roles. Before the 1990s, universities hired more tenure-track professors and a few adjuncts. Since 2000, universities have shifted to hiring hundreds of adjuncts and only a few full-time professors. The ratio is about 30% tenure-track professors to 70% adjuncts.
Yes, that’s what happens when labor supply outstrips demand: compensation falls. Tenure protections being a significant component of total compensation for an academic.
This may shock and appall you, but men are subject to the cruel vagaries of labor markets as well.
Check out Forbes on the universities and mismanagement:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/administrative-bloat-at-us-colleges-is-skyrocketing/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/bureaucratic-bloat-eating-american-universities-inside/678324/
Maybe the coal mines in West Virginia were shut down and the manufacturing in the rust belt was offshored as part of a grand misandrist conspiracy? (/s)
It's called the law of supply and demand. When women flooded the labor market the price of labor went down causing men's wages to fall. In the exact same way that today's college graduates flooded the white collar job market causing the price of labor based on a college degree to fall. Because of the oversupply of workers with college degrees today's employers can be picky in whom they hire and pay far less.
The shift from full-time to adjunct faculty began long before 1994, and actually the 2010s/20s are the first period during our lifetimes during which that trend has been reversed.
Per the US Department of Education, the percentage of full-time faculty at colleges and universities was as follows.
1970: 78%
1976: 66%
1986: 63%
1994: 59%
2004: 53%
2010: 50%
And then you can see the current trend here:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/csc/postsecondary-faculty
"From fall 2011 to fall 2022, the number of full-time faculty increased by 11 percent (from 762,100 to 842,400) while the number of part-time faculty decreased by 13 percent (from 762,400 to 665,200)."
And people went along with it, because supply outstrips demand.
Should they have created more jobs to accomodate more qualified people or should they have created more people qualified for positions that were in need of thos people?
The shift from full-time to adjunct faculty began long before 1994, and actually the 2010s/20s are the first period during our lifetimes during which that trend has been reversed.
Per the US Department of Education, the percentage of full-time faculty at colleges and universities was as follows.
1970: 78%
1976: 66%
1986: 63%
1994: 59%
2004: 53%
2010: 50%
And then you can see the current trend here:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/csc/postsecondary-faculty
"From fall 2011 to fall 2022, the number of full-time faculty increased by 11 percent (from 762,100 to 842,400) while the number of part-time faculty decreased by 13 percent (from 762,400 to 665,200)."
Maybe feminism could fix this problem…?
just being a woman entitles your to human respect. being a great person, developing you character, skill at communication, logic and reason, creative problem solving, depth of understanding(knowing a bit of history) negotiations are things all women Should, be good at. I wish i could tell those women at a glance. They still all go to the ladies room together. they want consensus thinking. perhaps they need it. they love bureaucracy. there may be a time and place for that, say in the judiciary, but in real life. real time. this makes a living hell. Like at the Department of motor vehicles, to get paperwork or something. and they can never admit their mistakes or take responsibility. I was just doing my job.
What a weird line of reasoning. You doubled the supply of people trying to fill these positions and expected the number of them available to also just magically double to match that increase in supply? Perhaps your PhD should've been in economics, although you'd only need to take Econ 101 to understand the error in your thinking here.
Thanks for bringing awareness to this. Seems like male flight could be very subconscious for many. So many men don’t even know why “they don’t feel like it”. I know this is my straight son’s experience. He is “embarrassed” to be enrolled in college right now and didn’t want me to tell people or announce it. And my gay son is enrolling into college and specifically in the medical field starting January with no embarrassment and is excited for something to be working towards. It’s a social phenomenon that keeps happening in all our institutions. I see it in religion too: We can’t let more women speak, pray, teach, lead etc… because then the men will leave. If it looks like half the leadership is female, the men will stop listening and will leave “cause they don’t feel like staying”. As a society, it seems we keep centering the male perspective and experience as if it’s the “better, smarter way”. Even though the statistics show that women are leaving religion….and men are dominating, we still can’t add more women to the leadership of churches because the men will leave. And we just can’t have that.
Fascinating about your sons Jamee! So crazy how much the perception of college has changed in just a few decades- it used to be embarrassing not to go to college
And a feminised church is boring so then the hot females start going to the church where the charismatic male preacher looks like he's got a Bad Boy spark in him (charisma is both a gift and a curse).
😂 this made me laugh
Your findings among teachers, nurses and interior designers are a data point but I’m not sure they are a trend.
Physical therapists in 1990 were 90% female.
Males began enrolling at higher numbers as job prospects increased, wages climbed and the profession’s status increased.
Now, Physical Therapists graduate with an entry-level doctorate.
I graduated in 1992 and was paid $32,000 a year. Now, the median salary for Physical Therapists is $95,000 a year.
Today, physical therapist classrooms are 60% male.
Why did men join these predominantly female classes over the last 30 years? The answer: status and money.
I wonder if your conclusions amongst teachers, interior designers and nurses is a case of reasoning from the specific to the general?
Perhaps those professions were already declining in status and wages?
You simply found a correlation between female enrollment and the decline in wages and assumed causation.
Very interesting. Are there any other fields where this has been happening?
Historically, computer programmers. https://studentorgs.kentlaw.iit.edu/ckjip/where-are-the-women-a-detailed-history-of-women-in-computer-science-and-how-it-impacts-the-modern-day-industry/#:~:text=Women%20were%20among%20the%20first,pushed%20out%20of%20the%20industry.
Oh yes! We should definitely be talking about this more!
“Betty Holberton, Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas, programmed the ENIAC to perform calculations for ballistics trajectories electronically for the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory.”
I don’t know, man, the first six of six computer programmers were women.
