Masculinity, Labor, and Sexual Power

Introduction: Work, Sex, GenderHanna Rosin's The End of Men posits that women are gaining so rapidly professionally that they will soon overtake men.1 She notes that blue-collar manufacturing jobs have disappeared from the American workplace and that many are likely gone for good.2 The recent recession, she explains, harmed men more than women: jobs heavily occupied by men disappeared at a much higher rate than those service jobs ordinarily performed by women. She also argues that women are gaining ground in white-collar jobs, and notes that women occupy a growing percentage of managerial positions.3Rosin observes that women today earn approximately sixty percent of undergraduate and master's degrees and nearly half of all professional degrees in law and medicine.4 Perhaps even more surprising is the attitude she reports young women and men have when approaching their university studies: young women work diligently toward attaining their degrees while "[g]uys high-five each other when they get a C."5 This immature attitude of the "guys" is the subject of Michael Kimmel's book, Guyland, which describes a longer adolescent stage for boys and young men than in the past.6 According to Kimmel, a young man's stay in "Guyland" can last up to two decades.7 Many young women are wondering, Rosin reports, whether they will be able to find a serious mate.8Rosin posits that American society and workplaces (and even international workplaces) are changing so rapidly that women will soon occupy the most powerful positions. It could be, she suggests, that characteristics traditionally associated with women such as empathy and consensus building are more valuable to business than the more competitive "masculine" model or the brawny "masculine" strength necessary for many blue-collar manufacturing jobs.9 And, she argues, women have demonstrated more adaptability than men. She faults men for their inability to "retool" or to adjust to the new economy.10Many of Rosin's statistics, or at least the conclusions she draws from them, have been challenged.11 She acknowledges that it seems odd to worry about the diminishing power of men when we look at the White House, Congress, courts, and Fortune 500 CEOs and boards, but she sees this domination as merely a "last gasp of a vanishing age"12 for men. In all of these high-powered venues, however, women have barely made a dent. In the highest echelons of power, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the first female director of policy planning at the State Department, has concluded that women "can't have it all."13 Slaughter makes no similar claim about men. Moreover, women still suffer from domestic violence and poverty at rates higher than those of men.14 Thus, a concern for men's future without a closer look may be premature.There are other concerns with Rosin's book. While it is unclear that her predictions will come true, she appears to blame men's presumed fate on their personal failures rather than on structural labor markets or the economy. Additionally, she tends to extrapolate to all men from a study of middle-class white men. But, even though it is open to criticism, Rosin's thesis raises important questions about boys and girls, women and men, education, work, and power and family relationships, at least in the white middle-class community. It also provides an opportunity to examine and discuss more broadly the phenomena that she describes and what they actually mean. While Rosin's title implies that there is a zero-sum game - that as women rise in education and power, men recede - a closer look at her book and at how men and women react to the recession and women's newfound successes in education and employment may reveal something much deeper about gender and gender performance.In fact, it is necessary to complicate Rosin's thesis to reach a more nuanced understanding. Although Rosin posits that women are gaining on men, and her anecdotes hint at the importance of gender shifts, she skips back and forth between analysis of differences that she appears to consider innate to men or women and those that are socially constructed. …