It's interesting that in the evolution of combating male harassment of females this topic should come up. MeToo's biggest enemy is not organized resistance from men who believe they are entitled to take whatever liberties they may want, it is the belief by men that they have no say in discussions about behavior or even male roles any more. If one reviews the dialogue over the past year concerning this topic it is immediately obvious that there is no dialogue, there is only female on male scolding and the sense that men should just sit back and keep their mouths shut, or perhaps resign their position in the Senate. Now we are revisiting jobs discrimination, with a twist. There are a lot of men in traditionally male work roles who are proud that they are "tough" enough to go to a job site when it is twenty degrees outside and start working a hammer or a saw without complaint. It gives them a sense of worth when not much else they can do does. It is membership in a fraternity that only a small portion of the population is "tough" enough to join and these men tend to despise those who are not up for it, female or male. If all a man has is a strong back and if a job is better performed by a man whose back is stronger than a woman's, why is it discrimination to hire him for that job rather than a less physically capable woman? Sometimes the adage what's mine is mine and what's his is mine is not humorous.
12
Hi Jerry, I'm a woman and I am glad about the #MeToo movement happening. However, I'd like you to know that I, along with a lot of other women, do want to hear what you have to say. We don't want to silence you. My thought is that the only way to make lasting changes is for everyone to have a voice, women and men. So please, participate in the dialogue. And yes, you will have some points that I don't agree with, but I expect that you'll have some thoughts that never occurred to me. I want to know what they are, so please continue to participate in the dialogue. We will all be richer for it!
9
Insofar as traditional role jobs, I have never had one but I worked for fifteen years as a cost analyst in the construction trades industry and I came to know a number of men who saw in their jobs the pinnacles of their abilities. Most of these men were highly skilled at what they did and there is no doubt that women can excel similarly in such tasks as erecting buildings that don't fall down, in case one is inclined to be prejudiced against the value of trades people. There is a belief among trades workers that skill is the starting point, the assumption, of their jobs and that the true value of a skilled worker is measured in his or her capacity to endure the physical demands of the job. This is the hard part of the job and journeymen workers are incessant in riding the less experienced in keeping up with the jobs demands. I assure you that the verbal abuse these workers levy against women is virtually identical to what they hurl at younger men who have not proved "up to the job." The point is, if a woman wants a manly job, she should be prepared to be tough, because in the minds of their male counterparts, it's a world that won't tolerate less.
A simple,basic fact is that some jobs are manly because they are better performed by men. Take Firefighter,for example. I was one in my 20s (I'm now an employment law attorney.) A Firefighter's job requires much upper body strength because of the physical demands of the job. Women don't naturally have as much upper body strength as men because female bones are narrower than male bones,and the wider the bones the more muscle mass there can be. Muscle mass is needed for physical strength. Now,another job comes to mind--lawyering. Well,I better not go there.
19
So why not simply have strength/endurance requirements (which I'm sure is already in place)? Why bring gender into it? Gender disparity might be an outcome of that, but it shouldn't be an entry.
42
They did have the strength/endurance requirements. But when most women failed to make the grade, they changed (lowered) these requirements to address 'equal-opportunity' liability issues. For instance, (hopefully, only for the training) while firefighters are tested for their ability to carry people out of a burning building on their backs or across their shoulders, the guidelines were changed only for female recruits who were allowed to drag these victims by their feet across the floor and down the steps. There were at least a couple of PBS Frontline documentaries on this in the 1990s.
7
Sure, some jobs have special physical or other requirements. Objective tests should measure whether applicants meet those requirements. That is the rational and fair approach.
What’s not rational or fair is to have quotas for applicants who don’t have to meet the objective requirements.
It’s also irrational and unfair to categorically deny or dismiss all members of a group because you believe that “most can’t” meet the standards. (I used to work out with a female power-lifter who could easily carry the average firefighter over her head).
Time for Americans to grow up: Treat individuals as individuals; and when someone does a job well, treat her with respect.
37
Susan Chira should give Jordan Peterson a listen. He notes that even in the most gender-equitable societies (Norway or Sweden, for example), men and women continue to sort themselves into particular jobs. Nearly 20-1 ratio of female to male nurses, for example. Same in reverse for engineers. Jordan Peterson also explains that hierarchical structures will always exist because animals have been hard-wired for hierarchies for 350 million years. So this column is very disappointing. I suspect these opinions are written with the goal of undermining any concept of "masculine" and "feminine", as if to say biology is meaningless.
3
You've entirely ignored the cultural forces that currently drive the gender differences in career choice. There's nothing inherently masculine about engineering or inherently feminine about nursing. As the author stated, nurses used to be primarily male until women entered the workforce (and took a pay cut). There are quite a few studies out there looking at the pervasive gender bias limiting female participation and success at the collegiate, graduate, and professorial levels in the STEM fields if you'd care to look.
2
I would like to add my own history to this story because it differs significantly. I am a female orthopaedic surgeon. I am would say I am a feminist. When I became a board certified orthopaedic surgeon in 1985, 0.4% of board certified orthopaedists were women (it is now 4%). I understand that this is a very white collar job, not the blue collar trades you are discussing. I was never subject to any sexual harassment of any sort during my career. What I did experience was lower pay compared to my peers and the usual problem of when I acted like a man (assertive), that was unacceptable because I was a woman. I was held to standards of being demure and self-effacing which was not my style. This did have unpleasant repercussions at times. In a "man's" profession, but not allowed to act like a man because I was a woman!
5
I work in the male dominated field of Architecture and Construction. I recently rejected an order for Structural Grade Yellow Pine from a supplier, and had to call the salesman to back me up, only I was transferred to the female dispatcher. When I explained that the driver was arguing with me over 2x4’s clearly marked White Fir, and were not Yellow Pine, I relished the slight gasp, and then handed the phone to him.
Apologies and corrections followed. The gasp made it worthwhile.
1
Rigid gender-based definitions of work are but another signpost on America's road to third-world status and irreversible decline. Attitudes displayed by these mook-type men whose education probably never went past 12th grade and effectively ended at 7th are why we are slithering down the slope. My Ukhrainian wife gets out there and does any and all types of physical labor, from shoveling today's big snow to helping rebuild an engine. And living in our trigger-happy state of Indiana, anyone who would accost her would probably fare quite ill. Women need to remember to assert themselves fearlessly, arm themselves appropriately for the circumstances and move on.
2
In certain jobs, might is right. I don't expect an upper body strength challenged woman to carry me out of a burning building. I don't expect a sexily-dressed woman sweating in a dirty T-shirt to carry sheet rock. Women seem to want it both ways: they can go out to a restaurant in a group without their husbands or men in general and flirt but if a man were to come on to a member of this group, he would be ostracized and called a sexual predator. A man looks longingly at an attractive woman with large breasts, exposed cleavage, a tight skirt and high heels and he can lose his job (why does the woman dress this way? Do men expose their genitalia in public?). Give me a break!
4
Empirical data when compared to anecdote-based conclusions would provide a clearer picture of progress, and all the progress we must achieve against anonymous indifference of powerful corporations. To paraphrase, good analysis is not hyperbolic attribution to sexual stereotypes, but like a good miner, a good analyst is someone who cares for all workers, who is responsible, and who could be a man or woman. Change will come from analysis that lays the ground work for broader communities of solution.
1
If women, liberated, are supposed to be free to define themselves and their lives in anyway they please, why can't men be allowed to do the same? Why is this a problem? If a man wants to do what he considers a manly job, who should object?
Men choose to do what they do in every society in order to attract and retain mates. This is a fundamental human and animal reality. Men want to do things that women will admire and will, in that process, take jobs that also emphasize the generally accepted or popular view of maleness. This is wrong? Please, then, go change biology and come back to me in a thousand years.
The obverse of this point would be to put men in jobs where they do not achieve any sort of admirable status in the eyes of women who would then, in all likelihood, reject those men, if they have other choices, in favor of high status men. Can you fix this? How? Have you ever seen a rich baseball player or football player or any celebrity, for that matter, with a low status wife?
Men will always do what they can to stand out and achieve the admiration of family and women. Men who aren't able to achieve status in the eyes of their female peers get left behind or, just as often, divorced. Just because some feminists in the 1960s and '70s said everyone's role should be changed doesn't mean that fundamental change came in human behavior.
6
This is tiresome.
Ladies, women, girls, the construction industry is in need of laborers and skilled tradesman.
Have at it.
You want it. Earn it just as everyone else does.
The opportunities are ready and need to be expanded.
Here is your chance.
By the by, as a retired carpenter/Jack of all trades, the work is fulfilling and gratifying. It is also physically strenuous and dangerous. My career is ended due to a bad back, four surgeries upon my knees, that are finally replaced, bum shoulder and neck and an arthritic body used and abused beyond its limits. The work is dirty, hazardous, burning hot and freezing cold, wet, humid and dustbowl dry.
But it is fun and rewarding usually.
The opportunities are out here. The jobs are awaiting.
Prove it.
5
I left the professional world at 40 for the construction trades (I'm an apprentice electrician).
I personally do not feel harassed but do occasionally feel like I am a token or oddity. I'm sure men don't think of me as a natural at the job, but I do good work, I enjoy it, I've found that men usually come around, and besides, I would never let anyone run me out. I have no illusions about the behavior of men because I have seen it over the course of my lifetime in my former profession, in sports, in politics, culture, etc.
This article brought up something I hadn't thought of though, and that's the lesbian angle. I have definitely witnessed women (often younger) who make me cringe by behaving flirtatiously or allowing themselves to fall into stereotypes (I can't do this, can you show me, can you carry this for me). I find it outraging.
Because I am gay I would never even attempt to go along with sexual banter or play up my femininity (yes, lesbians could do this/can be/are feminine, don't flip out) to fit in. I can definitely see how men who see women as sexual partners might think they are even less welcome in the boys club, whereas lesbians are "more like guys" and would be seen as closer to equals.
One of the first men I worked with saw through my cagey "spouse" act and said I should just say right out that I was gay because then the men wouldn't hit on me. I think he was on to something.
5
Most forms of masculinity are toxic. If a man has to constantly "prove" his manhood by way of his trade, then he has many more issues than the surface reveals. When such men harass women, they diminish themselves, not the women. The age of NO GIRLZ ALOUD on the treehouse door is coming to a deservedly ignoble end.
1
This 'Manly' jobs article is written by a woman, and only cites women
Will there be a 'Womanly' jobs article written by a male, gender issues correspondent, and only citing men in the near offing?
6
As a man who works in a female-dominated field--social work--I see the mirror image of the issues pointed out in this article. I was promoted more quickly than my female peers, and the clients with whom I work give me more authority. They routinely call me "doctor," and they continue to do so even after I correct them.
In terms of the bigger picture, traditionally male-dominated professions are either stagnant or declining in job creation, while positions in female-dominated fields such as nursing/health care, social work and education are becoming more numerous. Men, particularly those who lack a college degree, have a choice. They can either embrace the age-old ethic of "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," suck it up and enter these and related fields, or they can continue to boil with resentment, feel sorry for themselves, and vote for people like Donald Trump, who will offer them false reassurances that those mining and manufacturing jobs are coming back and that the can be "men" again. The world is moving on, whether they like it or not.
2
Growing up, my impression of the gender differences was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Miss America.
As I worked around animals, I realized their gender distinction was not so great.
And I notice a similar gender difference much closer to the rest of the animal kingdom when I look at swimmers.
1
There is a way lot less of these problems in the professional class.
Not to say there are none but definitely not like what one sees in construction.
What does that mean?
2
It's not just women in traditionally male jobs who are harassed. Nurses, waitresses, school teachers, secretaries...you name it. It's not because the men fear women will take their jobs. The do it because they can. Or used to be able to and get away with it.
3
Women did “manly” jobs during WW2 and the country didn’t crumble. They built planes, ships and weapons. Now they are treated like dirt if they dare to work in a manly profession.
4
Because men were gone. When they came back the women had to leave. Now the men are still there and resent women coming in at the same time. Men, for all their bravado, are the most fragile things in the world.
1
Most of the male tradesmen I work with now are not very good, and most of the women are worse. The good male tradesmen I know have no problem with a competent woman working alongside them. And most of the supervisors and PMs are lazy, ignorant incompetents. So just claiming that reordering the work culture to be more favorable to women is just more wastefulness, instead reorder it to emphasize competence, efficiency, and safety, regardless of sex or race, and I think most of the problems would resolve themselves. Fat, lazy sloths have the most time to spend denigrating others. Or as it used to be said, idle hands (and minds) are the Devil's workshop. Signed, an agnostic white male.
6
I read a report here in the NYT where women are forming work associations where women gather together to work in female safe spaces and are not subject to men's interference.
Don't you get it? Men have their domains and woman have theirs so that some work can be done. Sexual tension in the workplace makes the task difficult, what ever the job. Hope Hicks dates the wife abuser Porter and now the governance of the nation is disrupted.
Brains vs. Brawn. Too simple, or too true?????
So much entitlement.
1
The drumbeat of how aful all men are when it's really only a immeasurable portion of a certain type of guy, well, it's destroying a natural goodwill between mena nd women. If we had editorials each day about the "things" women do to men, it would rightfully be condemned, because we all know that those things are are mix of nature with a certain type of woman, and not at all the majority or common experience. Three of my close friends have had marriages end because their wives have cheated. At least two other friends have had long term girlfriends cheat with a guy who has more money. I don't look at all women as cheats or gold diggers. In fact, to make these deductions doesn't even cross my mind in the course of normal conversation. These editorials are tiring and are nothing more than assault against men. I guess no one has sons they love. This moment in the culture has created a silent resentment that will be manifested with legal hostility against women. How sad all of this is.
6
Exactly right. Thank you.
3
Is is misogynist or chivalrous that women are excluded from playing alongside men in the NFL?
It's neither misogynist nor chivalrous that women don't play in the NFL. It's stupid that the game goes on at all now that we know the damage it does to players' brains.
1
And yet, men don't want to be nurses. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/sunday/men-dont-want-to-be...
2
A conscientious, unbiased writer would, when considering the dual phenomenon of the paucity of women plus sexual harassment (SH) in working class environments would, on Day 0, set-out various plausible hypotheses:
1. The SH is driven primarily by common heterosexual desire, that is felt by its targets to be more intense because:
(a) it is spread across fewer women by more men;
(b) a higher proportion of the men in such workplaces, being lower in status than men in white collar fields, have no stable partner and so live with a higher level of unfulfilled sexual desire;
(c) the men in such workplaces actually have higher levels of serum testosterone and as such have more developed physiques; higher sex-drives; and, are more aggressive in many aspects of their lives including in their come-ons to women; or
(D) male dominated/blue-collar workplaces inculcate a culture of frank heterosexuality such that men who work there are more constantly conscious and aware of their sexual desire for women that they then express more vocally and openly.
2. Men, as a self-conscious social group, defend their collective interests from the entry of women to their trades and workplaces via SH as a form of bullying.
So, which is it? This piece leaves us without a clue as it jumps, with spectacular intellectual malpractice and ZERO evidence or consideration of the alternatives, to #2.
What's going on, NY Times? Is this just incompetence? Or is it institutionalized class prejudice and misandry?
5
DavidC,
Need to disagree with you a little here. 1.(b) is wrong for most of my local. The paper pusher that doesn't do anything but point or sit is not respected nor desired. So is the idea that they earn more money. The Trades make very good money at the journeyman level.
The rest is an interesting take.
Thanks.
4
Thanks for responding, DS, and apparently direct from the world being placed under the microscope.
How about the broader point at issue in 1.(b)? We read that marriages and stable relationships are in decline across society and especially in working class environments. But does that translate to declining sex lives and greater unfulfilled needs among those in the trades or on the factory floor? Or are folks "back-filling" their sex lives with more transient or casual encounters so that their overall level of sexual satisfaction remains more or less the same as (or even better than) 25 or 50 years ago?
Of course, the ideas in this article, and in the constant torrent of articles that the Times publishes every day and which say the same thing, will call come tumbling down into nothingness if the idea, that we are all equal, is finally discarded.
Numbers tell us that this is a world of inequality. 5 does not equal 10. And a woman who can only run 5 miles is not as vigorous as a man who can run 10 miles.
The old adage, "Put Mind Over Matter," has its limitations.
Very simply, the great majority of men are stronger than the great majority of women.
Testosterone facilitates the development of muscle; estrogen facilitates the deposition of fat on breats, hips and buttocks to give a women her curvy features. A woman's curves do not carry a punch.
Likewise, although many women are doing better than many males in school (This is arguably a consequence of the feminization of education -- but that is a subject worth an essay all its one) men with IQs over 140 outnumber women with IQs over 140 by about 7 to 1.