This is fascinating. Hopefully the same trend continues in other fields as well for more of a “the dynamic changes because most people don’t like to work with all the opposite sex” rather than “men won’t pursue powerful jobs and they’ll all just become more unhappy”
Ok hang on. Women are 60/40 receiving college degrees and the reason is…oppression by men? Oppression by men evidently can’t be falsified. And what does it mean when a hypothesis can’t be falsified? It means it likewise can’t be proven.
Here’s an alternate hypothesis, offered by a lowly individual with a lived experience in both male-dominated and female-dominated environments: the more women in positions of power, the more toxic the environment becomes.
And men don't create toxic environments? I can tell you stories.
🫤
Fabulous analysis -- very compelling.
One very small point to add -- an outcome of the devaluing of college because it is becoming feminized is that our government is also defunding it. We are investing less money in universities as a society -- I'll bet that the decrease in funding aligns very neatly with the increasing percentage of women students. Just like the increasing percentage of women in a (formerly male) profession leads inexorably to a decrease in the wages in that profession and a decrease in the perceived value of that expertise.
Oh great point!
The last thing the education system needs is more money. Before they get a dime, they should get of the majority of administrators. Get rid of DEI. Stop pushing political agendas.
Why does anyone want to be in school after the age of 14 anyway. I've only ever seen USA high schools and colleges (what we used to call University but now call Uni,in Aussie fashion)in films or tv shows (I'm in UK) and it seems like Americans go to school until theyre pushing 40. Ha ha. Thats because the actors playing the school kids tend to be well mature. But the other day on the radio a young woman was saying how she'd done her degree at University,then she'd done a post-graduate degree,and she said,and ingenuously,I honestly don't think she realized WHAT she was saying ,I'm now starting a research degree (can't remember the exact name but that's what it was) so by the time I graduate from that I'll be just over 40 years old. And when the radio host asked her what sort of job her education would qualify her for she replied,oh I expect I'll do another degree. So I know learning is stimulating and fun but this long drawn out education seemed an end in itself. As for money,she was of an Asian family so of course did not need to work as they supported her.
When I taught K-12 in one of the largest school systems in the US a constant half-joking philosophical question was this: The school district has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars. It does NOT go toward building maintenance, instructional materials, or teachers' salaries. So where does it go?
When a bunch of women enter a profession, the supply of labor exceeds the demand for that labor, and wages go down.
This is basic economics.
Do you know I think what we need is a good old fashioned World War. I don't suppose anyone else,like any people with political and financial power has thought of that.
EXACTLY.
I spotted a news article recently that straight men aren't reading novels anymore, but gay men and women are. Same issue? Probably. Methinks you hit the nail on the head.
Booktok slop doesn’t qualify as a novel
Fantastic essay. It's like the elementary school playground for adults. The girls have cooties! Run away! I was at the emergency vet with my puppy last month and was looking around at the open floor plan ER where all the providers were in one room, and noticed that it was 100% women. This explains why. Publishing is another industry that used to be aggressively male-dominated and now is majority female. I transcribed an interview with the literary agent Maxine Groffsky years ago where she talked about how she became an agent because at the time, in the 1960s, only men were allowed to be editors, while women were relegated to support roles. Starting her own literary agency was her only way forward. Sidebar: I'm not surprised that the Freakonomics episode missed the main story here. Michael Hobbes has a great takedown of Freakonomics on his podcast, If Books Could Kill.
Oh my gosh I was thinking of cooties as I was writing this! Like any room with mostly girls- boys are allergic to. Afraid to catch our cooties???
Probably more afraid of hearing words like "tampons" lol
I was JUST thinking about recommending this podcast episode! If Books Could Kill is excellent.
I love Maintenance Phase, too. 😊
Yes!😊 Anything Michael Hobbes does is great, plus the wonderful and varied co-hosts. I had heard the freakonomics episode on IBCK a while ago, and I actually caught most of the broadcast last Sunday on Freakonomics regarding men’s college rates dropping. I was going crazy while they circled around the issue, but never quite got to the heart of it (sometimes they were so close!). I couldn’t put my own finger on what was so agitating, but it really just felt like they had weird blinders on. It was so nice to see Celeste’s essay in my inbox. Right on time 👍🏻
Yeah, I guess young men just decided that college girls have cooties. That must have been it.
https://youtu.be/hx5x0Ztffm4?si=qyGClwRQ2mynQ6vj
And no doubt the same must be true of the publishing industry.
https://x.com/JoyceCarolOates/status/1551210510389022723?lang=en
Surely there's nothing more to see here.
Bingo. Thanks for saying out loud what I've been observing for years. Happened in ordained ministry as well -- as women came to be ordained, they took the small, part-time positions while men got the big, prestigious church positions, and when that generation died out, fewer men wanted to go into ministry.
I have read about the same (Non Jewish white) male flight from a number of professions in NYC post WW2 when significant numbers of Jewish men entered them, such as teaching. Similar flight from a profession populated by those considered “lesser”.
Hahaha “Obedience…is a feminine trait.” Jeez, I shoulda thrown that out to my drill instructors in USMC boot camp! What a load of self-indulgent, self-serving crap. A channel catering to incel’s. Nice…
Looking inside HR I have noticed an incredible disproportion of women in the lowest ranks, that changes as you move into upper ranks. I now wonder if I will see a “male flight” or will this trend continue.
Great article. One additional consideration in the workforce is that people receiving college degrees now outpace job postings requiring a college degree. The biggest needs in the workforce in coming years will be in areas not needing degrees including male-dominated areas such as construction but also female-dominated areas such as home healthcare. Anecdotally, I see why women are still pursuing degrees because of a need to be taken seriously in the workforce. But it will be interesting to see how this overabundance of college degrees and competitiveness for desk jobs shifts things for women in the future.
Great point!