End of Men

                Mr. Ogden’s presentation, anchored by an article and Ted Talk from Hanna Rosin that talked about how women have advanced in society and now it might be a women’s world as opposed to the past view that it was a man’s world. This hypothesis is supported through anecdotal and empirical evidence. Where this argument interested me the most was the economic side, money has no eyes for gender, and in a truly competitive market companies will hire the best workers that are the most productive regardless of any other factor. So, when Rosin presents her data, it goes with that economic theory, showing that women may be better suited for this era’s economy, as the manual labor in the steel mills era is effectively gone. College attendance rates are a good indicator of who will produce in an economy, because high education is a valuable trait, and with more women in college, the more desirable jobs will likely go to women at a continually increasing rate.
               But, this also reminds me of a book I read, Michael Lewis’ The Undoing Project which talks about bias in evaluation. Employers will hire people based on biases they don’t know they have, thus women may continually not get the most desirable jobs because the employers is more likely to naturally think more positively of the male candidate rather than the female. This can be attributed to the halo effect which is someone’s first impression making all of their traits seem more positive because they had one redeeming quality that shined over everything else. Some employers may be more likely to give men the halo effect without realizing it. Also, confirmation bias plays into women getting hired because if a women does anything whatsoever to play into a stereotype the employer has, they will generalize the women as that stereotype. This is likely to happen to women more so than men in the hiring process because there are less women desirable jobs, so they’re will be more generalization as it is more of an unknown. These two ideas that are talked about in Lewis’ book are key factors in women breaking through the silly proverbial “glass ceiling”.