Regardless of where you fall on the scale of feminist ideology -- great progress to stubborn inequality -- in the arena of women and work, big shifts are afoot. The direction is clear. The destination is not. But by all indications, work and families have some adjustments ahead.
First the numbers. There was a flurry of headlines that, for the first time, there were more women in the workforce than men. Second-paragraph perspective pointed out that is mainly because of the depleted employee rolls of male-heavy industries like manufacturing and construction. Still, we've had recessions in the past, and the balance had never tipped toward women. The fact is, women were already getting close.
While there is still a wage gap, it's narrowing. One example with interesting implications for families: according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, two decades ago, 17.8 percent of women in two-income families made more money than their husbands. In 2007 -- even before the cresting of the layoffs -- it was 26 percent. With the flow of female graduates out of professional schools, and the fact that they already make up half of middle management positions, there is every reason to assume that the trend will continue. There will simply be more women making more money than ever before.
The glass half-empty contingent counters quickly with the statistics that show women bunched in the in the middle ranks like a crowd waiting for a stalled elevator. True, the numbers at the top reflect a puzzling lack of females.
We can debate the reasons for the disparity -- leadership stereotyping, lack of mentoring, exclusion from development, positions that don't create a career track to the top and time out for family. None of this is fair. None of it is right. But in the long run, none of it is going to be particularly important.
In the time it would take to dismantle the machinery of exclusion and inequity, events will do the job for us.
Economic growth will be in the service sector, where women are well represented and where, one could argue, the path to the senior ranks is more open than in industries that have been historically male dominated. Also, factor in the millions of female entrepreneurs starting new businesses; and the fact that organizations with females at the highest levels have more females being positioned to follow.
All things considered, the demand for female talent is going to grow exponentially. But what about the supply? Do women want to surge to the top the way they surged to the middle? And if they do, what does that mean to family life as we have come to know it?
Listen to many women, and the conversation trends toward that improbable state of being called work-life balance. For anybody who has tried to find, let alone maintain, that balance, time is the merciless variable. The ancient Egyptians measured daylight, twilight and darkness and came up with the idea of a 24-hour day. Nothing has changed since then.
One issue emerging in the inevitability of the female rise to power is what it means to those who have held that power throughout time. This has never happened before. We simply don't know what it means or where it will take us.
Can men evolve psychologically to match how women have evolved financially? We have eons of emotional wiring to unravel here.
There are more women with more education and more independence making more money than at any time in our history. How fast and in what numbers will they rise to positions of top leadership? And what will that mean to the fundamentals of organizations and families.
The power structures are changing. We are in the process of witnessing how new structures will work, and the world they will create.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
Jo Rourke: Inappropriate Women of Twitter
I was walking through Iran a few months ago, and I went into Azad university. I had a chat with the professor of applied physics and he told me that 75% of his graduate students are women. There is not a single Western university that boasts such an astonishing ratio in the applied sciences. He reasoned (and I bought his argument) that because of the economic downturn, male, college-aged Iranians are trying to find work quickly, either with their father or their friends (maybe even start a business) while Iranian girls are afforded the luxury of having parents pay their tuition and not be expected to play the role of breadwinner. The same argument can be made on a global level. He argued that when college becomes valuable once more, men will come back in hordes.
I think what Peggy Drexler is crossing her fingers for is, in reality, an illusion. What we have is a momentary blip and is not the role reversal people think it is.
Although I am well aware that there are husbands/dads who do as little as nec as parents with the children, those men, I do believe, are not the majority anymore. I know plent of active, involved, nurturing fathers who are more involved in the day to day lives of their children than their wives/mothers.
When one looks at the content of the womens section and the sexual content of so many of the posts, on a basic level, having the parenting section included in the same section is questonable but more so it gives the impression that parenting issues are only women's issues.
Not only the content of much of that found in the parenting/womens section but the way in which men/husbands are portrayed and bashed by some has cultivated a level of hostility and negativity. I my self have read so of these post/articles/and responses and have simply shook my head at the nastiness of some towards men as fathers/husbands and simply people.
It is open society, and public education that have made America great. Isolationism is a fantasy of conservatives the world over. "If only we could isolate ourselves from all of that stuff that prevents us from self preservation and from doing what WE want, the world would be a better place", they fantasise.
