The end of men?

While having "the end of .." in the title is a great selling strategy, I am not sure that such prognostications stand the test of time; right, Professor Fukuyama? :)
But, that aside, this essay in the Atlantic raises a number of issues that I have often brought to my students' attention--BTW, most of the students are female--and have also blogged about here.

What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men? For a long time, evolutionary psychologists have claimed that we are all imprinted with adaptive imperatives from a distant past: men are faster and stronger and hardwired to fight for scarce resources, and that shows up now as a drive to win on Wall Street; women are programmed to find good providers and to care for their offspring, and that is manifested in more- nurturing and more-flexible behavior, ordaining them to domesticity. This kind of thinking frames our sense of the natural order. But what if men and women were fulfilling not biological imperatives but social roles, based on what was more efficient throughout a long era of human history? What if that era has now come to an end? More to the point, what if the economics of the new era are better suited to women?

As I have even mentioned in this blog quite a few times, my reality from the time I was growing up was one in which I didn't know that men were "supposed" to be the dominant gender.  (I prefer "gender" to "sex" ... pedantic, I suppose!)  I think the biggest reason for this was Indira Gandhi.  Ever since I knew how to say "prime minister", well, it was Indira Gandhi.  Then the 1971 war with Pakistan when I was a kid and people--politicians and regulars alike--were comparing her with Durga and Kali.  One politico went as far as to rephrase the famous Louis XIV statement when he said "India is Indira, and Indira is India"

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The trend that I see as an educator is all the more about female students simply kicking butt.  In my second year at WOU, one fantastic female student, who later went on to a prestigious law school, commented that she didn't have a boyfriend because up and down the Valley she hadn't run into any guy who could stand up to her intellect!!!
Anyway, read this from that same Atlantic essay:

Earlier this year, for the first time in American history, the balance of the workforce tipped toward women, who now hold a majority of the nation’s jobs. The working class, which has long defined our notions of masculinity, is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the home and women making all the decisions. Women dominate today’s colleges and professional schools—for every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will do the same. Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the U.S., all but two are occupied primarily by women. Indeed, the U.S. economy is in some ways becoming a kind of traveling sisterhood: upper-class women leave home and enter the workforce, creating domestic jobs for other women to fill.
The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today—social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus—are, at a minimum, not predominantly male. In fact, the opposite may be true. Women in poor parts of India are learning English faster than men to meet the demands of new global call centers. Women own more than 40 percent of private businesses in China, where a red Ferrari is the new status symbol for female entrepreneurs.

The Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin aspects of the last campaign, and their continuing presence on national and international politics, is all the more the beginning of a trend of women showing up in places where they were previously not allowed.  Good for 'em, and us, I say!  I am guessing that the coming decade will be the decade of women in American politics--it will be transformational.  (Even though I don't care much for Meg Whitman's politics, and even though I am not a California resident, I am cheering her on because I am convinced she will be way better than Jerry Brown, who is trying to relive the past.  It is that kind of transformation I am looking for)

I still stand by my semi-serious joke that once scientists figure out how to make easy the biological reproduction without the sperm from men, well, that will be truly the end of men ... And that day of reproduction will come sooner than we think.