It has been established that there is a positive correlation between cerebral weight and IQ among human beings. And it has been established that Men on average have heavier brains than women. Therefore I dare to assert that no matter how biggoted and Neanderthal this may sound, it appears that men on average have more innate cognitive capacity than women.
America is one of the most ===== whipped countries on earth.
2
Men and woman have identical Iq's on average, and brain mass is only important when correlated with body mass, which is also lower with women. There are more men with very high IQ's and more men with very low IQ's. The male distribution is less clustered towards the middle, which doesn't have anything to do with distribution and also doesn't really effect most people since most people are more or less average..
1
The author of this article is out of touch or she stayed within her groupthink group to write an article 50 years behind the times. A perfunctory search about women in the construction trades indicates women are taking over, as well is an increase in women ownership of construction companies.
1
I rarely encountered problems being a woman, often the only woman, on male construction sites (except for one lunkhead who I learned to ignore), so I take exception to the assumptions of this article. That said, there are some jobs that take strength or size that not every woman can do. Pretending that isn’t true is stupid and how people get hurt.
8
The first thing we need to do is to stop defining "masculinity" by the deviate conduct of misanthropes and Neanderthals. These latter day "apes" are not modern men and they should not be regarded as men.
1
The attitude of men in the construction industry to women isn't limited to their female co-workers.
They behave in much the same way to clients or potential clients.
They are patronising, derogatory, demand to speak to the man of the house, & intimidating.
On one occasion I escaped rape.
After the tradesman, onsite to give a quote, had left, I phoned a client. Maybe I heard a noise, but I turned to find the tradesman had climbed in through the bathroom window.
(My apartment is one storey above ground & the window's in full view of the street.)
I told my client what was happening, naming the tradesman & his trade. When I asked him why he'd broken into my home, he said he forgot his pen.
I told him to open the front door & leave. Then I ran around closing all the windows.
That was 30 years ago & I still feel sick at the thought of calling any tradesman. I'd open a vein to be able to hire tradeswomen & feel safe.
5
It's not just a jobs problem. The whole notion of manliness depends on defining itself in opposition to and superior to women. That leaves women as second class human beings. Show me a celebration of manliness that doesn't put down women directly or indirectly (as in gay-bashing).
We recognize white supremacists as a racist cancer despite their claims to *white pride*. How come we are reluctant to label manliness as unmitigated misogyny?
There's no positive trait that is exclusively male or female. Men are nurturing and caring. Women are strong and brave. We should be teaching all of our children to be the best that they can be without regard to gender stereotypes.
Discarding the sexist notion of manliness is long overdue.
Men and women are not the same. Our bodies are different, our hormones are different, our ways of thinking are different, and our ways of experiencing the world and each other are different. That's not going to change much.
What needs to change is this belief that there is something defective and deficient about men just because they're not like women or because some women feel uncomfortable with masculine behavior. I was born to live out my potential as a human being and a man, not to make women feel more comfortable with my existence.
You celebrate manliness every day by living as a free American. It was manly men who died and suffered so you could live in a prosperous country with a free press and your right to express yourself in its pages. Whatever your complaints are, just remember that they'd be a whole lot worse if it weren't for the men who came before you and protected you and the lifestyle you enjoy.
1
I knew it. The male ego is very fragile. The 'manlier' the man, the more fragile.
2
At this rate manliness is going to end up meaning emotional fragility.
As women venture into all the trades and professions men must either give up their notions of male superiority or retreat to the spheres that women have little interest in: concussion inducing sports, crime and video games.
It's perfectly fine for men to feel superior at some things and women at others. Despite your perverse wish, you wouldn't like a world men take no pride in themselves and become mediocre for the benefit of women.
Manliness will mean whatever men decide it means for themselves, not what women decide it should mean.
1
As a stay at home dad I see the other side of this coin every day. Diminished and demeaned every day by women who feel threatened by my skill at "women's work".
4
Equal opportunity and equal pay require equal work. In some blue collar jobs that might be possible. In jobsthat take sheer strength it is often not. If a female worker can’t break a stuck bolt (not strong enough) then a guy has to come over and do it for her. If a female can’t heft a heavy torque gun, then she isn’t able to carry her own weight on the job. This has nothing to do with “what is a manly job and let’s not think like that anymore.” It’s just common sense. I doubt the author has spent much time in real construction. And on any well run job men are usually very aware that they can lose their jobs for being gender inappropriate. The premise here is an over-generalization.
5
I have managed very large groups of blue collar workers for 30 years, which traditionally had been all men. Although about 20 years ago women started very slowly entering the groups. By and large it has been a very respectful process with no terrible behavior like you read in the media. They key has always been a very strict training and expectations process, recurring every year for all employees. And a strict zero tolerance approach by all of management, ESPECIALLY, frontline supervisors. People losing their jobs for unacceptable behavior clarifies expectations very very quickly.
5
Maybe you could give the men a little bit of credit? The vast majority of men in your workplace were never going to mistreat women with or without your programs and punishments, but that belief deprives you and the other management of taking the credit for that.
And why would you expect blue collar men to behave more poorly than white collar men like you? It seems that after spending 30 years with them, you've learned very little from your perch above them. It seems you could use some training and wisdom yourself.
2
When my husband suddenly died, in 1993, I began to do ALL the jobs and activities he used to do, with my help. I did my own home improvements, including electrics, plumbing, and building, by myself. Women can do pretty much anything men can do. Get used to it.
4
For the commenters that suggest there are jobs that are better done by men owing to physical strength required and etc. Have you stopped to think that there are perhaps entire job categories that mostly men do now that women would really be better at? The auto insurance industry seems to think women are better drivers (fewer accidents = lower rates). But trucking, operating heavy machinery (some driving is usually required), and probably a lot of chauffer type work is predominately done by men. Now I will wait to be lambasted for such heresy!
2
There are plenty of jobs that were formerly seen as "male" but have moved to being "female" teachers and bank tellers come to mind. The main effect of the change in those professions was a decline in the level of respect and pay accorded the positions. Other areas such as veterinary medicine -- now overwhelmingly female -- could suffer the same fate. Some will claim that this is because the available workforce doubles by having women enter the field, and that it is simple supply and demand. However, there is a good case is to be made that the system immediately devalues jobs filled by women. Perhaps those men working in the trades are somehow unconsciously aware of, and afraid of, that history.
2
No - it has to do with any field at all where men feel women don't beong or should 'know their place'. This could be anything from being a chef to teaching poetry.
4
Let's be clear. If there are to be no manly jobs, there is to be no manliness. And no femininity. La difference est morte. Look at what Susan Sarandon wore to the Golden Globes, an androgynous anti-outfit. That is the future of gender despecialization.
This week, a NYC school canceled its traditional father-daughter dance. It was insufficiently inclusive. But that's just the tip of that iceberg. Why should a child want to dance with a parent of the opposite sex? Why should anyone want to dance with anyone of the opposite sex?
Like it or not, biology's greatest exploitation of the need for sexual reproduction is the genetic specialization of the sexes. Among humans, one sex specializes in strength, the other in the genetic soundness we call beauty. Cultures have simply gone with the flow. Now, we are going to try for sexual reproduction without sexual selection. Good luck with that.
4
Still 92% of all workplace deaths are men. Why isn't that a 'manly' jobs problem, Ms. Chira?
Consider that a sanitation worker dies every day. Nearly all men.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/opinion/sanitation-workers-deaths-uni...®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
Why isn't that treated as a gender equity issue?
7
so having read the article it is clear that in the case of sanitation workers the issue is lack of private sector worker protections. if the private sector treated workers fairly instead of taking advantage of them to increase profits then both genders would be better off.
3
Simply put Frank, that wouldn't vibe with their narrative. It is clear that obviously women experience some issues more than men. What third wave feminism fails to fully acknowledge, is that men face some problems more commonly than women. This is one of them: others include a lower life expectancy, fives times increased rate of suicide, lower college graduation rate, etc. Unfortunately, there is a underlying narrative in third wave feminism that essentially believes in a mesh of three different descriptions of negative male statistics: all is actually great being a male, any tragedy befalling a male is their fault, or this is necessary to atone for all the sins that have been committed by males in the past/ present/ potentially future. Clearly Ms. Chira does not want to advocate for gender equity in regards to this facet of the conversation, as it is a true burden that the male population faces.
4
There was a single female crayfish that recently mutated in an aquarium in Germany to reproduce by asexual parthenogenesis. It escaped and is now devouring ecosystems worldwide. You go girl!
Discovering how to rig this fantastic mutation for humans can quickly rid the world of the scourge of manly men and settle the war of the sexes for good. A billion years of evolution is so last week. What could go wrong?
Perhaps Susan Chira can explain in the next article how in the course of the last 40 years the psychological / social work profession went from 80% male to 80% female? Young men now routinely report male-bashing by women professionals as a tactic to keep young men out of the profession. Why don't feminists care about that?
7
source please
2
I remember when I tried to convince the president of a company to install a computer terminal in his office so that he could have immediate access to the most current financial and operational information needed to manage the company, but he declined the offer because he would have had to use a keyboard and typing was a women's job.
1
Women have known they could become scientists, construction workers, bankers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, ditch diggers, warriors, rulers, and so on for all eternity. Men have know they could take on so-called female roles if they wanted. The the heyday of the mining community where I lived, women would take jobs in the mines if their husbands /fathers died. Mine work was considered beneath them but they did it to survive.
It is time to stop this faux outrage and let everyone choose the career they see is best for them. If a woman wants to be a fulltime housewife and mother, embrace that instead of attacking her. Same if a man wants to be a househusband and father. I quit the feminist movement back in the 1980s because it did not care about equality for women and did not support freedom for women. Feminism only cares about ensuring everyone is stuffed into one box, theirs.
7
"...sexual harassment is more regular and severe in traditionally male occupations. " This is hardly news, but it's good to have it laid out and discussed in specifics this way. This rage comes out in the news occasionally when it manifests itself in violence, but usually it's hidden.
Early in my supervisory career, I encountered a work practice, in a union job, that was absolutely wrong and did something about it. The "gangs" of workers did heavy cleaning. Part of the work was carrying 40-55lb 5-gallon containers of chemicals up and down flights of stairs and long distances. Women usually did not choose to work on these gangs, but a few did.
I observed that the men did all the bucket-carrying and 30 minutes before lunch, one of the two women took lunch orders-asked for mine too-and then said that she usually left the site now to go get a hot lunch and bring it back so that the gang could start a full lunch period with a delivered hot lunch.
This had become an unofficial "shop practice".
Everyone was very happy.
The next night the same thing, but this was the other woman's turn.
Everyone was very happy.
The following night, when the first woman started taking lunch orders, I stopped her and told the biggest man to take the lunch orders tonight. He refused. I told him he could do it or clock out. Alternatively, no one could do it and at lunch, everyone could get their own and still be back in time for the start of work. Turmoil.
No one took orders. The gang called the union over lunch. An organizer came and tried to intimidate me. I held my ground, there is no "women's work". Next night, I instructed the women to grab a 50-pound pail and start carrying it. The work ground to a halt. The gang was "ruined" by me. The women went out on workmen's compensation.
5
Since forever and until very recently—as in from after the development of simple and reliable birth control (“the pill,” ca. 1960s), the distinction between private life and public life was the distinction between the female-dominated domain and the male-dominated domain: home life (children) and the work world (money)—caring for a family and supporting it.
Men seem to be quite hung up on their masculinity, yes?
2
It may be reassuring to some that the MeToo movement will spark change. But, I take issue with the article saying that women swallowed hard and put up this behavior for 50 years. We didn't swallow hard; we reported it and were ostracized, humiliated or fired. Title VII didn't exist until the feminist revolution in the 70's that finally gave a name to the then unnamed horribleness of "sexual harassment". In the early cases women had to prove quid pro quo and that evolved b/c of women not men. Jobs are now scarce and I do think there will be a backlash so women in their early 20's and 30's have to realize this will be a life long battle for them just as it was for us who were in our 20's in the 1970's. Until women are in board room's in at least 1/3 of positions nothing will change. And that does nothing for waitresses, domestic workers and factory floor workers.
4
Not too long ago a woman couldn't walk past a construction site without being the subject of verbal abuse. I can't imagine what actually WORKING there might have been like.
2
Men get abused too. Often they are in manly jobs,police, firemen, military and because of the humiliation do not report the abuse. In some cases the women use the idea that they must be the victim not the perp to control the situation and manipulate the victim through emotional blackmail.
4
On your first point, In my current job as a surgical resident I experience this heavily. Some surgeons go the extra mile to intentionally degrade any male resident in their presence: insulting their knowledge/ skills base, their integrity, their personal life. In contrast, the female residents have never described any of this abuse, and in fact talk about how nice these surgeons are to them. Gosh, I would love to experience that.
2
It's not just in civilian life. Forty-five years ago, I enlisted in the Navy as a WAVE. Starting in boot camp, women were subjected to a tremendous amount of male hostility, sexual harassment, name-calling and being divided into one of the two categories as stated in the article. I only hope that the military has changed its ways and that my nice, straight, respectable, capable second-cousin, who just joined the Navy, is not subjected to the kind of treatment to which I and my fellow WAVES were subjected.
2
Although this op-ed cites many so-called academics, it still reflects many stereotypical perceptions of men. In fact, the writer uses so-called academic evidence to support the stereotypes. As far as I am concerned modern society is moving increasingly to feminism and the former world of men is becoming emasculated. I believe this is the intended result of the modern progressive, to feminize and emasculate society. What bothers me is that many men are part of this transformation. It is a true departure from traditional patterns of family and community in which the differences between men and women were not based on sociology. Thank you.
4
Society will be better if it acquires more "feminine" traits and loses many undesirable "masculine" ones.
2
Replying to Karen:
What do you consider to be masculine traits, what do you consider to be feminine traits, and why?
Do you for example consider being straightforward, subtle, logical, bold, self-sacrificing for the good of others, intuitive, considerate, focused, team-oriented, risk-averse, willing to take risks, or creative to be masculine, feminine, or neither? Why?
How important are the things you’re good at? How important are the things you’re not so good at?
Consider the possibility that this sort of categorizing is dicey business. Men are like this. Women are like that. Black people are this way. White people are that way. Asians! Muslims! Scandinavians!
What are the odds that you’re going to make big mistakes and do more harm than good when you start going down that road?
1
Karen K, I just want to point out that in replying to Southern Boy, who lets us know his home is rural Tennessee, you essentially dismissed him and did so with a snide remark. As an academic woman myself in the northeast, I want to hear and listen hard to this young man (i.e. "boy"), for it is sad he feels emasculated. This is a strong word, a strong feeling. It implies a sense of being belittled, of a deep hurtful feeling of being castrated, socially neutered, even excluded as a no longer whole being. We should all care about these feelings. Moreover it is not unreasonable to think that anyone who honors a myriad of customs that together comprise a way of life that men, women and children built, together, into a loved tradition would take great offense at "outsiders" who mock it. I want to know what Southern Boy's life is like, the details, his vision of the good, the bad and the ugly and to find out what we share and/or what is foreign between us. This takes much much work. But the comment section of our paper of record -- the NYT -- should be a place where we all reach for mutual understanding. Not unnecessary dismissive retorts.
1
I am less optimistic about the possibilities of charge in this political climate. The constant dog whistles appealing to white male privilege along with the current swamp dwellers could easily turn into a version of The Handmaid's Tale.
I always envision Pence as the Commander.
2
What I worry is that while writers speak of "male privilege" or "entitlement" they fail to entertain that in a workplace with few barriers to entry, any new worker is a threat to be managed. As a man, I have seen the brutality with which men treat other men to maintain a hierarchy, to protect their jobs, and ensure their status. That men should treat women in the same way should not be surprising. That men should choose gender as their weapon of choice equally unsurprising. Ultimately, without any acceptance that workers in tenuous positions will fight to defend their jobs. They do not see themselves as defending any greater privilege than the privilege to keep working which they see as under threat. You are, in a way, asking them to disarm; to train/support/encourage the person that might ultimately take their job. And you wonder why it generates resentment?
6
Excellent points which deserve much more thorough examination. I think you accurately summarize the Trump voter who feels his way of life and livelihood is under attack. He sees this attack as directly threatening his identity. Unfortunately, with Fox News reinforcement -- the wrong causes are assigned blame. It isn't corporate America stealing his job, it's that uppity woman or minority.
3
Hardly a day goes by that something isn't written in the NYT about what women have to put up with. You have to be either extremely myopic or devoid of empathy to ignore everything male laborers and soldiers have had to endure over time.
Most of my male ancestors who worked in factories and mines for most of their lives went to those jobs every day because they had to, not because they wanted to. Some of them had a hard crust because that's how you survive a life like that. They endured it for the women and children. Many of them suffered work-related long-term illnesses and almost all of them died before their wives. How privileged they were!
