Friday, May 13, 2016

The End of Men

            I found the End of Men article interesting, but I don’t really agree with the thesis. The author seems to believe that our modern economy is uniquely suited to women, and that the reign of men as the “dominant sex” has ended. But it seems to me that there is far more evidence to the contrary. First of all, the current wage gap doesn’t exactly suggest that women are far ahead of men. Women are paid around 70% of what men are paid, numbers that aren’t exactly consistent with a society in which women occupy a higher place in the hierarchy of genders. Furthermore, for all Rosin’s claims of women providing for their families over men, 53.2% of the workforce is male. If men are working more and making more money for their work, Rosin’s claim that women are becoming the dominant economic power seems impossible. Pop culture, which both affects and is a reflection of America as a whole, is similarly dominated by men. The majority of movies feature more male characters and certainly more male speaking lines than female, and women are often featured in roles that draw largely from outdated stereotypes. Music is similarly filled with stereotypes and questionable ideas about the roles of men and women in society. Again, if men are making more money and working more than women while being reflected in a much more positive light in pop culture, it seems near-impossible that women are the dominant sex.

            A much more realistic argument is that we, as a society, have come much closer to the equality of men and women. The workforce being almost 47% female is a reality that would have been near incomprehensible in the past, and the fact that we can and do have discussions about the role of women in pop culture would have been similarly hard to grasp. But saying that it’s the “End of Men” is simplistic and implies that there’s no more work to be done, or even that work needs to be done to help men out. That’s just not the case.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What do you think about this issue?

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.