In its recent special on the State of Women, Time magazine announced that the gender wars were over and declared a tie. "It's no longer a man's world," Time concluded. "Nor is it a woman's nation. It's a cooperative, with bylaws under constant negotiation, and expectations that profits be equally shared."
I'm not so sure. In a war, no matter the outcome of a certain skirmish or battle, the winner is the party whose attitudes, behaviors and preoccupations come to dominate the postwar landscape. By this measure, the outcome of the gender wars, if wars they were, is clear: women won.
Men's attitudes more and more resemble women's attitudes. In 1977, for example, 72 percent of men believed that men should be the primary breadwinners and women should be the primary caretakers of home and family. Today, only 42 percent of men hold those opinions, which happens to be almost exactly the same as the percentage of women who feel that way (38 percent).
Men's behaviors are becoming more and more like women's. In 1977, men spent, on average, only six hours a week doing housework, as compared to 21 hours for women. Today, when it comes to the "second shift," men look a lot like women--men now spend 13 hours a week on housework, while women spend 17. Similarly, 40 years ago, the average Don Draper spent only two hours a day caring for his non-teen kids, while the average Betty devoted almost twice that much time to her kids--3.8 hours per day. Today, Betty's kid time is exactly the same, while Don's has climbed to three hours per day. Gen Y dads have taken it up a notch. They now spend more than four hours a day on childcare.
"To know a culture, look to its heroes," goes the saying, and here, too, we see change and new models of leadership. Gone are the macho monarchs--Jack "Neutron" Welch, George "The Decider" Bush, Michael "Micro-manager" Eisner, and Carly "The Fighter" Fiorina (not all male models are masculine). In their place we now honor a new style of leader, no less visionary, but more pragmatic, more conciliatory, building consensus as they quietly get things done--in the Oval Office, Barak Obama; at Hewlett Packard, Mark Hurd; at Disney HQ, Bob Eiger; and at the Welch mansion, the softer, friendlier hybrid, JackandSuzy.
Even our entertainment heroes have lost their masculine muscle. Arnold, Bruce, and Stallone are long gone from the screen, but even the flirty, flaky, funny adolescents--Tom, Brad, Jim, and Will--no longer charm us quite as much as they once did. Instead, our leading men are the likes of Zac Efron who, though he can still "Michael Jordan" it on the court, now has to sing and dance charmingly to earn our affection. Or the dangerous but effete and oh-so-delicate Robert Pattinson of "Twilight" fame. Or the gender-bending, pirate-styling and pretty Johnny Depp. Even James Bond has found his feminine side--all he wants is a quantum of solace, crushed as he is at the thought that the one he loved, really truly loved, betrayed him.
The war is over. Women won. And, as ever, to the victor go the spoils.
And what are the spoils of this particular war?
The spoils are choice. Women have more choice than ever before in their work, home, and lifestyles. And yes, men are becoming more like women, and so men are starting to face the same multitude of choices that women tackle.
Today, with many companies offering paternal leave, men now have the choice to stay at home after the birth of their newborn--which, as any dad will tell you, is a wondrous gift. But they also have the choice to take advantage of this leave and stay at home wondering whether or not this absence will hurt their careers.
Men have the choice to stay at home even longer and assume the chief caregiver role-- this happens in 40 percent of U.S. households, either through choice or circumstance (in 40 percent of U.S. households, the woman is the primary wage earner). But they have to face the fact that, in making this choice, their skills might become obsolete and their wages, when they re-enter the workforce, will wind up reflecting their out-of-date proficiency. According to recent research, this kind of career interruption with its attendant decline in relevant skills, rather than pure gender discrimination, accounts for almost all of the fabled 77 cents-on-the-dollar male/female wage gap.
Men have the choice to arrange their schedules so they can pick up the kids from school twice a week. And they have the choice not to, and then to feel guilty about this choice.
The choice-filled world that women have bestowed on men is a tough world. Tough on women; even tougher on men. At least that's what the data reveal. In 1977, 41 percent of women reported feeling some level of work/life conflict, whereas only 35 percent of men did. Today, about the same percentage of women report work/life conflict, but 59 percent of men are now similarly torn.
Or maybe it's not tougher on men. It's just that men aren't used to it, and so they feel it more. And so they complain more, as all novices do.
The victors are leading men into a new world, a world devoid of narrow paths and clear finish lines, a world of broad expanses of choice and role, a world where you, not society, can decide your definitions of success and fulfillment. In its abundance, it is a wonderful world. It is also a world where, as women have found, if you possess a poor internal compass you can wind up utterly lost.
So wake up, men. Whatever women are feeling, you are now free to feel it, too.
Marcus talks more about finding a strong internal compass in his new book, Find Your Strongest Life.
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Marcus Buckingham is the bestselling author of five books, with more than 3.7 million copies in print, and the world's leading expert in personal strengths. An internationally renowned consultant and the founder of TMBC, a management consulting company, he has been hailed as a visionary by corporations such as Toyota, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Disney. Buckingham has been featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Larry King Live," "The Today Show," "Good Morning America," and "The View," and profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review. A Senior Researcher at Gallup Organization for nearly two decades, Buckingham addresses more than 250,000 people in live audiences each year and leads management training initiatives in organizations worldwide. His most recent book is Find Your Strongest Life (Thomas Nelson).
Marcus Buckingham: What's Happening To Women's Happiness?
Marcus Buckingham: Women's Happiness: What We Know For Certain
Letters - Women and the Pursuit of Happiness - NYTimes.com
He's Happier, She's Less So - New York Times
Marcus Buckingham: What's Happening To Women's Happiness?
Marcus Buckingham: Women's Happiness: What We Know For Certain
A man is not so threatened by women that he fears assuming a traditionally feminine gender role will somehow make him less.