Articles like this, which are all too common here and elsewhere, create an illusion and a narrative about "bad men" and the ever-suffering woman that can be used to demand that "change is necessary," which means less for men, more for women, whether they deserve it or not.
Modern feminism is driven by self-interest and self-obsession, and an absolute disregard for the pain and suffering of men, not equality.
8
Society gets to choose how it assigns roles and the old society had males laboring to support their females and offspring. These societal norms kept things civilized for the most part. Today society dabbled in free and equal norms for its members but it will not fully commit to these new norms. Why, because that would require everyone being treated as human beings 1st and foremost.
I worked hard to be seen as an engineer, hockey player/coach, and scientist. I never wanted woman or female added to those roles because that separates me from "others". We will never be equal until we accept that engineering jobs do not have a gender, sports do not have a gender, and that gender is only one of the facets that make "me" who I am, but does not define or limit what I am.
2
This isn't rocket science, but is quite clear, just by way of basic common sense and observation. Look around at the typical construction site. Very masculine and macho looking environments. Always like that, so why the surprise now?
2
I spent some years in a multi-national group of low- and mid-income blue collar workers: carpenters, joiners, builders, plasterers, tilers, plumbers, masons, farmers, landscapers, gardeners, and labourers. They were mostly men, but included several women.
Their work culture and relationships were completely different from what is assumed in this article. What counted was whether you could do the work, how skilled you were, and how reliable you were. It had nothing to do with sex.
Several of the highest-status members of this group were women because they were natural leaders, worked hard, related well to the customers, and had good business skills.
They all harassed each other constantly, with jokes, put-downs, pranks, insults, curses, and the occasional tirade. The women gave and took as good as the men. That was their culture. Was it "macho"? Of course. Was it human, friendly, and honest? Yes. In fact it was wonderful to be around, far more human and authentic than any white-collar job I've ever had.
This seems to be another ideological NYT article relying on cherry-picked, partisan sources, slanted to make a point, while actually ignorant of what it's talking about.
11
Is it possible that there is a sound reason why since the earliest recorded history, human civilizations have established separate social roles for men and women, as reflected in the Confucian Chinese saying that "the functions of husband and wife should be different"? I would suggest that it has something to do with survivability. Perhaps, societies in which strong gender roles exist have strong family systems which provide a higher level of social harmony and cooperation than more "loosely structured" societies in which these roles are weak or non-existent. Both Chinese and Indian traditional societies have existed, and flourished, for a long time. The highly patriarchal societies of ancient Greece and Rome laid the foundations of Western civilization over 2,700 years ago.
This is not to say that these societies have been ideal. Patriarchal societies have tolerated and promoted many injustices, including violence against women. Traditional India and China were hardly paradises for women - though men didn't have it all that good either, unless they were part of the elite. But those societies have survived, and even thrived.
Gender roles provide social stability, and in 21st century America as well as 1st century China, the only people who don't have to worry about social stability are the rich and powerful.
4
Some Republicans talk about the deficit, but mostly they just talk about tax cuts. And they mean it. And it's all that most voters care about. If and when the economy slows down, they will call for more tax cuts! Seems to work for them.
1
Ironically, the decline of manufacturing may have polarized the roles. On my way to a humanities Ph.D. in the 1970s, I worked in three different factories, all assembling precision materials (sometimes under a magnifier)--a two-way radio factory, a phonograph needle factory, and good old Kodak in its glory days. There was some power jostling among the sexes (some thought only men should work the machines), but mostly a good deal of equity, including somw female supervisors. There was also pretty decent ethnic equity. The pay was better and the sexism was far less than in the "white-collar" jobs in which I also typed for a living. Maybe heavy industry was and is a bastion of macho identity, but the blue-collar story is one of greater equity and opportunity than this article suggests.
10
The real truth that the author can't handle or simply is lying or pretending to not know is that most woman can not do, and in most cases do not really want to do many of the tasks required in traditionally strenuous, dangerous and yes also very skill and intellectually demanding jobs that mostly males do. Now of course when women are brainwashed by our media and Marist college professors to believe that they have some mysterious right to get exactly half of the high status or high paying jobs that they really do not want to do, and then have our society "humanize the work environment" take the nasty bits out of them so women can do just the easy stuff they enjoy, well then you get woman demanding they have a right to 50% quota hiring of women. And the remaining male half of the employees doing all the heavy lifting, because of this reality the recent inanity of women crying about how they are not getting paid as much. And paradoxically who this often harms the most, for sake of argument, is the 25% of women applicants for a job who can and actually want to do it for they have to be humiliated by the hiring and failure of basely unqualified women needed to meet a 50% quota. Women have written articles and books about the idiotic politically motivated lowering of standards and quota hiring of women into the military. Small weak 90 pound woman and ones who are 100 pounds overweight and refuse to for example carry a gun on other jobs are a continuing insult to all workers.
7
The patients I have lifted while working as a nurse, the intellectual, emotional and physical challenges that nursing brings are enormous. Nursing is a female dominated profession. Please don't talk about women being unable to manage physically and mentally until you have spent time with some nurses. I'm unsure you could keep up.
4
It's almost as if ignoring biology is dangerous. Who knew?
6
It's with a bit of trepidation that I offer comment since my personal experience has generally run counter to many stated here. In my life I have worked in textiles mills, paper mills, power plants, engineering offices and numerous construction sites in the United States and overseas. Among other jobs I've worked as a "yard rat" in a wood yard, President of a union Local with 800 members (with over 200 females), an Associate Engineer and too many power plants and construction sites to count. And yet, I have never encountered any egregious act of gender directed discrimination or harassment as many described herein. I'd have to go back to the 60's to recall females even being conspicuous on a job. I'm not trying to stake a position or take issue with anyone's argument, I'm just relaying my own experience.
But I've never, and to my knowledge none of my friends, ever been molested by a priest either. Perhaps it me.
8
I am growing tired of the war on men. No. People may have been created with equal rights, but no two people are the same or have the same inborn capacities. Get on this "internet" thing and just watch what, for instance, a roughneck working on an oil rig does for a living. It is dangerous, strenuous hard work. Not every person on earth could do this job and even fewer would want to. People get jobs because they need to pay the bills, not to oppress YOU.
9
After reading some of these comments one might be forgiven for thinking that most firefighting work involved carrying 220 lb people.
I want my firefighters to come in a variety of shapes and sizes. I want a firefighter who can squeeze into a small opening. I want the firefighter who can last longer on a portable air tank. I want firefighters who are lighter in weight so they don't cause weakened structures to collapse.
There are plenty of reasons that women, physically, make excellent firefighters. Excluding women makes a firefighting team weaker.
17
You can do real-time engineering load calculations in your head in a fire weakened structure determining that the 130lb female firefighter is safe and the 160lb male will cause a collapse? (Weight without equipment for illustration.) This incredible skill must be passed along to all the other fire chiefs around the country.
Or perhaps you have absolutely no knowledge of either what firefighters do or how firefighting is done.
1
I'm surprised I haven't seen it mentioned in the comments so far, but it's not just harassment that keeps women out of many traditionally male occupations, such as construction worker, firefighter, or oil rig mechanic. It's also the fact that many of these occupations have schedules that do not mesh well with family responsibilities. Some require being away from home for extended periods of time. Some require very irregular hours or being able to work at a moment's notice (such as volunteer firefighters, maybe less so for union ones). Some require working to tight deadlines (construction) and may require a lot of overtime, again with little notice.
While all of these conditions can also apply to traditionally female occupations (i.e. office work), usually occupations with a critical mass of women have more family-friendly schedules. It was not just men's physical strength that defined "masculine" jobs, it was also men's relative freedom from child/elder care responsibilities and willingness to put the job's demands first. I think there is great benefit to instituting more flexible schedules for workers regardless of gender - a male friend of mine is in the building trades, and if he needs to pick up his daughter, take her to a doctor's appointment, or otherwise arrange his schedule around hers, there is NO understanding). But until such schedules become more common in "male" fields, few women with families will enter them (or stay once they have children).
14
I think one reason these and other male-dominated professions continue to have inflexible schedules is because it’s assumed the men have stay-at-home wives. That’s a really old-fashioned assumption that hopefully will go away with time.
2
Your entire premise is sexist as you assume that women must be in jobs that enable them to attend to what you seem to feel is their primary duty - raising children. Who says all women want a family? Or that men can't attend to children and a household?
1
This article is firmly fixed within the narrow limits of the American elite feminist imagination, which assumes that men - especially working class men - unjustly feel themselves "entitled" and need to change their thinking before relations between the sexes improve. What elite feminism demands is that discrimination based on gender be eliminated, but that the most fundamental inequality, economic inequality, be allowed to grow. Had Hillary Clinton become President, it is likely that economic inequality as a national crisis would be as ignored as it is under Trump, although without the gaffes that characterize his administration.
Along with this comes the assumption that white males are a kind of privileged aristocracy in this country, a status that few of them, perpetually threatened with economic insecurity, actually feel. Indeed, the crisis in "Middle America" in which both men and women suffer is something the liberals, including the elite feminists, cannot understand or connect with. That is because they regard the culture of Middle America as inferior. And it is a major reason why Trump "won" in November 2016 and why the Democratic Party may not win in the November mid-term elections.
The narrow views of elite feminists and other liberals may lead to the "normalization" of Trump, which will be a disaster the American republic may not survive. But liberals as well as so-called "conservatives" share the blame.
12
Define "elite feminism". I can't hear that particular dog whistle.
Good comment, but if I may, you got a couple of things wrong here:
1. "What elite feminism demands is that discrimination based on gender be eliminated..." No, what it demands is discrimination based on female gender be eliminated. Discrimination against men is fine.
2. Don't equate feminists and liberals as being the same group of people. No. While most feminists are liberals, more liberals than you can imagine have rejected modern feminist rhetoric, it's just not yet safe to do it in public.
1
I could say so much on this topic. However, I would like to leave it with a little hope. You see, despite working in a very masculine field, I stuck with it and now I am a supervisor. I suffered a lot for this position. I have noticed something wonderful happening. Millennials. They just do not buy into the privilege nearly as hard as the older generations. It makes my heart sing.
11
Clearly politics are important, as male teachers and nurses have been harassed for decades, but that's okay. My union rep publicly said that she thought "male teachers (me) are pedophiles looking for a victim. " It's not as bad in all school districts, but it's certainly present and ignored.
12
Any woman can do a man's job, with the right tools and good training. The bigger problem is there are not enough fun jobs that pay. Most work is designed by managers that don't want to do it, and only later modified to be fun by the work force. You have to be desperate to take the harassment and abuse that come with low wages. Smart people know enough to look for work in companies with low burnout and turnover rates.
1
Men gravitate to jobs that have automated vehicles that can be driven to fulfill the requirements of the jobs. Lawnmowers, forklifts, shovels of every kind. Manual hard labor is done by people lower on the food chain like immigrants.
Cherry picking, agricultural workers...where does this leave us in trumpworld?.
Boys and their toys.
I think that, on the most primitive level, “manly” jobs are jobs from which a man gets enough money and/or status to use as leverage to “get” women - and sex. Some men are attractive enough to get women anyway. The ones who aren’t have to work for it - literally. If a woman takes, or even just aspires to, one of those high-paying jobs, it suggests that she believes she doesn’t need to trade sex for that money/status. She can earn it herself. The men resent women who won’t make the trade. They either force the trade on the women they employ (like Harvey Weinstein and Charlie Rose) or shut the women out of the good jobs altogether. I’ve also noticed that men in those jobs tend to attract women (girlfriends & wives) who are willing to make the trade. I’m thinking of the financial industry here, for example.
21
Katyary--Excellent point. "Male" jobs are the ones that men can succeed at in order to get women. They "get" women by having perceived higher status, more money, or other benefits that women aren't able to get themselves. If women can get them directly by doing the "male" job, the value of the "male" job declines....so men fight hard to keep that from happening.
(And yes, I'm just repeating what you said. Because it's very insightful).
9
Truer words were never spoken. Perhaps a more successful strategy for a man to "get" a woman would be to act like a decent human being and treat a woman as he would want to be treated himself, as an equal. Very sexy.
3
Agreed. Like my husband, brothers and father. I would not want people to think I am painting all men with a broad brush. Just the Matt Lauers of this world.
2
Right, so men are collectively bad and women are collectively good. Good luck with that!
10
Then start an all-woman construction company.
7
Way back in the ancient 1970s some women started a trucking company and called it 'Mother-Truckers'.
2
The "Manly" Jobs Problem is at least two distinct problems as you can quickly learn by reading Mike San Diego. Problem 1 - This problem, the belief that job x is best done by males, must be seen on a sliding scale. Mike points to firefighters. Problem 2 - The belief that whatever the job being done by women, it is perfectly acceptable for males to demean, harass, mistreat.
Even In Sweden: Headline p. 13 DN: In translation, the building industry wants to get rid of machoculture. We read on and see that there are two professional areas with a severe shortage of qualified personnel, one building, the other software and system developers.
The rest concerns the extreme type 2 problem, machoculture in the building industry. But strange as it may seem, the machoculture problem exists, at least in Sweden even in the culture world.
I wrote yesterday (URL below) about the macho culture problem displayed by 3 members of the Swedish Academy who until recently openly revered a figure now disgraced (in the eyes of many, not all) because of his macho treatment of women at his club, a gathering place for members of the Academy.
We in America have a very long way to go, and even in Sweden, we are not there yet.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen US SE
Swedish Academy 101)
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/us/politics/rob-porter-resigns-abuse-w...
8
Hmmm,
Is this an example of "mansplaining?"
or
Is this an example of "womansplaining?"
It will be a good day when the gender wars focus on the shared human issues involved rather than who is what is explaining why to whom.
8
It's All Statistics
Last summer, from the vantage point of my desk, I watched a crew work for three days taking the old shingles off and putting new shingles on the roof of the house next door. The crew, three men and two women, did an excellent job.
As far as I could tell the only difference between the sexes on that job was that the men were much more adept at that time-honored talent of goofing off on the job.
I imagine that when it comes to performance on almost any job, the within group variance is much greater than the between group -- i.e., between the sexes -- variance.
On the other hand, I disagree with Nb who claims there are only a few jobs at which men (on the average) are better than women. But who cares ... there are plenty of professions at which women tend to be better than men. Given responsibility for choosing a General Practitioner (with no other information except sex), I'd choose the woman. Given responsibility for choosing someone to work on a skyscraper, I'd choose these guys ...
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/21/24E8936800000578-2920453-image...
I admit, however, that I have always appreciated the Joneses ...
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/21/24E8947E00000578-2920453-image...
Bottom Line: On the average, American men tend to underestimate and undervalue women (on the average of course).
Why, I don't know, but the best male bowlers and curlers tend to be better than the best women.
3
Why does sexuality issues broadly construed—sexual harassment, abortion, etc.—get so much more attention than sex segregation in the labor market, which de facto locks women out of all these blue collar jobs? Unless, like me, you are one of the very few very lucky women in the professions or management you are going to be doing boring, dead-end, underpaid, agonizingly boring pink-collar work. You will be trapped in a confined space—at a desk, in a carrel, behind a check stand—or force to have contact with the public or both. And that is much, much worse than being being sexually harassed. That is rape—the rape of one’s mind and soul.
Sex is sexy, and all the MeToo stories are dramatic, but it is much, much worse to do the work that most women spend most of their waking hours doing—trapped, physically constrained, bored, doing endless repetitive tasks—every weekday all day, for most of one’s adult life. C’mon, is getting pinched or catcalled, which is episodic, really anywhere nearly that bad? Is having an unwanted child, which you can always put up for adoption or leave at the hospital emergency room, no questions asked? Is being raped?
I was raped, and I also worked as a clerk typist at a bus company. And I can tell you which was much, much worse!!!
4
Who would have thought that "alpha males" would be considered major sexual harassers. The alpha male with his arm around the neck of a woman, like he owns her.
3
Not just the trades, but all of science and engineering have held down female participation. Has little to do with macho garbage or education. Culture, pure, simple and very difficult to buck. Since the 1960s at least, physical job demands have also been largely removed by union and OSHA changes. Corporations have also been skittish about liability issues, like toxic exposures for women of childbearing age. We had some doozies of these job rules in the semiconductor industries, where women mostly populated production lines and wallowed in toxics, so a hysterectomy became a job requirement. Enlightened, huh?
Personally, I believe major cultural shifts only happen quickly when circumstances are suddenly changed: war is a proven change agent, for example, but so far the US hasn't had enough pain to cause lasting shifts.
4
I thought this was going to be an article on how few dangerous blue collar jobs requiring physical strength are even left for humans to do....
most of these gender based complaints are based on things that happened 30, 40, 50 years ago
6
“. . . some who have observed trained once-recalcitrant men . . .”
You make men sound like performing seals. May I suggest a companion article where you bypass the female scholars in their academies and talk to some working class guys about their experiences. It won’t be theoretical.
