The End of Men

Mr. Ogden’s presentation on Hannah Rosin’s “The End of Men” was very interesting. Rosin wrote about her findings that conclude feminism is no longer that relevant because women are starting to dominate the workforce, college, and economy. Mr. Ogden chose to present on this topic because views like Rosin’s are not something that this class discusses a lot. In every other presentation we have talked about the poor treatment of women historically, except for this one. This presentation and Rosin’s argument center on the statistics that show women’s roles are shifting through each generation. Rosin is an economist and throughout her presentation she showed data that demonstrates how women in higher positions are becoming more widespread and how the old fashioned idea of a women staying home to take care of the children and the men being the only breadwinner does not exist much anymore.  

After reading the article I was not swayed that feminism does not need to be relevant anymore. Like many of the other presentations we have seen have pointed out, there is much more to be done for women’s true equality in society. However, the goal of the article and Mr. Ogdens presentation was not to show this, it was more to just give the statistics and show how women have been making significant progress economically. Rosin showed this when she wrote, “A white-collar economy values raw intellectual horsepower, which men and women have in equal amounts. It also requires communication skills and social intelligence, areas in which women, according to many studies, have a slight edge. Perhaps most important- for better or worse- it increasing requires formal education credentials, which women are more prone to acquire, particularly early in adulthood”. Women are cut out to work in many professions that can be very rewarding and this is very evident through the data Rosin shows. On the contrary, it is hard to see that that is possible sometimes when all you hear is that men get paid more for the same job and some jobs are more likely to hire males. I plan to do my end of the year presentation on women in the sciences and how there is still a lot of work left for women to have equality in this field because it is very male dominated. Yes, the number of women in these jobs are growing, but some of their treatment by male coworkers is not something to be happy about but hopefully as more females join this field this behavior goes away. Women have made very strong gains and I do believe this is a trend that is going to continue for women based on how far they have come.

It was very interesting to hear my Mr. Ogden’s and my classmates personal stories about the different generations in their families and how they viewed a woman’s role. Mr. Ogden noted how his father thinks men are responsible for being the head of the household, while women care for the children and stay home to do things around the house. I could see this in my grandparents as well. Then Mr. Ogden talked about how him and his wife share things 50-50 and things have very much shifted away from the older view that his father had. My family is not as evenly split between my parents as Mr. Ogden’s family but there definitely is a noticeable shift from my grandparents and parents. I agree with Mr. Ogden that societal norms are slowly starting to change in each generation, and that is something that makes me very excited for the future.