Hitler tried it, Stalin tried it, and virtually every despot in the history of human kind has tried it. Like 'tax cuts', it just doesn't work, because humans are elevated by civilization (aka society), not by the wishes and dreams of a people who use the refuge of personal wealth to extend their refuge to everything and everyone around them :-) Their fears and their views of perfection become the zoos and that cages in which the rest of the world is managed and contained. It's an impossible dream, that is rooted in the worst instincts of human endeavor.
According to the Republicans, we need to put America "back" on course. And that involves putting women in their rightful place. Back in the home where they should be where the man is head of the household and makes all the decisions as he deems necessary for his family.
All of which I totally "disagree" with.
I believe that women should share "equally" in everything that are able to.
And that includes pay and benefits in any job(s) they take.
But most of all, I believe that men should share equally in maintaining a home and raising the kids too. That is why marriage is called a "Partnership in Life".
The one thing women might to do help us all they refuse to consider.
That would be a return to mother led families - the family name passed down from mother to daughter not father to son.
Nothing would change human existence more. From the atomized father led family failures to growing networks of mother led families in a new female re-enculturization.
Why do you think mothers cry at weddings?
With two wars going on and the current body count from ten years of two wars and a dailly body count that gets lost in the day to days hoo haa of non-sense such as Kardashians and dancing with stars and so on and so forth.
This work force is predominantly male. It sd be remember by all including women that the economy/economic situation is does not just happen. Trade routes, domestic security, international trade-does not happen by majic or good wishes, a male dominated work for enables it to happen. Yes women are in the military/security but is male dominated.
This dynamic sd not be over looked when posting on the changes dynamics of the work force and income/employment advances of women. All civilians enjoy the benefits of the sacrafices of others and women need to be reminded that their income and employment has occured at a high price of others. Near 30,000 have been maimed in combat, heading towards 10,000 have been killed in combat following the events of 9-11. Of those causalties/killed, most were men.
I also believe that social roles have shifted and will continue to shift so that family life is more balanced, meaning that mothers and fathers are working together rather than either party picking up the bulk of family duties. I also hope that there will be more flexibility for men that opt to be stay at home fathers or that need to leave work to take care of family issues. We're definitely getting there, but we do need to keep pushing. We also have to have patience. As society continues to evolve, so will everything that touches it.
Combine this mentality of some with the sex/power model of female empowerment being advaced by some and do believe there are those who find the combonation of it all to be offensive on a number of levels. Too often in most of these posts, there is a lack of recognition and respect given by those men, fathers, husbands who have actively contributed to and supported women/families/children by means other than financial contributions. There is an increasing tendency to demonize all men in the same way that some men demonize all women.
Despite the shift in employment numbers/income, we are living in an economic situation that has waged war on men and women, families and the negative impacts are all around in loss of homes. livlihoods, as well as families and marriages. Women sd not be reveling in changes that have negatively impacted half of the working population in this country.
A slow thaw for women http://wp.me/p1xS1Q-3X
Let me try something... "Can women evolve psychologically to match how men have succeeded in science?"
This isn't a comparison of evolution, in my book. I think the author is asking, since women's roles have changed drastically in the last 50 years, whether men are able to grow enough to accept those changes. I also think that men's roles have changed, and we as women need to be mature enough to accept that evolution as well. If we can't grow together, we'll be stuck in a gender war, and I'm sure that I don't want to go back to a male-dominated society, just as I'm sure that men would not want to live in a female-dominated society, either.
What's that even supposed to mean? Can't anybody simply write a female positive article without slipping in a dig against the men?
From what I've seen in my 46 years, the average woman is hardly more psychologically evolved than the average man! And this from a psychologist?!
From what I've seen of the women and men in my life both at work and at home, a comment that one gender is somehow more psychologically evolved than the other is laughable. On both sides I see a pretty broad spectrum. On both sides I see exemplary humans as well as childish idiots.
And when it comes to work I see an awful lot of women that could use some psychological development -- especially when it comes to making a hostile environment for someone they don't like for whatever reason and also for creating drama,
I was an excellent male parent, the one who got up at night to feed my daughter, took her to doctors, dance, school, sports, etc. Didn't make a whit of difference when my ex filed for divorce and the judge proclaimed; "I don't know of any judge who would give custody to a father."
I have a good friend who is a male nurse - he experienced much abuse and discouragement during nursing school - only the fact that he was extremely stubborn enabled him to graduate.
And due to the demonization of men - that we are all rapists or child molesters, few men are willing to enter the fields of teaching children anymore, for fear we might be accused of something.
I have not found any evidence that Feminism is really about equality, it just seems to be a naked power grab.