7
Sexual harassment is ubiquitous. I faced it as a computer programmer, but had skills to escape. For the women who can't, it doesn't matter how masculine their industry happens to be.
My complaint
1
This is changing. Just watch a current “This Old House.”
4
Breadwinner's wage, huh? Good luck finding that.
5
Let me tell you how ridiculous this all sounds, having lunch with a male friend in Paris I asked why there were so very few female waiters. He said the reason was the job was too hard for women. Maybe the look on my face cost some alarm because he backed up a little bit by saying well maybe they could manage serving lunch. Honest.
12
I guess some people won't be satisfied until we are all indistinguishably gender-fluid beings wearing gray pantsuits.
8
It is telling that Susan Chira only quotes women professors and a woman non-profit director. She quoted not a single working class man or woman in this article. There is no evidence that she even spoke with a working class person with direct experience in preparing this opinion piece. And throughout Susan Chira demonizes and blames men.
I guess this is the She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said the Times is bragging about in its advertisements.
12
If you want to know what real blue-collar or pink-collar women think, read the comments. We're here!
In my neck of the woods, women are becoming apprentice plumbers in part because, apparently, men don't want the job. I understand that there are thousands of skilled construction and factory jobs that cannot be filled because there are insufficient applicants. How do factors like these play into the whole manly/girly dynamic?
5
I would love to have a female plumber.
Men are too sensitive. Women are much tougher.
6
As someone either much more feminine or masculine than me once said, you go, girl!
3
You are making too much of the manliness issue here. What is manly is providing for your family. These jobs are relatively well paying and the men are threatened economically. The men attack the gender because that is the distinguishing factor. If it were black men, the white men would attack the color.
33
"What is manly is providing for your family." Okay, but what about women who support their families because their husbands are unemployed, in jail, disabled, dead or have taken a powder and disappeared because they can't handle the responsibility of supporting a family? Are these women "manly," too?
Most women who work outside the home do so because they have to, not because they want to. Most women aren't working their dream jobs. They're working jobs that they have to in order to feed, shelter and clothe their children. But nobody ever seems to think, "She has a family to support so let's pay her more and give her opportunities for advancement." Only men seem to get that courtesy, whether they have families to support or not.
5
Well, women need the well-paying jobs as well. they also have a family to feed and bills to pay. And sometimes, men alone cannot do that.
1
"If it were black men, the white men would attack the color."
And they did, and it was wrong then too!
1
100 years ago there were 101 reasons offered by (mostly) men as to why women shouldn't be allowed to vote. The cruelty imposed on the suffragettes (often jailed, beaten, fed maggots in jail) was considered justifiable by the government. Change is slow and takes courage that only a few have.
62
Suffragists is the term. “suffragette” is condescending and patronizing.
We need a new definition of masculinity - one that prizes highly care and responsibility to others and devalues the currently highly prized ideal of the heroic entrepreneur-disruptor.
1
A new definition of masculinity? It's called a human being.
3
You mean like beat cops? Firemen? High school principals? Doctors? Airline pilots and crew? Can we have these roles be either gender and still revered?
2
How about we do away with the words "masculinity" and "femininity" entirely, and use new more-or-less gender-neutral descriptions, like "strong," "resilient," and "nurturing?" regardless of whether or not the noun is male or female?
The post-industrial economy has made masculinity largely irrelevant. Anyone can sit behind a desk all day staring at a computer monitor. Many men still prefer to work with their hands to produce something tangible at the end of the day. Sometimes the work is strenuous, uncomfortable and dangerous. Not many women want those jobs but if some do, by all means they should have at it. In my experience on construction sites, anyone who can do the job is respected, and any man who disrespects a female co-worker may soon find himself looking for another job.
8
Having investigated all types of charges of employment discrimination; in a male dominated profession, sexual harassment notwithstanding, is it about gender equity and skill sets OR application pools? For systemic discrimination to exist there needs to be pools of comparators not puddles, give each time to expand.
3
my sister, all of 5'1" tall, has worked construction crews for several years. she is what they refer to as a "laborer"... she lifts heavy objects, moves equipment around, and does basic chores for the specialized labor. some crews may raise an eyebrow when she first arrives but after they see how hard she works, and how smart she is, they usually accord her the respect due another worker. yes, she's had to deal with the remarks and the comments and the sexual side, but she has never, she asserts very strongly, been threatened or bullied or attacked or physically harassed. she gives as good as she gets, and if more women would just learn to dish it out, as well as receive it, they'd be far better off. i am not a laborer, but i've had my share of sexual harassment, insulting remarks and condecension. i make sure that i let them know i won't put up with it, do my work competently and know that i am often better at my job then they are and i feel sorry for them. don't say women aren't suffering physical harassment, and they need to report that and make sure it doesn't happen. but i do say the world changes slowly. don't take every remark to heart, have a good comeback, do your job well, and let people know how good you are at it. speak up!
7
There are so few of these jobs left in the US. Construction, for example, a well paid career in my era is dominated by illegals hired by subs. Union work is pretty much limited to government jobs with heavy featherbedding. Women function in this environment well often for political reasons.
6
Yes, prejudice against women, often virulent, is firmly entrenched in the skilled trades. When I first started renovating buildings in the mid 1980's I was amazed how threatened men were by the simple fact that I was able to do the same things that they could. One plumbing supplier literally refused to sell to me, causing me to have to drive further to find someone rational. I also had a job managing a large apartment building and the engineer wouldn't listen to me until I bet him I could correctly identify more tools in the shop than he could. I did and things went more smoothly after that. But why do women have to prove themselves superior to be treated barely equally? These days I still find mansplaining endemic but as the person who signs the checks it's a little easier than trying to work side by side.
69
Because in America, one must EARN RESPECT, its not automatic. Now woman in examining their fates are coming to the reality that they are much like people of color. People of color prove themselves on to be treated less than equally, regardless of the job or the knowledge require to perform it.
1
For what it's worth, a male African-American friend of mine has the same problem -- he has to be twice as capable just to get the same respect. True equality will only be achieved when a woman, or a minority man, or a disabled person, etc. has the same ability to survive despite being mediocre as a straight white man. Look how low the bar is for a certain high-ranking politician -- would a woman or a black man have gotten away with the same?
1
What is a 'manly' job?
Any job that'll pay a man more, than if a woman was doing it.
10
Maybe men enjoy working with other men and relish there time away from women. Women do not need to be everywhere men are. Many years ago in the dark ages men and boys swam naked at the YMCA. It was fun just being with guys. An then women who had a wonderful YWCA decided to integrate the YMCA. Suddenly to appease a few women we could no longer swim naked. I resented their demand for entrance but not equality then and still do. Sometimes as much as we love or mothers, wives, daughters and grand daughters we do enjoy the company of men!
5
You can still get your male friends together and bond. But we're talking about the workplace, where people go so they can put food on the table. It's not your treehouse.
18
Sounds a little unhinged to me.
"Although statistics are spotty, some studies have concluded that sexual harassment is more regular and severe in traditionally male occupations."
This is unacceptable scholarship. Either your argument is supported by statistics, or it's not. A good scholar admits the weaknesses of her argument.
This is the "argument from ignorance." "Since we don't know the evidence, I must be right."
Suppose an engineer was designing the safety systems of a nuclear power plant, and said, "Although the statistics are spotty, some studies have concluded that this plant is safe." (Three Mile Island, anyone?)
Would you want that engineer working for you?
Would you want to live anywhere near that plant?
Would you want that engineer to write an article on sex discrimination in the workplace?
5
Obviously there are differences between men in size and strength just as there are with women. But men also have more physical aggression than women, for whatever reason.
I feel that much of the problem stems from macho. It's become ingrained in males over time.
We need to Teach and nurture that manliness is being a kind and good father, brother, husband, and citizen. Instead our society associates and promotes manliness with uneeded pick up trucks and physical dominance.
Women are not raping and mass murdering...it is men.
7
Hopefully, in 2020, we will get a President who doesn't epitomize the macho culture and give permission to every macho man to let testosterone poisoning get the best of him. The world will be a much better place.
1
Men were the hunters, women gathered berries and maintained the camp. We would have returned to the trees if the roles had been reversed. If a woman can carry two sheets of 4x8 up two flights by ladder without adding to risk, then all power to her, if not... maybe she should find work more suited. BTW, the same goes for any man.
Men and woman are not the same, stop acting as though they should be.
3
"Men were the hunters, women gathered berries and maintained the camp. We would have returned to the trees if the roles had been reversed."
That is a ludicrous assumption. A review of this book states otherwise:
"Distorting the Past. Gender and the Division of Labor in the European Upper Paleolithic." Here's the link:
http://www.paleoanthro.org/static/journal/content/PA20080091.pdf
Here’s the first paragraph of the review (it mentions berry picking):
“The hunting of big game in prehistory has always been thought of as an activity that would be carried out by strong and able men, who would have the role of meat winners (since there was no bread at that time), while women were busy taking care of young children and picking up some berries and a few other sundries that would then complement a diet based primarily on big game meat. Hence the importance of ‘Man the Hunter,’ and the less regarded and dependent role of ‘Woman the Gatherer.’ Owen demonstrates that this simply was not true.”
2
Years ago I had a friend who repaired autos for a living. She was 5' tall and helped me do everything on my VW bug, from oil changes to brake jobs to removing and rebuilding the engine. We didn't need huge muscles, just floor jacks and other equipment to provide leverage. Men need to learn--or really, to recollect--that what differentiates them from mules is not brawn but brains. As far as I know, there is only one exclusively male job: sperm donor. And only two jobs exclusive to women: birth mother and wet nurse.
8
I appreciate the article and agree that worksite harassment of women is a real and persistent problem. That said, it really speaks to a more general societal problem. It isn't really talked about, but men too face hazing, harassment, and the threat of violence every day from other men in the workplace and on the streets. Women are not alone in being brutalized, and all men aren't the enemy of women. So the larger questions here are why a certain percentage of the male population engages in these sorts of behaviors, what creates them, how are they enabled, and what can society as a whole can do to stop them.
6
1975: Lois Jensen v. Eveleth Taconite Mine. See the book Class Action and the film North Country.
Men in my family have always worked in the "manly" trades-- construction, oil and farming. They, like ALL blue-collar men, will never, never admit to it, but they have all experienced being sexually harassed and threatened by superiors on these job sites when they were newbies.
A young man, who is new on the job site, will often be made the target of jokes and even physical violence. The abuse takes the form of sexual jokes, taunts, and nicknames and even sexual physical violence.
The male blue-collar victims cannot complain as they will be judged as weak by society. Even some supposedly enlightened, educated feminist women--- who have themselves experienced sexual harassment--- will be contemptuous of their plight.
5
That's as it should be for its part of a man proving his worth. But there's no reason to visit it upon women who have every right to choose not only their career but their tolerance level as well.
2
No that's not as it should be, for anyone, male or female. Proving your worth should consist of doing the tasks of your job well, not taking harassment. Neither men nor women should be judged by their ability to endure torment, sexual or otherwise, in silence.
1
Social culture, the American way of life and yada yada..... When I was growing up I started hearing things like, Men don't cook. Women don't fix cars. Etc, Etc,
What I knew was all that stuff was false. My mom fixed cars and my dad cooked. They grew up in an era when they had their own labeling going on, just like the above, but they were mold breakers. My mom was more tom boy But very pretty, Young looking even up into her 70's. My dad could shoot anything he pointed a gun at, but so could my mom. My dad could create a meal out anything and have you love it, he could sew by hand or with a machine, hardly anything would stay broken for long around him. He is still a jack of all trades, even though a stroke in has slowed him down. My mom would be 88 this year, and She'd still be praising my dad for all he could and did do.
They were a team, My mom helped him, fix the cars, or the meals, helped him in work projects and Home projects. I grew up knowing there aren't limits to males or females, besides a few. Men can't carry babies to term ( my dad said if men had to do the second child they fathered, we'd have a lower human population, he didn't think that most males could handle what women go through doing the child bearing process).
Equal pay across the board. Respect for all life, especially your human counter parts. But I seem to be an outlier.....sadly.
5
Not discussed in the context of male behaviors and manly jobs is the historic obligation of men to suffer privation and harm in the military, especially during wars. By this I mean not just having to wear a uniform and obey orders but to inflict and suffer violence. A few women are very keen on being equal to men in this regard as well, but how would this work under conscription? The question worth asking is whether men should again be expected to accept a disproportionate share of involuntary participation in organized violence.
2
There's no true question at all, since every eighteen year old male has an obligation to serve their country. Women can choose this path but aren't obligated to it. Any man who raises this as an "issue" is simply displaying the very misogyny that women have endured for millennia. Women have earned the right to chose their path in life, to determine their roles and push back against anyone who gets in their way. Men have to accept that such cannot apply to everyone, else no one would dig ditches, clear sewers or work for belligerent, abusive and threatening bosses. In the end, the work still has to get done, regardless of how much a man likes his job.
3
Ideas of what are considered to be "manly jobs" are not restricted to the trades. In January 2003 the Vienna Philharmonic appointed its first female orchestra member, a violist. It seems that until the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Vienna Philharmonic thought what?? Obviously women can lift instruments, including harps and string basses. And obviously their hands and fingers are dextrous enough to finger clarinet keys and cello strings. But hey - professional instrumentalists had to be men. That's still the expectation in many ways. Adoption of blind auditions - the auditionee is behind a screen so that the judges can only hear them, not see them, has helped bring more women to the professional music stage. But many music entities still believe that a woman's place is as an usher.
5
Males are in a sorry state when their sense of self, of worth, is defined, they feel, by the gender norm of a job, the manliness of it. It's pitiful and sad and obviously dangerous. This is a societal, structural problem, much broader than the subset of jobs.
2
Somewhere beyond our "reptilian" brains, there are "empathy", "fairness" and "honor" genes. Everyone who takes pride in their work thinks they have something special. If you big brother is better, that's OK, but if you kid sister is better at basketball, you may feel bad. Eventually I hope you get over it and realize it was your family that benefited, it wasn't all about you it was about getting the job done.
3
I'm so sick of living in patriarchy, where everyone has to cater to men's hurt feelings or insecurities. Can't we all just do what we need to do to survive, plus get along and not hurt each other along the way?
4
You are what you do.
Taxi Driver (1976)
1
There has been a time when there was no gender wage gap. Why? This was because income was not considered a man's income or a woman's income or even the child's income. It was called "family income". The rearing of children was considered part of that family income function. What the problem is--tampering with function defined by natural propensities. A male's touch is far different than a female's touch. When one tampers with Nature, one is asking for deadly problems that will destroy a society and so weaken it as to make it unable to function at all and thus it will disappear.
1
Susan Chira sounds very frustrated that men are too recalcitrant to change how they view so-called "manly" work. She makes the male perspective sound like it is stuck in the Jurassic Era. No one condones male harassment of women, but why is it liberals are constantly experimenting and trying to reorder the lives of the working class? They seem to be saying "why aren't you more like your well educated, well meaning....and of course, more noble....superiors? Why wouldn't you want to be more like us?" Perhaps we need sociological studies that explain the arrogance and narcissism of the progressive class. Indeed, the results of a blue collar construction worker asking Susan Chira detailed questions regarding what gives her the right to lecture him about his behavior would be most illuminating.
4
I'm surprised the article does not mention the military, with women lately in combat roles.
1
i remember when the want ads in the Minneapolis paper had headings "Help Wanted: Men" and "Help Wanted: Women." The listings under the women's column were for clerical workers, servers in low-end restaurants, retail sales clerks, nurses, and nursery school teachers. Almost all other jobs were listed under "Help Wanted: Men." The column "Help Wanted: Men and Women" consisted almost exclusively of openings for caretaker couples for apartment complexes and resorts. The only really egalitarian listings were for public school teachers.
Some time in the 1970s, it became illegal to specify gender in job listings, unless gender was a "bona fide occupational qualification" (BOQ) the example being "men's locker room attendant."
For a while, there was the most amazing proliferation of BOQ claims for attorneys, accountants, servers in high-end restaurants, hotel desk clerks.
2
The depth of male entitlement and insecurity has no bottom.
25
The depth of feminist anxiety and shaming as well.
5
Neither is the misandry.
1
Many of us prefer to have a few women on the team but it is hard to find any that are qualified. I don't care if they are lesbian or not, as long as they can do the work. We have some truly excellent women there now.
There is a restaurant near our building and we eat there often. The head waitress just graduated from college and told me she would like "a real job" at our company. My manager gave his approval for her to be hired. Then she explained because of her restaurant tips, working for us would amount to a pay cut, and she requested two weeks to think about it. "Think about it for a year," I told her, "There is no time limit."
