Macho Run Amok and Excessively Compensated Is Giving Way to Macho Unemployed and Undirected
The era of male dominance is coming to an end. Seriously. For years, the world has been witnessing a quiet but monumental shift of power from men to women. Today, the Great Recession has turned what was an evolutionary shift into a revolutionary one. The consequence will be not only a mortal blow to the macho men’s club called finance capitalism that got the world into the current economic catastrophe; it will be a collective crisis for millions and millions of working men around the globe.
Consider, to start, the almost unbelievably disproportionate impact that the current crisis is having on men—so much so that the recession is now known to some economists and the more plugged-in corners of the blogosphere as the “he-cession.” More than 80% of job losses in the United States since November have fallen on men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (see chart above of male vs. female jobless rates). And the numbers are broadly similar in Europe, adding up to about 7 million more out-of-work men than before the recession just in the United States and Europe as economic sectors traditionally dominated by men (construction and heavy manufacturing) decline further and faster than those traditionally dominated by women (public-sector employment, healthcare, and education). All told, by the end of 2009, the global recession is expected to put as many as 28 million men out of work worldwide.
Indeed, it’s now fair to say that the most enduring legacy of the Great Recession will not be the death of Wall Street. It will not be the death of finance. And it will not be the death of capitalism. These ideas and institutions will live on. What will not survive is macho. And the choice men will have to make, whether to accept or fight this new fact of history, will have seismic effects for all of humanity—women as well as men.
Make no mistake: The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender. We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho. But we can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent.
~"The Death of Macho," by Reihan Salam in Foreign Policy
8 Comments:
Make no mistake he is correct. Make also no mistake that the situation is much more serious than he thinks.
So true and I believe is the big secret that men are having trouble accepting.
Or it is a time when such "macho" qualities need to be cranked up.
It's that darned pendulum swinging too far stuff again.
I note every description of the places in which women dominate say "(public-sector employment, healthcare, and education)". It seems to me these are pretty much the same thing. I don't know why they use this construction, unless it is to mislead you.
"Education" is public-sector employment. I doubt the private (high school and below) schools make a dent in the overall numbers. Even nominally "private" post-secondary schools receive so much government money that they are public employees in all but name. Indeed, one might notice that government "subsidy" of college education hasn't made it more affordable, for the obvious reasons.
Healthcare is dominated by Medicare and other government reimbursement, and in the case of health insurance is so riddled with regulation they're practically agents of the government in fact if not in name.
As long as men can change tyres or kill mice they will be ok
One of the most crackpot blatherings passing itself off as "legitimate analysis" I've ever seen.
OBH says: "One of the most crackpot blatherings passing itself off as "legitimate analysis" I've ever seen."...
Absolutely!
In a socialist induced recession its expected that the productive work sector will take the hit, hence men are taking the brunt with higher numbers in the unemployment arena...
Women still can't carry their end of the log...
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