What about NOT INTERESTED?
Think about a single man vs single woman's apartment....guess what? Men are not as interested in housework.
Men and women (in general) want kids equally? No. But they are supposed to be as interested in child care, etc.
You can see that men have become more 'sensitive' by the way they dress and the way they act, at least in the big, traditionally more liberal cities. Men aren't allowed to be men anymore. They carry 'man-bags', paint their fingernails and even shave their body hair. What's all that about?
I'm all for gender equality and for men taking a bigger, positive role and responsibility to help make up for all the things we as a gender have screwed up over the years, but we have also somehow been told that we can't be men anymore in the process. I don't mean macho, posturing, aggressive types necessarily, but why turn them into whipped, effeminate, catty types?
Wonem seem to want men who will be the strong, reliable, secure type. Some women like it when her man acts like one sometimes. And, some women like their men furry! No women wants to be with a man who is more effeminate than she, nor does she want an abuser, either. It seems we have swung from one extreme to the other. Where is the middle ground anymore?
You cite opinion polls to show that women have won the "gender wars." But, opinion polls are unreliable when it comes to this sort of thing. In polls like these, people always answer with an eye to how they will be perceived, rather than what they actually think. Nobody wants to be seen as sexist. You may as well ask them if they think white people are superior to others. Obviously, nobody, not even a racist, would answer that in the affirmative, even if they actually did believe that.
So, the real key to measuring progress should be hard data. Hard data shows us that women still make 79 cents for every dollar that men make, for doing the same job. Hard data shows us that although women are graduating in roughly equal numbers from professional schools, they are still very, very poorly represented among executive level positions. Hard data shows us that while men may claim to want equality in the household (as your polls show), women are still doing the overwhelming majority of childrearing and housekeeping in this country.
So, NO, the "gender wars" are not over. And, by the way, it's not really a "war" - it's a movement to bring equality in our society, which would be beneficial to both men and women.
Regardless, everyone trying to help one another is a good thing. Qualiies of care, respect, service, start in the home. The more we can 'practice' it there, the better habit we are creating for helping and serving others. I am very curious to see how these trends then move out to the developing world. Thank you for an informative article!
Sincerely, Pamela
Founder and CEO
UniversalGiving
http://www.universalgiving.org
Living and Giving Blog
http://pamelahawley.wordpress.com
http://www.prlog.org/10354634-why-real-men-drink-herbal-tea.html
The role of sex is a good example. In my day to engage a woman or go on a date, the male was prompted to "Pursue" a woman with charm, intelligence, romance and fun. I walk into a bar today and 4 woman virtually accost me and solicit hardcore sex.
Take a few minutes and breath in that change.
Teenagers back in the day were hippies with rebelious desires of fighting back against institutions. Or they were individualists who defied tradition with machismo. Today I cant tell the difference between boys or girls. My niece's boyfriends walk and talk like women and even wear make up. They dont rebel against anything, they just kinda pout and then go get Starbucks.
I open doors for women at work (corporate America) and get stink eye stares like I'm offending them. During a diversity meeting I suggested women carry cell phones and conduct their lives on them more than men and was almost lynched by the females. But every one of them had their cell phones on. And only One male had a phone with him and it was turned off.
Women are raising boys to men and the men they want apparently are more like themselves. Lets see how they do at defending a nation.........................in make up.
LMFAO!!!!!
Right = men
It's all over folks... we need a nice resolution of our differences.
Men today are more in the mirror today than women, what do they call them "metrosexual" or something; Yuk. And men today are rude they have no manners at all, yet I have to concede that’s women’s fault because many women disrespect themselves, in so many ways today, that they’ve made it extremely difficult for other women who still have standards.
In addition, men today are so effeminate; I sometimes can't tell the difference anymore. Honestly, I have a little, thin neighbor covered in black clothing, Gothic style, and I swear I don't know which it is, male or female.
Also men today are conniving. I read a posting in another venue that said, men: search for women with high paying jobs; get her pregnant and work only part time; then file for divorce; get joint custody and child support. Was this what the Women's Liberation Movement was for? No wonder the birth rates in western industrialized countries are going down, and increasingly women in these countries (over 50% in America), are opting to stay single.
"Ugh, American women seem pretty useless by the standards of my parents; mainly women whine too much today. They argue about cooking dinner. I'm told by younger men that women say "it's your turn", huh? My mother never asked my father to cook dinner; or wash clothes; iron; Mommy did it without being asked."
Yes, in previous generations the mother worked outside the home as well. (at least in my family they did)
In response to your last paragraph, I know too many men going through that situation right now with women.
"Was this what the Women's Liberation Movement was for?"
With every bit of progress there are always unintended consequences. To quote Spiderman's uncle, 'With power (freedom) comes great responsibility.' As women you are now learning about some of the responsibilities that men have that went unspoken, were understood and just 'taken care of' that you never had to worry about because of prescribed gender roles. Contrary to popular belief our lives never just consisted of leaving the house to go to a job we love, coming home, sitting on the couch with a beer and watching the game all night. You have been sold a bill of goods if you believe that. Getting rid of prescribed gender roles is fine with me, but you can't expect 'help' with stereotypical female roles and say 'real men' do all the things my father/grandfather did.
Really, women are looking for opened minded but “traditional” men, no matter what the feminist say; and the statistics show, women are choosing to do opt out of marriage, why? Why do men remarry at twice the rate of divorced married women? Obviously married life in this modern age is better for men, but not so much for women.
Regarding feminism, domestically, women have been hoisted by their own petard.
http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2009/11/18/bradys_an_iron_man/
I'm glad I was born during the 80s. Atleast most of my male peers see women as an equal. However, I work in a male dominated field, so sexist sh*t happens.