Recently our entire crew had a luncheon there. The men very much resemble those described in this article. Afterward, when I was standing at the register paying for my meal, she said, "Now that I have met everyone at your company, I don't want to work there." I can't blame her really.
And so it goes.
20
Many men define each other and themselves by their work, blue collar especially. With fewer of those types of jobs available and less respect for them I feel that there is likely to be a greater need for male "rites of passage". As more of those traditional roles are eroded there is likely to be greater push-back and resentment by those men who vie for those jobs. It is unfortunate that women will bear the brunt of this. Has anyone considered how the blue-collar workers feel about how they are treated? I will refer to The Politics of Resentment and the Trump victory itself. Wm. S. Madison, WI
8
Gender equality in pay and opportunity benefits both genders. How many men would love to be home with their children but can't because they earn more money and are therefore the primary breadwinner? I have known lots of men who love being home more if not full time. As to the "some jobs are for men because they are stronger" argument, a small female lifeguard can rescue people just as well as a male lifeguard. I don't think it's much different in firefighting. Staying calm, using your resources, and sheer bravery are what is really required.
9
Sexism in the workplace and all its associated evils -- from pay inequality to sexual harassment -- is part and parcel of our hierarchical economic system in which a tiny unelected elite has life-and-death decision-making power over millions of subordinates. That economic system -- capitalism -- has been thoroughly patriarchal since its inception five or six centuries ago, and not coincidentally, heavily invested in racist ideologies to justify the slavery of Africans and genocide of native Americans. Can we expect real reform in a system so dependent on basic structural inequalities? Only of the cosmetic kind, I fear. Only worker-owned businesses can make the necessary changes.
4
As a leader in the science and engineering industry, I am very well respected by my male colleagues. Occasionally I still find some resentment and disrespect. I think it gas advanced farther than this article suggests.
6
This article reminds me of the book “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny” by Kate Manne. She writes that some of the misogyny we see is either hostility towards women who break sex roles or policing of sex roles.
I’ve seen this so clearly. I have a female relative who went into a male profession and even though she is so “tough” she is harassed and disliked in a way I never have been. Men respond to her so negatively— it’s actually kind of grimly fascinating to watch.
But when I look at her life — a life that demanded and caused her to lose touch with the pretty and feminine teenager she once was — it’s enough to cause me to tell my daughter to stay far away from the male professions.
In Ontario nurses and teachers both often make over 100K a year. Maybe the solution is for women’s work to pay more rather than for women to push into men’s jobs. Why go where you’re not wanted? The harassment will change you. Why have a miserable life — for what? Money and ideals? This is your one life — don’t waste it trying to change the world.
Ahh, yes, the "stay in your lane" theme that will solve all our problems.....NOOOO! It will not work for long, because all jobs will either change very drastically over the next several decades, or they will just go away. Both men and women need to eat and most of the time it's not about making lots of money, but just surviving. What are your thoughts for what physically challenged folks are supposed to do if they have skills to do a certain job, but to get to work is so hard...they should just stay at home and not try. What about blacks who were slaves, or suffering during Jim Crow, yes it was hard for them to try to survive and they often were attacked or died trying, so your suggestion would be for them to just be happy being servants or sitting at the back of the bus? Men now are becoming more interested in the Nursing profession and I think that's great. They are seeing they can make good money as manufacturing and certain white collar work is being outsourced. I don't see anything wrong with that. So your thought about women just going into Nursing or Teaching, well men are and will continue to go for those jobs now, and I'm OK with that.
Sorry, but it's time we stop trying to go back to 1940 because 2018 is too hard. It's not going to get any easier and we have to start somewhere. No one said this would be quick or easy, so fasten your seat belt C!
3
If you are timid and don't want to make waves, that's fine. Each to his own. But you do future generations of women a vast disservice to discourage tody's girls from following different paths. They will have to live in a world that we can barely imagine, so please do not try to hobble them in the here and now. Let them follow their dreams, and they can make those dreams a reality.
3
Solves many problems on the road.
1
I remember vividly having a conversation with a dean at a Big Ten University about increasing the number of women in the male-dominated sciences. But, he complained, if we did that, it would be only fair to then insist on increasing the number of men in female-dominated fields like nursing. And, we can't do that, he said, because then we'd have to pay them more. So, there you have it, if the job pays well, it belongs to a man.
202
Maybe now that the jobs in the service sector are the only ones around, men will have more of them just to be employed, but the wages/salaries will go up accordingly because they are men. What a concept! That the work of serving, caring, teaching, domestics, etc. will be valued!
Not to worry. As more men become paramedics in ERs or nurses they automatically get more pay than women who have the same or greater experience and often higher grades from their years in school. Happened to my daughter. She graduated number one in her class but everyone assumed it was the man with the second highest grades who was the top. And when she was working with a male colleague in the ER he never did the "dirty work" of cleaning up the used exam rooms. If she came on shift after him, she could always be sure the cleanup would have been left for her.
It's been my observation that many men, in "manly jobs" are undertaking physically difficult jobs, under physically difficult conditions.
Scaling tall buildings, 20 degrees below.
Laying asphalt, bricks, you name it - 90 degrees hot.
My - sole - concern for women or men: a living wage; insurance to cover medical and other risks for their families; good education for their children; a community that backs up their elder care and child care needs; and so forth.
Let's face it : MEN are not the oppressor, and the reason so many women have it tough.
We are - all - sisters and brothers in the struggle.
15
rosie the riveter and her sisters proved that the trades are not just "manly" per se...that those women were discarded after the WW2 proved only that the trades were "manly" by force of occupation.
for all the talk about "inclusivity," all the programs to ensure attention for every imaginable "under-served" interest, why not a push for gender balance in the trades where women have already established their "can do" creds?
2
There was a Time when the husband went to work & wifes stayed home to care for their Children, cook & clean the house, talk about inequality this was the epitome.The woman’s chore was far more difficult then the men, who worked 8 hours, & the women worked from morning to night, and had the additional chore bearing Children & satisfying their husbands sexual desires.All this has changed , most households require two incomes to meet expenses, this freed women from the slavery they were forced or thought was their plight in life.We now have women in virtually every profession & job which was considered a man’s domain, & we are better for it. We had wasted 50% of our talent & progress & innovation is at a all time high, as women play an important part in this progress, & this is just the beginning. Men must get used to wearing an Apron , the tables have turned.
10
How can raising children, caring for elderly parents, and running a home be considered a “waste”?
In male-dominated jobs, the introduction of women threatens to change the rules of a game that men believe they have already mastered. In a male-dominated world, there are no excuses, feelings are ridiculed and punished, and winning/surviving is everything. Men form their identity around their jobs, and a threat to a man's job is a threat to his very right to exist. And often, that extends to his family, including his wife. Careers are competition, and it can be brutal in the trades as well as law and politics. If a woman can work an angle through tears or feelings or sexual appeal, men are going to feel very threatened. In addition to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we instinctively recognize a hierarchy of threats. When words and other strategies fail, a man is more likely than a woman to resort to physical violence. That is where the ultimate power resides. We all know it. Therefore, women and their talk of "glass ceilings" represent the path of least resistance or least threat.
2
The other manly or unmanly jobs problem is that unemployed or underemployed men can find it demoralizing to consider work that is identified with women. A large part of the economy in which jobs are more available feels closed off to someone who cannot feel manly without a hard hat on.
5
As they say, the only thing that does not change is change itself. Let's remember that we have grown up in a 'macho' society where we men felt entitled to be the breadwinners, and women the one's that took care of everything else, children included. This will not change right away in spite of women's brave efforts to be seen raising from the ashes, to occupy their rightful and co-equal place in society. However, for it to be successful long-term, we must start at infancy, imparting respect, if not love, towards each other, and recognizing women's abilities and dedication at least as good as our's. Man-woman dualism of sexual opposites is fully complementary and necessary...if we are to live in harmony and enjoy life, however brief and bittersweet it may be. Belittling women is an awful reflection of men's insecurities, and a distinct blotch in our self-esteem. A paradigm is urgent and we men may do well in accepting that, thus far, we have behaved as bullies, unbecoming to show our real potential in loving each other. Showing repentance and humility, and upholding the 'golden rule' is not only the best way to enjoy each other; it's also the prudent thing to do.
3
For 40 years I have been saying, "Sorry for you, but I don't put up with that. No female oriented profanity, no sweetie, or honey or any implication that I don't belong on your construction site." "Yes, I am a wife and mother, 5'2", 115 lbs, but I am also the project manager, raised as a carpenter by my millwright dad, educated as an architect, I know more than you, AND, I approve your pay applications" "Do we still have a PROBLEM? No, I didn't think so." If more women took this tack, as suggested to me bymy Dad, we would all be much further along.
155
That approach might work if you're the one in charge, but try saying it to a BOSS with power over you. Not quite the same, is it?
6
Straight to the point and challenging the bullies....well done!
1
Many females do not want to stand on their qualifications and position of authority to get the level of respect that would go to any human being holding that job. Many people today feel they are entitled to levels of respect beyond what their position and experience would indicate.
I have spent my whole 38 years of working in manly jobs and never had treatment by male colleagues that reached a level of harassment and this includes construction and assembly line work. I earned my colleagues respect and when needed demanded the respect that went with my job title and experience.
'Manly' jobs have always been whatever jobs men wanted. 'Woman's' work has always been whatever jobs men did not want.
Orchestra musicians were men. It took many years for orchestras to begin holding 'blind' auditions, hiding applicants behind a screen while they played, so judges would not be prejudiced by the applicant's gender. Now, there are a great number of women playing in the best orchestras, because of their talent, not their gender.
The Mercury 13 women astronauts qualified exactly the same as their male competitors, but, none of the women were allowed to go into space. These were jobs men wanted. Women are no longer on the sidelines of space exploration or science in general.
Women were not allowed to become doctors, or even nurses, because it was believed that women would faint at the sight of blood and would not be able to react properly in an emergency. Do you know how much blood and stress are involved in giving birth? Individual women put up with a great deal from their male counterparts, and from their instructors, in medical school for years.
Although there are still a few 'Manly' jobs - like, maybe sumo wrestling, the arbitrary division of labor by gender has been revealed for what it is - an artificial construct of a male dominated world.
23
When something is ending/dying there is often a frenzy of activity to defend it. The so called "manly" jobs are vanishing and have been for a while. As the pace of their extinction increases, some men are getting violent in their defense of 'their' jobs. Or retreating into a fantasy world of Manly-men. Look at any ad for any truck. None of the million of truck buyers who live in suburbia have those kinds of jobs. It is a fantasy.
8
Oddly, there is little mention of the sea change in medicine and surgery. There was a riddle presented to medical students in the 1970's about a car crash in which a boy and his father were killed and the surgeon who received them at the Emergency Room says, "My, God! This is my son!" So how could that be if the father was killed in the crash. Most students guessed the answer turned on biological vs step father. The surgeon was a woman. Few thought of that. Because there were almost no American women surgeons, or physicians in those days.
Now slightly more than half of medical students and eventually doctors are or will be female.
In formerly male dominated specialties like gynecology, men have been driven out or simply opted out.
There was plenty of misogyny in medical schools and housestaff training programs along the way, but all that is history now.
The sheer weight of numbers in the workplace changed behavior, ethics, sensitivities.
Not all the changes as women came to dominate medical practice redounded to the benefit of the patient, as many physicians and some surgeons said, "I'm a mother first, a doctor second." But overall, the sea change as been a positive force.
Whether that will ever happen on construction sites or coal mines is another question, but it will likely be settled, as it was in medicine, by demographics, the force of numbers, not by studies, commissions, academics or editorials.
7
Not every female physician or surgeon is a mother, just as not every male physician or surgeon is a father. Prioritizing work-life balance is not at all to the detriment of the patient. Happier, more grounded doctors provide better care and result in healthier patients.
2
Oh Claudia. If only it were really so. I got out of med school in the 1970s in a class of 6 women and 200 men. Truly there was great prejudice from doctors - and nurses - but medicine at that point was one of the highest paying professions around.
Now medicine is a salaried job, most practices taken over by hospitals or large national conglomerates. You get a salary, do shift work and - importantly - adhere to money producing guidelines or risk being fired.
So of course as it is devalued you see the void left filled by women as men go off to the real high paying fields like finance, where the payoff and prestige are greater. Only few women are found there.
7
Your point is one never heard in any public forum I've ever seen. I supposed we should be grateful to the NYT for that. What you are saying, if I'm hearing right, is it was only when medical careers became devalued that they were handed over or taken over by women (and new immigrants.) I do not dispute your macroeconomic analysis, which is spot on. But the change in medical school classes began in the mid 1980's mostly and that preceded the devaluation of medical careers. Overall, your analysis is fresh, correct and too seldom heard.
1
This is going to be moot in a few short years when mining and a lot construction jobs are dominated by robots.
2
This piece targets an important problem, but its narrow focus may be misleading. Until fairly recently, many occupations that required intellectual rather than physical skills also had few female representatives. Business, law, medicine and teaching on the college level all come to mind.
Men, like any dominant group, will not willingly yield the power and the prestige that accompany position. The notion that women who demonstrate their competence will win acceptance assumes their male counterparts will evaluate their performance objectively. This view defies common experience. Only a change in policy or the law can change male behavior. Attitudes may not evolve until the next generation of men begin to work under the new rules, but laws always target behavior.
10
Yet the online manifestation of this very issue is the oft-repeated claim--usually in discussions of the pay gap--that there is no pay gap because women "don't want to work as hard as men," and the example cited is the relative absence of women in blue collar jobs. As this article and everything most of us know about sexual harassment make obvious, many men who take their identity and their paycheck at such places attempt to drive women out through harassment. The chorus of "men's rights activists" online follows up by blaming the victim for "not wanting to work as hard as men." What seems unique and under-analyzed is the way masculinity inspires men who don't know one another, don't work together, and might detest one another in real life to create such a multi-wave attack on women's progress. At some point the intensity of the death grip on the concept of masculinity as superiority starts to seem cartoonish; but typically the overvaluing of male accomplishment that patriarchal culture also steadily practices prevents most of us from laughing aloud. One wonders if this loyalty to such a wooden and outdated concept of gender doesn't just block out a chunk of the observational and reasoning abilities of anyone who badly needs for men to "win" over women at every turn.
9
I recently read an article, I believe in either the Guardian or The Telegraph, about a group in Nigeria that believe twins are demons and kill them to protect the rest of the group. There was a quote from an Nigerian anthropologist/sociologist that might apply to the current situation in the West over both the topic of this article and opinions of people who oppose normalizing LGBT behavior. She said, and I'm paraphrasing, that the need to kill twins was embedded in the group's culture and had been for hundreds of years; and that changing their culture so they did not see twins as evils to be eradicated could easily take up to two hundred years. She thought that such changes in the fundamental values of a culture were not something that could happen overnight.
Wall St. trading is dependent upon focus, discipline, mathematical talent, and a host of complex rapid decision making skills. As with other high-paying, high-status male dominated environments, the control of these jobs is about power and money. Historically dominated, controlled and managed by senior financial executives, nearly all male, how would a female ever be able to even be given a chance to succeed in such a position?
If there is a woman present in the upper executive echelons of a Wall St. bank, unless she is the daughter of the CEO or other top executive, she will be the sole female in those ranks. Women who miraculously rise to these positions at the Director level and above, are generally isolated and marginalized by the nearly all male Old Boy Network that socializes together after hours, plays golf together, attends business junkets together, and generally excludes the lone female from meetings and other career-assisting activities whenever possible.
This remains true in most large corporations, and the situation is even more egregious in computer tech which requires no physical strength differentiation whatsoever.
It is already proven that businesses which have a mix of both male and female management enjoy higher success rates in financial results.
Changing the culture in which women endeavor to succeed in careers outside the home is a vastly more complex and challenging set of issues that extends far beyond sexual harassment - the worst offence.
9
many years ago, i had an aunt who worked for a huge automobile corporation. she worked her way up from filing clerk to a junior vice president. she was called into policy meetings. at one point, they were discussing hiring women for actual inspection jobs. one of these male suits declared, "i wouldn't let my wife do inspection. it's a dirty job". my aunt, always gutsy, took a breath and said, "so is cleaning a toilet bowl, or changing a dirty diaper, but i bet you let her do that." after a silence, they went back to the discussion. but the following year, the first women inspectors went to work at the automobile plant. it sometimes takes just one or two voices.
140
I only question the accuracy of men once dominating the nursing profession.
That needs a citation.
1
Dan - You are correct.
I think they are referring to the pre-twentieth century military situation in which men cared for the wounded. Walt Whitman, for example, nursed during the civil war.
Informal home nursing by family members or hired helpers would have been a mainly female occupation.
And of course the professionalization of nursing begun by Florence Nightingale in the late 19th century was almost totally dominated by women.
6
And dominated by women because the men were all fighting. I wonder what would've been different if women have been counted on to fight also, but there has always been this need for the women to stay home and take care of the children.
and please do not overlook Clara Barton.
Someday, we will peel back the onion sufficiently to reveal a fundamental rationale for the stereotypical male sense of entitlement and unearned privilege and we find it to be maletheism. We will then need to think about what kind of world our beliefs actually create for all of us (including our daughters, mothers and sisters), not what we pretend our beliefs create.
1
Back in the late '80s I worked as a bartender in a fine-dining restaurant on Friday nights, the "meat market" night. It was wall-to-wall people during Happy Hour, a lull for a couple of hours, then wall-to-wall people again for the '50s & '60s cover band. I opened the bar & worked the Happy Hour, then stayed on until the other bartenders—all guys—had had a dinner break. If one of the guys took the night off, I pulled a double shift; none of the guys ever did. Initially two of the guys weren't happy w/having me back there...the only thing that they could do that I couldn't was carry three cases of beer up the stairs from the basement, & having a female able to keep up w/them was a definite threat to their sense of superiority, masculinity, whatever you want to call it. I was locked in the beer cooler, deliberately body-slammed behind the bar, & unknowingly had tips withheld, until one of the problem guys left. His replacement had no problems working w/me & gave the remaining guy enough grief that he left me alone after that.
9
There was another study recently that showed that men who go into nursing often feel stigmatized by both women and other men. We still use the term "male nurse" too often in conversation. Talk about archaic! Men who work in nursing say that women they meet look down on them because they work in an occupation viewed as "female." That is a bad situation, because nurses are in high demand.
2
Why no mention of the fact that many patients. male and female, who are supposed to be the focus, are uncomfortable with male nurses, and for women who would prefer a female staff from top to bottom? Or do reverse gender politics matter more.
1
i don't know where that exists, but i spent 3 weeks in the hospital and rehab last may. 3 of my night nurses were men. they were wonderful. as far as i could see they were treated with respect, consulted on my care and were professional, courteous and i didn't feel the least uncomfortable with them. i hope they were as respected as their work entitled them to be.
2
Change takes time. As a union Electrician I saw few women on the job, ever. Nor did I many Latino's or Blacks, openly gay or trans members. I was nearly turned away because i have a BA. My teachers were all of a 'previous' generation and so maintained strong biases from that time. But time does change things. Now that i am retired and teaching apprentices i stress to them that Union solidarity must be based on inclusiveness. I tell them in no uncertain terms that any "ism's" will not be tolerated. And i hope that as a model of acceptance of 'all comers' that my students will realize that times have changed. I hope that the kind of modeling for change that i represent will be included in your future articles as i am not an anomaly. I represent the kind of changes that came forth in the late 60s and 70s and all although it has taken time for us to move into leadership positions we are making the kinds of changes this article indicates are necessary. Seeds long ago sown are sprouting but you must look close!
6
Despite society's forcible attempts to eradicate all forms of "sexism" and introduce hand-holding across the masses, Mother Nature is far better suited to be the true and final authority as to who is generally better at what. Of course, we could encourage the party to go on by declaring that Mother Nature is really a man, at least 50% of the time...
1
Tell me. Does this mind set still pertain to the job of President? Hillary Clinton would probably say that it does despite every argument by some that it was other reasons.
5
I'd like to see a greater emphasis on co-ed sports in grade schools, Sports like track & field, swimming and cycling, where both genders practice together, suffer training together, and cheer each other on in competition, help build respect and admiration between athletes and genders. In the same spirit, I'd like to see Title IX revised for college sports to give extra emphasis to promoting sports where both genders can train and compete together. I have witnessed, through participation in these sports that when both genders learn to play together they do a lot better job working together.
5
I've been a trades instructor for a quarter century. On rare instances I will have a female student in class.
I always insure she is included in all activities and not marginalized and I always shut down any randiness coming from male students. To their credit, female students do understand they will hear the sometimes foul language that often goes with physically demanding, technically frustrating work and never has a female student felt the need for a safe space because of it.
I've found during lectures female students are much smarter from a book learning point of view than the male students and often they are the only one in class able to answer some questions.
I wish I had more of them enrolling.
121
When I was in school, girls couldn't even take shop, just home ec.. with my name I was often scheduled for shop and turned up only to be turned away. I've had to learn tool use on my own.
3
Hi, Paul, and, by extension, other trades instructors and program administrators - I just want to mention that as a social worker, I'm wondering if you actively reach out to women/girls and let them know about the skills you're teaching in your classes. We social workers do outreach and case finding. I see parallels with your profession. There are obviously millions of under-challenged, under-paid women, as well as men, who just don't have very much information about what the skilled trades are and what tasks skilled tradespeople do. I bet many people would be fascinated and attracted to this work. And an influx of these young, vibrant, curious folk would go a long way to making the culture a better work environment for everyone. Young people these days seem so much more accepting and supportive and seem to call out misogyny and racism and homophobia in a heart beat. Bullies usually back off when faced with a phalanx of "don't even look like you're going to go there."
1
As a retired female who spent over 40 years in the construction industry--20 as a union carpenter and 20 in construction management, I can relate so many instances of sexual harassment and assault. So many people asked me why I stayed, why I didn't quit. My standard answer "because I was good at what I did." Still am! So, here's to all the women who went before and walked the trail after. Things can and will change when there are enough of us!
199
During WWII women worked in traditional "male" occupations and did the job. except for child bearing and breast feeding "work has no gender."
1
Sexual harassment is a necessary part of women's jobs today. Instead of freaking out over sexual harassment, women must learn to expect it, do their best to avoid sexual contact and carry female condoms if necessary to avoid venereal diseases. Managing this and surviving without diseases is much better than walking away from high-paying jobs.
I am struck by some of the commentary regarding this article. I really think instead of over thinking this issue, it can be boiled down to our shared basic humanity. If one harasses and threatens you have chosen to ignore your shared humanity with that other person. Your perceived "gains" in the material world by the intimidation are offset by your failure to respect not just the person you are intimidating, but also yourself. This lack of respect seeps into your soul corrupting you and damaging you internally.
When I see this base behavior, I don't see someone powerful and masterful (like they do in their own mind), I see a damaged individual with a lack of respect for themselves trying desperately to unload an internal deficit onto someone else. That's why when this type of behavior had been tried on me in the past I felt pity for them. It rolled off me and I was able to move on w/o any emotional baggage.
We as a human family need to learn respect. Respect for ourselves and by extension respect for others.
7
The underlying issue appears to be a fear that one is not a “real man.” Women have only lately, and only thanks to feminism, taken on the same fear among ourselves. Is it competitiveness that drives this fear? Is it homophobia? Does it come from a culture that tolerates bullying? Is there some universal, inborn worry that one is only an imposter, a not-good-enough mirage of competent adult to others, while still inside a child, an incompetent, a fraud, known only to oneself but always vulnerable to exposure?
Not easy questions. Answers? Also not easy.
Early in my supervisory career, I encountered a work practice, in a union job, that was absolutely wrong and did something about it. The "gangs" of workers did heavy cleaning. Part of the work was carrying 40-55lb 5-gallon containers of chemicals up and down flights of stairs and long distances. Women usually did not choose to work on these gangs, but a few did.
I observed that the men did all the bucket-carrying and 30 minutes before lunch, one of the two women took lunch orders-asked for mine too-and then said that she usually left the site now to go get a hot lunch and bring it back so that the gang could start a full lunch period with a delivered hot lunch.
This had become an unofficial "shop practice".
Everyone was very happy.
The next night the same thing, but this was the other woman's turn.
Everyone was very happy.
The following night, when the first woman started taking lunch orders, I stopped her and told the biggest man to take the lunch orders tonight. He refused. I told him he could do it or clock out. Alternatively, no one could do it and at lunch, everyone could get their own and still be back in time for the start of work. Turmoil.
No one took orders. the gang called the union over lunch. An organizer came and tried to intimidate me. I held my ground, there is no "women's work". Next night, I instructed the women to grab a 50 pound pail and start carrying it. The work ground to a halt. The gang was "ruined" by me. The women went out on workmen s compensation.
2
As the supervisor, your job should have been to come up with solutions to the problem, which should have included better ways to transport the too-heavy pails of hazardous materials in a purely manual way. If you wonder why so many MEN are permanently out of the work force; if you wonder why so many MEN take early and permanent disability; if you wonder why so many MEN are the opiate addicts crippling parts of the nation-- look no further than dangerous workplace practices like you describe. Better enforcement of existing OSHA rules; worker-oriented workplaces; and an emphasis on safety-first in the workplace can limit the dangers you described and mitigate the results that I did. Example in this article is the KC fire department.
3
You miss the point entirely.
All the work methods were safe and according to the rules and regs. There were option for the used of hand-trucks and dollies. It was easier-and safer-to carry the buckets.
The work was not punishing. I prided myself on being a working supervisor and every day I some of the labor in addition to my supervisory duties; buckets too.
Consider the article I am commenting on. The MEN wanted work that was "mens" and the women wanted to do more "womanly" things, like seeing to the feeding and care of men who were working. NOTHING in the job description called for leaving the work-site to get meals on company time ahead of lunch. A previous supervisor had allowed this "women's work" ethos to take hold.
I gave them a choice, the men did not want to do "women's work" and the women claimed workers compensation when given the duties they were already found medically/physically qualified for, had agreed to do when they chose the job, and had done previously while on probation.
The claims for workers comp were heard and denied. They lost pay for malingering. In lieu of discipline, which they were facing, they took a stipulation to a lost time served suspension with a stipulation not to pick certain jobs in the future, like the heavy cleaning gang.
The word got out, everyone who worked on the heavy cleaning gang had to work. Next pick I got two women who were fantastic. They DIDN'T WANT to be treated any differently and they weren't. Peace in the valley.
1
Management success begins with an absolute commitment to reality and a recognition/rejection of nonsense. By that criteria, all gender and ethnic stereotypes are fundamental falsehoods and impediments to best solutions.
The only valid gauge of job qualification is competence demonstrated by performance.
As Herbert Spencer observed, nothing will assure the preservation of ignorance so much as contempt prior to investigation. And nothing reinforces that so much as the superstitious attitudes produced by testosterone.
2
While there have been changes there continue to be many people, men and women, who act as though working in roles outside one's gender is a betrayal of the gender itself. In addition there is a good deal of distrust when the first or second "wrong" sex person is hired for a job. The same occurs when it comes to skin color or surname. It's quite upsetting to hear how many people suspect that the only reason a particular person got a job was because of skin color, gender, or national origin. Worse yet is how often these pioneers are set up to fail by the employer through a lack of support, sabotage from others, and being held to higher standards than the rest of the department.
Harassment of any sort undermines morale, affects the willingness of other employees to work together, and the quality of the product being produced. The onus is on the employer to hire the best people for the job regardless of skin color, national origin, age, etc. I have more respect for the Jamaican woman who can answer my questions than I do for the white male supervisor who interrupts me or ignores me all the time.
5
"...What we’re seeing now is an attack on male power and the possibility at least of change.”
As long as change is sought in these terms, it is not likely to come. Men have been claiming they are under attack for a while now. Now feminist academia has admitted the claim is a valid one. For shame...
4
If you think that men in 'traditionally male dominated jobs' only harass women, you're not paying attention. Men can be absolutely brutal when it comes to harassing each other as well. I've had jobs in the past where some of the guys harassed each other so much that they got into physical fights. Many of these altercations started with guys making derogatory comments about each other's manhood, manliness, etc. So while I don't condone sexual harassment of women, how about we broaden the scope of this issue to include any kind of verbal abuse, bullying and so on. Otherwise, I fear we'll trade sexual harassment for just plain old harassment.
181
I think one significant difference is when the harassment is there because you are part of a specific group targeted for harassment it follows you for decades, and is not due to a particular group at a job site.
1
It seems to me that most of the problems of our world are the result of Manhood psychology. How about we invest more in being human beings rather than in being men or women.
This article neither stated nor implied that women are the only people who get harassed in these types of jobs. Many of the commentators have correctly pointed out that people of color also face their own unique brand of abuse (and god help female workers of color and gender minorities). Consider that male-on-male bullying often involves accusations of femininity or lack of "manliness." The implication is that femininity is inherently weak and shameful. So these attacks, even when directed at men, are symptomatic of the same work culture that breeds sexism and division along gender lines.
3
CNBC says we are almost at full employment, and no one left to employ pretty soon. A few weeks ago an article in the Times about unemployment, the comments section was full of people over 50 who complained bitterly they were unhirable. No one wants you if you’re over 50. Impossible if over 60. People with skills all the way up to PhD.
How many people in the US are over 50? If we are excluding all of those people who may be looking for a job, shame on us whether they are male or female.
12
Laurence Peter wrote "The Peter Principle". His findings have not changed our culture. Bullying keeps the incompetent in power. Donald Trump epitomizes that culture.
5
If the men feel threatened by women on the job site how well are their prepared for the seismic shift of robotics coming to the trades for both men and women?
1
Robotics are not new. Industrial robots have existed for years.
I work at a company that makes some support materials for industrial robots, so I have a pretty good idea of what they can and cannot do. They are not like robots in science fiction movies! They are big, flexible, clever machines that do a couple of repetitious and dangerous tasks very accurately and very fast.
They cost millions of dollars, and it will not be that quick a change for most fields -- there are still a LOT of jobs that require thinking & finesse (yes, even blue collar jobs) and robots do not do that well at all.
The real threat to American employment is off shoring of jobs to the third world -- illegal aliens working in the US at sub-minimum wages (and off the books!) -- and H1Bs taking desirable tech jobs from American workers.
2
I was an RN for more than 40 years. When men entered the profession, salaries increased, making it seem that they were valued higher than the women who'd always "been there." The other side many people assumed if you were a male nurse, you were gay.
This sword cuts both ways.
6
Add the complexity of transitioning many of these manly jobs to brown people. These jobs have historically been the gateways to mainstream acceptance for new minorities. Construction was once all white and English speaking (so was baseball, remember that?) in this country but that was a long time ago. Women and minorities are attracted to the good wages paid to male jobs. On the reverse side, female jobs, which might be higher on the economic ladder and require more education, have lower wage scales, generally, and have a hard time attracting men, hence the disparity and the sense of white men of a certain age that they’ve been kicked out of one side of the economy and prevented from entering the other. As Hilary said, women’s rights are human rights; the employment problem won’t be fixed until we look at it without rave and sex filters.
3
Construction is now prominently hispanic -- ILLEGAL ALIEN hispanic -- and Spanish speaking -- due to the vast influx of illegal aliens (something that lefty libs adore and promote!).
Actually illegal alien workers have DISPLACED both female construction workers AND black construction workers -- is that the kind of lefty liberal multi-culti future you long for?
2
CC,
Just who do you think is employing these workers?
You might want to check that mirror kettle, your bias is showing.
1
Concerned: whose idea was it to hire all these illegal immigrants? And why?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
1
I've worked with blue collar men and they would jokingly insult each other using words that would make most liberals blush. If women would come into the room, every man would default to the delicate sensibilities required in our litigious world.
Don't be so sure your women workers were treated differently. They may have been treated like one of the guys, without regard for PC sensibilities.
7
Years ago I worked a summer for a temporary work agency. Not only were my placements dirty and unpleasant, they were unsafe too. We were disposable. So many of my co-workers had hoped for a placement in an office but clearly the decisions were made solely based on gender. If you were female you got to work in a nice clean office, if you were male you were sent to work in a dangerous, unhealthy environment. I didn't mind the physical labor, what I object to is the unsafe conditions we were put in. I also object to choices being made for me based solely on my gender.
Everywhere I worked those years while I was in college, it was always the same. If the task was unpleasant, dirty or dangerous, it always went to the males. I worked at a place that sells hams. If you were female, you worked the register and that's all you did (okay, I admit working with customers can be a dirty job too). If there were no customers, you chatted with your co-worker while waiting for customers to come. If you were male, you sliced and glazed the hams, washed the dishes, scrubbed the floors, cleaned the bathrooms, worked in the freezer and so on. Never a spare moment. And so the women could have a lunch break, you worked the register too. The pay was equal, the work was not. I doubt any of the women I worked with would have wanted to change places with me.
Yes to equal pay. Let's also make sure the work is equal too.
6
As a white woman hired into a skilled craft telephone job in the 1970s thanks to the AT&T consent decree that opened up jobs for African-Americans as well as women of all ethnicities, I quickly learned that these had been white men's jobs, and that racism was as big a factor as gender discrimination. Especially for African-American women, who had been segregated into the lowest paying jobs with no chance of advancement. The all-white management, in particular, made it very clear that none of us belonged there, and that there were two sets of rules for how you were treated. This was a much bigger problem than overtly sexual harassment, which certainly existed but in the much larger context of whether all of us had a right to be there at all.
113
Solution: make half of all school teachers and administrative staff in offices male; make half of all construction workers, oil rig workers, linemen and forest fire fighters female. Pay them equally. Problem solved.
1
Just finishing a career in construction trades here out West. Never saw women framing. Electricians and plumbers occasionally, especially if Union.
There is a comradery from bleeding, sweating, exhaustive non-stop physical labor in all conditions. Searing heat, freezing cold, wet and dry. Day after day. Job site to new job site. It quickly weeds out those that cant or wont do the work.
That said, taking and giving "harassment" or name calling etc. is a given. Is it necessary? No. But it also is what groups of men do (it seems) with each other. Be it sports, military or other testosterone fueled activities. Respect is earned. Keep up and put in/out a consistent effort and the banter becomes a back and forth. We are all in this together and sweating/bleeding as one. Hack it or don't. The women I encountered seemed to have adapted and gave as well as took. Respect and acceptance is given when that person has proven able and competent. Keep up or you're a drag and safety issue.
DBAD is the rule on site, cause else will disrupt the work environment. No time for that. But banter and or name calling does and will happen to both sexes. Not everyone will fit in.
Is it right? Probably not. But things change and adapt. For the better? Sometimes. It is what it is. A hard charging, fast paced. sweat pouring endeavor. That beer at the end of the day is earned.
From what I experienced, women are/where welcome, if they produced.
Just like men.
4
Readers might be interested in the book, "North Country." It describes the tribulations of women working in the Eveleth Mine, which led to a landmark sexual harassment case and was the substance for a full length feature film by the same name. Also, one might read a 2005 article out of the National Women's History Museum about the plight of the women who brought the suit against Eveleth Mine. It underscores Ms. Chira's NYT piece.
9
Everyone knows that this is the age of computers and of quick minds over strong bodies. Boys know where they stand in the grand competition by about the 2nd grade- they know who the smart ones are that have a future and will obtain status.
Blue collar white men have been under siege for the last 40 years. Integration, the decline of unions and the decline of jobs being replaced by machines have decimated their salaries and sense of status.
Inevitable class resentments have been fueled by GOP demagogues and sometimes invisible propaganda to get working class white men to vote their anger rather than their economic interests, which has accelerated the decline.
America exercises a relatively cruel form of capitalism, with clearly designated losers and winners in the quest for money and power. I suspect that the most abusive of blue collar workers towards women are themselves the most abused.
14
I've seen in my life a reason for keeping women out that is not reflected in the debate today as far as I know: Wives. The wives of men in manly works who feel threatened and therefore expect or demand their husbands to not allow women in. In fact, I brought this up at a dinner and a woman said that yes, these wives are doing the right thing, because if a man works with a woman he will end up marrying her. This could also explain the male-sounding nickname, so that the wives and girlfriends would not know there is a woman on the crew. Although I stipulated this hypothesis for jobs such as directors in a company, where women marry the successful men for status and may feel threatened by a woman making a career and reaching the same position as her husband (or, God forbid, surpassing him), it might also be applicable to typical "male" jobs such as construction and fireman. Some women are obviously attracted to the masculinity reflected by the career choice, and if a woman proves that she can handle that same job, then the illusion vanishes. Would be interesting to hear what others have to say about this idea.
3
I remember the vitriol of my aunt when women first started working as union electricians (IBEW) in the 1970s. She was so scared that one of them was going to take her man away from her. I tried to placate her that the young women entering the trade as apprentices would not be interested in my uncle who was in his late 50s at the time. But she was not to be assuaged.
5
What, no mention of the US military where sexual violence and rape are practically institutionalized, and then covered up and victims disregarded? Let's get real. The military victimizes women more than it "protects" America.
6
Women plowed and worked the fields for thousands of years while the men flitted around the forest looking for a deer to kill. The notion that some jobs require the physical strength of men is cultural bias.
Chivalry was invented to limit the power of women. By denying skilled jobs to women a form of servitude was created and women were forced to barter their body and soul for survival.
There are few jobs, even in construction, that require extreme physical upper body strength. Women have begun to make inroads in careers because their brain is just as dexterous as a man's.
Climate change, nuclear proliferation, and globalization are here to stay. We need to quit worrying about the genitalia and find solutions before we endanger the whole species. Stereotyping (of both sexes) has got to go.
153
Over 50 years in the workforce I've used the power and strength of my 230-lb. weightlifting built body too often to assist the women I've worked for or with and supervised to buy your nonsensical argument. Your assertion that there are few jobs that require extreme physical upper body strength is also flawed. Even working in an office setting where paper is purchased in a case weighing as much half of what some of my female coworkers weighed I was called upon to do the heavy physical lifting. I never resented it nor held it against my female coworkers until I started reading nonsense like this. And the assertion that chivalry was a conspiracy to force women into servitude requires some additional thought. If anyone was oppressed by chivalry it was the men because they were expected to sacrifice their safety and lives to protect women. Why? Because in a time before modern medicine and lower fetal/mother mortality rates, ensuring the survival of the species was paramount. If you know your basic biology, one guy can run around and impregnate how many women? But, most women only bear one child at a time. So, they needed to be protected as the carriers of unborn generations. That chivalry outlived its usefulness, although not really because it has only been in the last 100 years that medicine has made real progress is another topic for a different day.
2
Mostly agree, except that that "flitting around in the forest" often involved great hardship. exertion and danger (wading icy streams or swimming them against strong currents, etc.). There was a certain division of labor. Yes, stereotyping of both sexes has got to go.
3
So true. And as also seen in hunter-gatherer societies, though the women did most of the work and provided the majority of the food that the group ate to survive, then men were lauded as the mighty hunters and heroes when they managed to bring home the deer. This is not a new phenomenon.
The primary problem is judging the value of a person by what they can do. If their value came from what they are, then we would all be equal. We can teach our children this system of value, rather than teaching them to judge value by what they can do. Absent this seismic shift, we will continue down the road we currently travel.
3
Hopefully, times are changing. One of my brothers studied to be a nurse, and did very well in the class work but when he went into practical training he was treated with open hostility by the women who supervised him. The other man in the class suffered the same treatment. My brother changed fields, saying he was afraid the resentment and lack of cooperation would affect patient care.
15
It's not just the male nurses who suffer hazing in nursing. The field is known for an often hostile workplace culture and harassment of junior nurses by their seniors regardless of gender. This is so much the case the American Nurses Association has addressed it as a problem (see http://www.nursingworld.org/positionstatements) for their policy statement on this issue. Also, as an academic librarian in a school with a large nursing program, I have often asked our graduate students whether they thought there was really a shortage of nurses, and if so, why. Many of them said that bullying was such a problem it drove many young nurses out of the profession. There are plenty of people trained as nurses, but not enough willing to stay nurses, particularly in large institutional settings where bullying and hazing are often rampant. I am sorry your brother was driven out of the field by behavior that should never be acceptable no matter who the victim is.
1
In the construction industry I have seen women making great strides over the 40 years I spent there. It began with the Fair employment acts of the 70's. The trade Unions have done their part and in many instances have had the problem of getting women interested in taking the apprentice positions. But progress has been made. Where more progress is needed is in the racial makeup of the industry.
6
Is this really a "male" problem, or is it the result of competing in a particular dominance hierarchy?
Chira describes the problem in terms of "a core definition of masculinity itself" and "blue-collar jobs that once scored a kind of trifecta". That indicates that the men in these jobs see themselves as winners in a particular dominance hierarchy, and that they achieved their position through competition with their co-workers and other men who couldn't get those jobs. That would imply that their attitudes toward women are meant to both push out seemingly weaker competitors and prevent a flood of new competitors into the hierarchy. But they use the same approach with women as they do with other men--in effect, the women lose their privileges and protections in order to compete in the same hierarchy.
I wonder whether men who enter "womanly" jobs or into mostly-female work environments face relational aggression from co-workers analogously. That might be an interesting situation to study, if it can be done objectively.
29
I’ve always noticed in the school system where women used to have all the jobs, that the jobs of administration and principles are now mostly men.
It looks like when the men enter Jobs mostly held by women, the management positions are held by men.
7
When I was young I was impressed by two women who thrived in 'male' jobs. One was a policewoman, I believe the first in our small city, and the other was a forklift operator at the hospital where I worked part time when I was in college. They had a lot in common. Both were single parents. Both were obviously women, but they carried themselves with dignity and purpose. Neither expected favorable duties because of their sex, and both got along well with the men they worked with. They earned their respect.
13
After being a stay at home mom for several years, I was the first female employee in my new position in the state and was hazed for about six months. Finally out in the work force, it was as a gift. I realized that my relatives were not so bad after all. Anytime I mastered and improved an assignment, they assigned me different work out of spite. I ended up being the most diversified and knowledgeable person in the department. Bad things are good things.
27
I can think of very few jobs where men are better than women, NFL lineman, NBA center, oil field roughneck. I am not sure about Wall Street trader.
14
All the research shows that women make better trading decisions than men. My husband was head of a major trading desk and he agrees. However the work environment is very macho. My husband ultimately lost his job because he fired a male who insulted a female co-worker and my husband's bosses thought he was soft. Take a look at the series 'Billions.'
2
Nb. You forgot about the sperm donor job.
I worked as a bus upholsterer, a truck loader and a refinery worker in the 70s and early 80's. I took these jobs to earn enough to support myself so I could be financially independent from my parents. The higher paid the job was, the more harassment I suffered. When, at 24, I was in the top 1% of wage earning women in the US as a refinery worker, I suffered the most brutal harassment that included death threats and premeditated exposure to toxic and explosive materials by bosses and co-workers. I finally quit the refinery job because of the unnecessary and forced exposure to toxic chemicals. Since then I have had two bouts of cancer, one of which can be directly related to that chemical exposure.
I came to understand that the presence of women on these jobs threatened the bosses ability to man shame my male co-workers into doing dangerous things. Women didn't have the need to prove that they were not scared of dangerous situations and often challenged the union and the bosses to fix the situation. This led to the bosses using man shaming to rally my male co-workers to create situations that not only put my life in danger but also the lives of other co-workers. Only when the union leadership could be convinced that fighting the harassment of women was in the men's interest would there be a slight downturn in the harassment. Unfortunately union support often wavered.
171
Male or female, those jobs pay so well because of the risk, exposure and damage they inflict. That's just the nature of capitalism.
3
It's so sad that you and so many other women of your generation had to endure such harassment. The only good thing to come out of this mess will be if our society finally begins to change in real and lasting ways so that future generations of women don't have to endure this misery.
1
"Male or female, those jobs pay so well because of the risk, exposure and damage they inflict. That's just the nature of capitalism."
Oh, bull. Deliberately endangering a co-worker is not capitalism; it's a fundamental violation of both engineering and business ethics.
In India half of all the construction labor is female. Moreover, this is typically the unskilled half doing a great deal of the literally heavy lifting. Representations of Indian construction sites going back to at least the sixteenth century depict women at work there. Although most of these women endure horrific working conditions, their presence has made it easier for middle class women to succeed as architects in much larger numbers than is common in the west, and some of these women in turn have worked hard to improve the lot of women labourers.
29
So, 1) a sense of purpose and 2) legitimate/acceptable social identity are core human needs, and men have traditionally met these two crucial needs through their work. Whether a woman chooses to accept it or ignore it, their bodies give them a built in an unalienable source of 1 & 2 in motherhood. If women "attack" men's source of 1 & 2, labor, what do you think could happen? People will say "shift in roles so that men can be stay at home dads without shame". This is not all up to men! Most WOMEN actually don't accept dads having a big role in the family, let alone being a stay at home parent. I'm not saying anything has to stay the same, or that there can't be change. I'm just saying that there should be a more intelligent and thoughtful discussion of these sensitive matters than I'm seeing in this article.
15
"their bodies give them a built in an unalienable source of 1 & 2 in motherhood."
Inalienable? Huh. I thought for that you had to have (1) a husband, (2) who didn't need you to help pay the bills.
Some of us actually have to earn a living.
9
My wife is a doctor. I changed a lot of diapers. I was also a construction worker. I was also a Lawyer and and University professor. Men will use ANY excuse to abuse and degrade women no matter what the circumstances. Be a REAL MAN and stop spouting such nonsense.
103
You make an excellent point- the discrimination against fathers especially is society's best kept secret- but good luck. There is a reason nobody expresses such thoughts. Reprisal is quick if you stray from the "narrative". Ask Katie Roiphe.
5
As a woman working as a general contractor, I have some pretty interesting experiences. However, they are far better being the boss who can fire people than if I were the employee. How do men feel about working for a woman, a woman who is not a housewife doing projects, but a woman rehabbing older homes for profit? Some have a hard time with it, and seem to get resentful when I make money, and when I do not flirt with them. But I love my job and I love working with men who are trades people. It is really a new experience for all of us. We are learning, literally on the job, every day. I find it quite empowering to be employing on average 10 men on some days in various trades. I love what we can do together, the collaboration. That said, there are several men I do not work with anymore. One "loved" me so much he was going kill me so as to install me in a kitchen we were building so he could always visit me. And I smiled and thought, you are done. His replacement on my latest job is still under approval. Men do not always take well to criticism from a woman, but they can take direction and they respect you when you pay them in a fair and timely way. Most of my trades people are dads. These are family men. And I think they are actually really nice men to work with. I trust them and enjoy working with them.
57
Wait a minute, "One "loved" me so much he was going kill me so as to install me in a kitchen we were building so he could always visit me. ", what?
What century are you living in...?
I remember the nurses striking for decent wages in the 1970s. A few years later, we knew they had succeeded because suddenly there were male nurses - unheard of, at that time.
65
Even so, after almost 50 years....more than 90% of all nurses are women.
1
Concerned - at my hospital I'd say about 25% of the nurses, and close to 50% of the aides, are men. (That's just one hospital and doesn't take other settings like nursing facilities into account though.)
1
Well said Pamela
No amount of lecturing is going to change human nature. Extreme behavior can be controlled by the threat of punishment, but thoughts are involuntary.
3
Human nature? Culture is not human nature. In the 19th century, many if not most Americans thought of African Americans as slaves. Even the most inveterate racists do not think that anymore, and bad as racism is in this country, it is still not at the levels it was in the 1920s. In fact, thoughts can and do change. There is nothing 'natural' about them. We teach sexism, we teach that violence is acceptable, we teach that grabbing private parts is an important stepping stone to higher office.
6
No one's talking about changing human nature, only human behavior.
If lecturing was ever going to have any effect on human nature, medieval Europe would have been the purest, most peaceful society in history.
1
Thoughts are involuntary, yes. Acting on those thoughts is not.
Jonathan might think: Wow, look at those hooters!
Jonathan might or might not say: Your hooters are amazing! I must touch them now.
Jonathan might choose instead to keep his mouth shut and his hands to himself.
Human nature can be controlled, if one wants to. You don't murder everyone you get angry with, you don't rape women you have sexual thoughts about, and (I hope) you don't punish women in their chosen workplace.
Extreme behavior CAN be controlled by society, fool. Stop being simple: thoughts of murder are almost always controlled by just NOT murdering. You just have to want to do the right thing.
1
While I agree that the central question of this article is important, I find this piece to be misleading. We can agree that sexual harassment is a significant problem, but I cannot agree with the implication that sexual harassment is an inevitable byproduct of male-dominated work environments. Such an implication speaks too broadly of half of the readership of this article and might too easily exclude that half from a necessary conversation about cohesion and cooperation. I think some more questions about the source of this problem are in order. University professors may not be the best (or only) source of information about blue-collar jobs in the American workforce or prevailing cultures within those environments. But, for what it's worth, both of the bricklayers in the accompanying artwork are doing a terrible job, regardless of their sex.
9
The harassment is caused by centuries of male perogative. It’s cultural and oddly often learned from men’s mothers.
14
Harassment is part and parcel of competition in the economy. We will never resolve this if we continue to be misled by the male/female struggle. Remove all the women and the harassment remains.
I don’t think it helps women if some view themselves as weak and in need of special protections.
1
I own a residential construction company. We’ve had women carpenters since the beginning in 1983. What this article doesn’t acknowledge is that quality construction these days requires a lot of brains and some brawn. I can’t think of any physical task required on any of our job sites that a woman couldn’t do as well as a man.
102
I think an even bigger problem is the fact that it is increasingly impossible to raise a family on the income of even two working parents. The well paying jobs are not there. The gig economy cannot sustain those forced to work in it. As some of the commenters have mentioned, automation threatens a lot of good jobs. The now almost complete destruction of unions both public and private has taken any voice away from ordinary workers. Our tax structure, especially given the new tax reform package passed under Trump, will allow the 1% to increase their wealth on the backs of ordinary working people from the middle class on down. The government seems to only be there for their donors and not for the ordinary American. Good middle class jobs is not just about gender. The fact that women going into typically male jobs is not the issue, it is about how good jobs and future retirement security has been all but destroyed for the average working American.
73
That doesn't explain why, for example, women were welcomed (patronizingly, but still...) into the mens' workplace during wartime, during national disasters, etc, but THEN told to get back home after that need was satisfied.
The problem is that some women said: "You know, I really like factory work! I'd like to do that for a living!" or whatever field where men work. That's where the pushback is.
Note that workplace harassment often comes from co-workers; men who are getting a paycheck. They weren't pushed out, and they still can't stand a woman working like them, alongside them.
8
30 years ago I had a string of cabinet shop jobs where I was the only woman, and while I was mostly treated fine by my coworkers (I think because I was good at my job), I always made less than the men. Also, while shops would regularly hire untrained men as manual labor and then train them for skilled work, they would never do the same for a female prospect. I only got hired because I came with skills, but was always paid like a newbie. When I went on installations, I was also almost always the only woman on the job site.
I have long since left this world, but in my current profession, I frequently visiti construction sites. I always look around to see how many skilled tradeswomen are working. Sadly, the number is most often zero. Most recently I visited a $100+ million dollar job site being built with state dollars and the only other female among the hundreds of men working was a state employee who was assisting the architect.
Women have made NO progress in the building trades in over a generation.
40
It's not how many skilled trades are being used it's how many American citizens. The building trade is rife with undocumented workers.
I do see more women, like myself, today working as general contractors. But fininding women trades people to hire is difficult. There are some women owned painting companies. The problem is the apprentice roles are almost always filed by men with men. This needs to change. Perhaps unions need to be required to have an increase in membership.
Consider that in little more than 2 generations, we have shifted from a society where (for the middle and upper classes) men worked outside the home and women inside the home to a society where both men and women work outside the home.
It's a huge change...
And I wonder how much of the hostility in some workplaces is due to the fact that men feel as though they are being asked to give up their workplace dominance in return for - what exactly?
How has this remarkable transformation changed and improved men's lives?
Men are still expected to leave school, get a job, and work until they retire.
No sabbaticals, no paternity leave, no staying home for a few years to keep an eye on the kids.
So when men see women entering their field, they don't see great positive change, they see new work rules, sensitivity training, and more competition. Men see their old boys' network disparaged and dismantled, to be replaced by women's networking brown bag lunches, mentoring for women, and women's management fast track programs. Men see special training for women, to teach women the skills that men had to pick up without that training.
And men don't get more power at home or more flexible life choices.
Women, obviously, see things differently. But perhaps if we, as a society, took a harder look at how men can also benefit from all these positive changes for women, instead of just disparaging men as backward thugs, both men and women can benefit.
I won't hold my breath.
27
I had to chuckle at this comment. What does my husband get out me also working full time? Well, greater career flexibility for himself, for one. My additional salary means that he can choose to explore new career alternatives since we are not limited to a single paycheck. He has less stress because he knows that the kids and I won't starve if he gets fired or dies young. He gets to take fancier vacations since my salary means we can afford to travel better. He doesn't have to put as much of his paycheck towards the kids' college funds because my paycheck now does that.
Of course, we are only one family, and maybe all the other men out there really are suffering just as you believe.
8
And just what makes you think men are entitled to get something "in return for" their workplace dominance in the first place?
2
You are repeating bogus history.
Immediately after World War II, women were forced out of the wage labor market by federal government, union, and large employer collusion in order to "free up" those jobs for men leaving the armed forces. That period, which you clearly valorize, represents not the norm for American history but an exception. Before the postwar era women participated in the wage labor market - either at factories outside the home or doing piecework inside of it - at much higher rates than most people realize. In the 1870 census a full third of all factory workers were women.
Women have always worked. They have also always been exploited and mistreated. If you think that a more equitable workplace threatens you, or picks your pocket somehow, you are contributing towards that exploitation and mistreatment.
6
About those studies that "have concluded that sexual harassment is more regular and severe in traditionally male occupations":
This is a thankless comment, I know, but we need to consider that most "traditionally male occupations" are in a part of the economic and cultural spectrum where it's hard to make a principled correlation between sexual harassment and the "traditionally male" component of the occupation. It wouldn't be surprising to learn that the same set of men exhibit more racial prejudice, xenophobia, homophobia, and anti-intellectual bias than the general population of employed males, and yet one wouldn't attribute that to the nature of their occupation.
The thesis of this essay is highly plausible, but I think we may as well reach our conclusions intuitively and not try to bolster them with analyses that are bound to lack integrity.
17
That's funny. When I worked in male-dominated fields, most people understood that if they harassed me, I would react aggressively. I felt fully female, but empowered.
2
It it’s the “locker room” banter between young men that sets the tone and is seen as innocuous that’s the problem. I don’t mean outrageous statements like those of the President, but rather the crude jokes that are seen and defended as harmless. It defines women as outsiders and informs the perception of their competence, and will be the hardest thing to eradicate. We can lecture young guys about equality all day long but until we scrub that sensibility from a casual conversation among friends, nothing’s going to change.
15
Just a question: do women ever talk and joke about men when men aren't around? If so, do we as a society need to "eradicate" such talk? Isn't that most of what (especially young) people of both genders talk about?
2
I can remember showing up at construction sites seeking work as a journeyman carpenter, tools in hand, and being asked if I could type. And being told I would not be hired because a man needed that job to support his family. Always one of the first laid off at the end of the job (not for lack of performance, as I lasted till the layoffs began and was rehired on future projects.) If it hadn't been for EEO requirements, work would have been scarce indeed; this in spite of my finishing 2nd in the State apprenticeship contest the year I journeyed out.
Nevertheless, she persisted.
112
There are so many legitimate problems women face both at workplaces and public spaces,in addition to the problems women face at home. It would be a lot more helpful if we stopped siloing the problems as being specific to one type of job or environment.
The problems are universal, it seems, these jobsites with their skewed proportions make the problem more obvious.
We need to address society's expectations of and for women and men more honestly if we really want to see any useful change. Cheers.
3
Unfortunately, articles such as this are examples of the forces that divide labor. There should be some recognition that the entry of women, en masse, into the workforce, created a larger pool for prospective employers to choose from thereby driving down wages for everyone. This is the same problem with immigration and the explanation for why otherwise politically conservative corporate entities historically supported it. What we need is a return to organized labor across the board to bring back an economically viable middle class. Only then will there be a force for solidarity between man and women, as well as all national origins.
28
More people working raises aggregate income and demand for goods, which increases output and aggregate wealth.
6
You really think unions can solve the universal puzzle of male and female and what they should? The armed forces tried, and they almost succeeded with racial integration.
Pete, more people working for pay doesn’t necessarily increase aggregate income. If in the past, let’s say, you had one man working sixty hours a week and now you have two people working each 45, that one person earning sixty might have been more efficient than the two people working. Plus the two people need two sets of specialized education and pay two sets of taxes — two work wardrobes, on and on. So they might not end up with more — even if the government might (by taxing them both).
Working women has increased the employment of daycare workers, nannies and so on — maybe increasing overall GDP, but I don’t feel like it really helped average people have nicer lives. We’re all like hamsters on a wheel running faster for a set of diminishing returns.
And I bet doubling the workforce did lower income. For the very first people who did this, like my grandma who went back to work when my dad was a teen, it helped give them a little more income. But now that everyone is doing it we’re probably paid less and finite goods — like houses within commuting distance to jobs — cost double too (because the families earning are all competing based on a two income family). It’s not giving anyone a leg up anymore.
So we lead these harried lives for maybe a tiny income bump.
2
Funny, HRC may have nailed when she said you have to have laws to make changes and improvements really stick.
Males in groups are hierarchical in nature and also pack oriented at the same time. A leader can be on top of the group but they can also say something but if it's too radical, the pack may turn on him. He needs some backup. That is laws.
Male leaders generally may see the value and importance of giving women equal opps in all jobs and all levels of society. However, he alone can't deliver that.
However [squared], he can if there's a law in place. Title IX in college sports is a good case. Due to this law, male sports administrators "had" to implement equal budgets and treatment for females in college sport. They had no choice. The reality is amazing equality and expansion of women's sports. And something that administrators (male and female and university presidents) can take great pride in.
Similarly, some sort of equality law for all other aspects of society will give good men everywhere the backup they need to confront the pack and implement real change and equality. What that law will be, who knows. But the principle is that we need to give good men the backup necessary to change things for the good.
HRC had it right. Keep fighting HRC, you're on the right track.
28
Susan’s real question is legitimate: with so much changing in our society regarding gender, should we dramatically intensify the questioning of traditional gender-roles and the appropriateness of “male-dominated” and “female-dominated” jobs? If we do and this opens up a far more diverse source of jobs to women, then we may see less sexual harassment.
Perhaps, but I suspect it will take more than that. Women have been invading once-male preserves for some time now, and for even longer women have been growing a presence in business, to the point where they’re now ubiquitous, increasingly at management levels; and we still see a lot of harassment, although it’s true that it’s probably far less intense today than, say, forty years ago.
It’s a legitimate discussion. But I also remember Ed Koch’s tongue-in-cheek response to women who wanted to establish back in the 1980s a far greater presence in NYC professional firefighting. He said that it didn’t bother him at all, so long as EVERY firefighter could carry a 220 lb. mayor down the side of a building on fire.
However, some of Susan’s cited sources obviously see this intensifying historical process as an “attack on male power”. Regardless of the manifestly evident justice inherent in much of it, take care that it not become exploitative itself, and SO intense that it sparks a tectonic reaction by men.
11
@Richard Luettgen: "Women have been invading once-male preserves for some time . . ."
Invading?
And ooh, ooh, yes. We women must be careful not to offend men by being "SO intense" in craving equal opportunity. The feelings of delicate snowflakes masquerading as the stronger gender must be protected. Or, as you would say, MUST.
The greatest hope of the human species is the fact that a whole generation of elderly misogynists is nearing its expiration date. When those clueless old guys have all dropped dead, the world will be a much fairer place.
3
RE: "Women have been invading..."
Invading.
Kind of says it all, doesn't it?
1
I was an elementary teacher for 30 years, the last 11 teaching kindergarten. I always felt accepted, but I did get a lot of, "Isn't that sweet!", when I told people what I did. It takes a determined and confident person to cross gender lines in either direction in the workplace.
214
"isn't that sweet" isn't what women hear in jobs where they are the minority...I think it would be wonderful if more men taught in elementary school and if more women got to be principals of high schools.
I felt extremely tentative about allowing men to work with my children when they were young. This is because something like 95% of child sexual abuse is by men, and the most serious (penetrative) abuse is by men. There is also, generally speaking, a lot of sexual abuse.
I think this is reason enough to simply discourage men from working with young children. Working with children also opens them to accusations. When I was in high school back in the nineties the male teachers were told never to talk with a female student with the door closed. To me this seems sensible.
By the same token, is there any value in having female firefighters? There must be so few women who can carry a 220 lbs man. And those few super strong women, I would think, would be more helpful somewhere like a police force, where perhaps certain victims and perpetrators — people who might have had bad or violent experiences with men — might respond better to a woman.
Viva la difference. We don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same to make life fair.
2
Gender equality progress is being made albeit over decades with some backsliding (e.g., computer science). Biologically men and women have one small chromosomal difference out of 46. ~2% in simple math. This helps make clear why the differences within a gender far exceed the difference between the gender averages on likely all work related dimensions. Equality is progress.
Between gender equalization and the rapid displacement of male dominated industries by services, opportunities for males have been in decline for over a generation. Couple that with country data that make clear that happiness comes with growing GDP/opportunity and one asks:
How important is a generation of declining prospects for men in Trump's election?
33
If these Neanderthals or "deplorables" are responsible for Trump's election, then maybe we need to revisit the widely accepted idea of universal suffrage. John Jay said it best, that "those who own the country should run it." Just look around yourself and prove to me that at least half of those you pass should be allowed within spitting distance of a ballot. What we need is perhaps a decade where we adjust the balance by banning men from college, from large sports contracts, from supervisory, managerial and executive promotions.
You can start entertaining the notion that there is another side to this question by watching this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deJUY8CmdNQ
And isn't it time we closed down the soup kitchens, at least in poor neighborhoods?
I have been a Project Manager & Superintendent on many large commercial construction sites in the last 25 years. Things have changed far more than this article implies... in my experience the men are very respectful of women on jobsites. The number of women in the Trades is still very small, but I have had some excellent female techs on my jobs... Competence is what really earns respect. Of course this is the Western US... it may be very different in other parts of the country.
183
I've been in construction for over 40 years, from digging holes to hanging the highest pieces of iron & as a construction attorney. I agree with BD fully as to Eastern US. Anecdotes may abound; but, culturally "the times... they have been a changing" in this regard for the good.
4
I was a female on a construction crew 15 ys ago and this article describes my experience well. You may be unaware of their experiences and they probably don't want you to know as it would make it more complicated for them.
73
Also, it may be different if you are actually a female and know what goes on when the Project Manager & Superintendent is out-of-sight.....
44
Key word: "threatened."
While the author would apparently concede that there are gender-based differences in ability (the dexterous fingers or women), there aren't many jobs left for which being male is a necessary and sufficient qualification. Most of the jobs previously considered such have been replaced by automation. And women have proven themselves capable of more than more remaining jobs previously thought to be the province of males--in particular professional jobs like doctors and lawyers.
Guys with little else to offer are understandably, but not excusably, hostile to others who might prove capable of doing such jobs, be they women, immigrants or minorities.
But we're really just fighting over crumbs. The notion of a 'job' as a means of economic survival is rapidly disappearing. Like fish in a drying lake bed, we fight over what's left and pray that our overlords allow for our survival.
217
The big obvious thing coming is the self driving vehicles. Every truck driver, cabbie, uber driver and so on will be pushed onto the dry edge of the drying lake. Self driving vehicles are not a question of if. Then there are things like the hyperloop which will potentially replace all rail and airline traffic and utilize way less energy and human labor. These are rather big, but besides these, gradual increased automation has been taking place and continues throughout all manufacturing. I predict we will get a lot of manufacturing back in the US but it will have sparingly few humans jobs.
Not exactly sure our current leaders are cognizant of these ongoing changes and eventualities and could possibly be smart enough to know how to deal with it. The big old industries have them bought and paid for.
90
"The river shifted course, and the fish found itself out of the water. The fish flipped and the fish flopped - not knowing if its flip or flop would land it back into the water. What the fish knew was that the current situation was untenable " - a preface to one of C.Lester Thurow's books...
9
Pretty sure the writer was referencing how people at the time justified the work as women's work, not agreeing there was a sex difference in dexterity.
How is being a movie producer a manly job? Now being an oil roughneck is a manly job. Politicos are manly?
45
Because they are in charge and have power.
4
you are kidding, of course. Enough women are as fully capable of being narrowly focussed on 'winning' as men to replace all the men still doing trading on Wall St. (presumably a lot fewer than there used to be now that we have computerized trading algorithms able to execute trades based on complex and arcane rules) in microseconds.
4
Jonathan - You're joking right? The mind and temperament of men on Wall Street gave us the housing bubble, CDFs, and the worst economic downturn since the depression.
It was the mind and temperament of Sally Yates who told Greenspan and others that these unregulated derivatives were worthless and dangerous. They scoffed at her until the government had to prop up financial institutions to keep our economy from imploding.
19
It is still often assumed that when I walk in a room (as a partner in a law firm), I am the secretary coming to solicit coffee orders. Sometimes I play along, much to the dismay of the men who are served coffee by a senior partner and don't figure it out until I sit down at the table with them to discuss business.
374
Good for you, stupid of them.
122
Brilliant, Mary A !
Gotta' love that dumb white male privilege that just doesn't want to enter the 21st century.
This man would love to get you some coffee.
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LOL. That happens a lot. It is worse in Japan. I know a female Sr. Engineer who visited a vendor for a key component in Japan with a male subordinate. The hosting team was 4 or 5 men and one female engineer who was constantly doting on not just the two visitors but all her male colleagues. The japanese woman's behavior was so subservient and obviously expected by her male colleagues that it embarassed the (generally cool and enlightened) junior engineer from Silicon Valley.
The american subordinate hatched a plan over dinner, which my friend immediately approved. Whenever the japanese woman would rise to clear the dishes, the senior (female) engineer from California would ask her a question. Her male subordinate would say 'oh, that's important. Here, let me get those dishes for you' and take the housekeeping task away from the japanese woman.
This terrified her male colleagues. Since they were supposed to be good hosts for this visiting team from an important customer. With the two women discussing an "important" topic, they had no choice but to jump up and take the dishes from their male guest.
After 2 days of this, the japanese men just started taking turns doing their share of the housework! Of course my friend, the Sr. Engineer, took her turn fetching coffee for everyone as well, but only after the guys in the room had proved they didn't think it was beneath them!
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