{"id":4281,"date":"2017-03-07T13:53:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T12:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4281"},"modified":"2017-03-07T13:53:21","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T12:53:21","slug":"the-future-for-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/4281\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future for Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Twitter I stumbled across this blog post<\/a> about the grim future facing young boys in a world seemingly hell-bent on promoting women simply for being women:<\/p>\n

I must say that when I read of Hillary Clinton\u2019s recent video proclamation…that \u201cthe future is female,\u201d my mind immediately raced to my four grandsons, ages 3, 7, 10, and 11. What would the two older ones think if and when they heard or read of this statement, which emanated from someone who came very close to being our president (and for whom I had voted)? In fact, what does this say to Clinton\u2019s own grandson, Aidan, who is now eight months old? The message to her granddaughter, 2-year-old Charlotte is clear and encouraging. But what about Aidan? And all his baby boy peers?<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Yes, due to the incredible energy and persistence of second wave feminism, the world\u2014read, the developed world\u2014has changed positively for women, and especially for girls and young women.<\/p>\n

Just one example: Education. In 1975, men slightly outnumbered women on college campuses, and vastly outnumbered them in graduate school, medical school, and law school. Today, women substantially outnumber men on college campuses, and are essentially 50 percent of postgraduate programs. In fact, in the last several years there have been more doctorates awarded to women than to men.<\/p>\n

By comparison, boys and young men have, at best, languished.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That education systems in the West have been transformed to benefit girls, i.e. by putting more weight on coursework and collaborative projects than all-or-nothing exams has been known for years<\/a>. It has also been noted that teachers and school staff are overwhelmingly female<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Female staff make up an even higher percentage of teaching
\nassistants, 92 per cent, and school support staff, 82 per cent. In total
\n80 per cent of the school workforce are female.<\/p>\n

There has been very little change between 2012 and 2013 in the
\npercentage of teachers who are female\/male. In 2013, 73.6 per cent of
\nteachers were female, 26.4 per cent male. In 2012, the split was 73.3
\nper cent of teachers were female, 26.6 per cent male.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The detrimental effect<\/a> this has had on boys has been known for a long time. The fact that young men are the most likely<\/a> to commit suicide is something that doesn’t garner as much attention as it ought to.<\/p>\n

The blog post I quoted at the beginning asks what boys and young men are supposed to make of campaigns, often supported by government, which state categorically that the future belongs to women. I myself have wondered a similar thing when it comes to the corporate world. It is difficult to identify a major corporation these days which does not<\/em> openly\u00a0cite “gender equality” as one of its core missions and actively campaigns internally and externally for more women to fill\u00a0the prestigious and better-paid positions.\u00a0Audi recently embarrassed itself<\/a> by perpetuating the gender pay gap myth in an advert it showed during the Superbowl in a sign that modern corporations have adopted third-wave feminist agendas without even bothering to check whether the complaints are real, let alone whether the solutions are desirable.<\/p>\n

This will come as no surprise to those who have bothered to look at a major corporation. For all the talk of women being underrepresented in modern business, anyone who has had to deal with an HR department will find it staffed almost exclusively with women. Take a look at a marketing department in any given corporation and count the number of men versus women, particularly those in management. Admin and general services aren’t much different, and nor is public relations. The legal department will probably be around a 50:50 split, as will the accounts department. If anything, they’ll be top-heavy with women.<\/p>\n

Where you don’t find as many women is in the technical and production side of a business, i.e. the bit that makes the company money. In other words, women prevail in the support services and men tend to dominate the departments which create the product that brings in the revenue. And this is what the campaigns are trying to change: the problem facing modern corporations isn’t that there are not enough women employed, but that they are not employed in the right areas, i.e. those which require technical skills and pay well. Rather than accept the rather obvious truth that women are under-represented in these areas mostly because they choose not to go into them nor study the university subjects that lead there, corporations have decided to aim for equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. In practice, this means promoting women ahead of men in order that the gender statistics balance to a degree satisfactory to the Diversity Department.<\/p>\n

Which is fine: companies may do as they please if they think it will help them in some way. But don’t expect young men leaving university (or thinking about going to university) to be overly impressed\u00a0with a graduate recruitment programme that talks incessantly about women as if men didn’t matter any more: chances are they’ll get the message and think about doing something else.<\/p>\n

So what else will they do? Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? For a while I believed the future of employment lay with giant corporations wedded to government-imposed regulations that kill off smaller competition and create insurmountable barriers to entry.\u00a0But now I’m not so sure. Whereas I always thought industries were destined to consolidate, now it looks as though they may well do the opposite. Look at my own industry: the supermajors are struggling to come to terms with an era of lower oil prices and have adopted strategies of effectively waiting for it to go back up again. Meanwhile light, nimble shale operators you’ve never heard of in the United States have popped up out of nowhere and are back producing again. The growth areas of employment in France are not giant, lumbering industrial champions but much smaller IT service companies (not many people know this, but the French are really good at IT, particularly stuff like point-of-sale technologies). Logistics is an enormous growth area which the Internet has opened up: how many people does Amazon employ now compared to ten years ago? Whereas years ago manufacturing was done in giant factories, now a combination of the Internet and CNC machines means small-scale fabrication can be done anywhere. At the moment it is still being done in China, but there is every chance that as 3D printing develops further we could see the benefits of tiny, one or two-man cottage industries in every town making things on demand with a delivery time measured in hours beating the current model of making everything in China and shipping it over. It is speculation on my part, but I can see a future in fragmented, tiny enterprises scattered everywhere and linked to the customer by the Internet and brilliant, on-demand logistics. I also think this will represent a better opportunity for economic growth than further consolidation of massive, established companies. It’s hard to see what more can be done with the latter, whereas the possibilities for the former are endless.<\/p>\n

Which raises the question: into which model do men and women fit? As I said before, women seem to prefer working in sprawling bureaucracies masquerading as support functions in huge companies. Men tend to drift towards the sharp end of the business where the core function is carried out and the most value added. I am also fairly certain that it will be men who are setting up the small, nimble businesses that aim to cash in on technologies such as the Internet, drones, and 3D printing. There will be female entrepreneurs, but their numbers will be dwarfed by those who are men. For whatever reason, young men in their twenties have a habit of risking all for a big reward instead of seeking security and certainty, at least in comparison to their female peers.<\/p>\n

If the future of economic growth and employment opportunities are going to be in smaller, lightweight\u00a0companies with minimal overheads working in fragmented industries scattered all over the place, the brightest men will be drawn to these areas of the economy. This will only get worse if established employers continue to favour women over men in their recruitment and career development policies, as most are doing now. I appreciate I can’t see the future and I might be wrong about all this, but we could find ourselves in a situation whereby large corporations become the employers of choice for women while the men head off into the areas of\u00a0the economy that represent the future. And how do you think that’s going to work out for each group?<\/p>\n

In short, those\u00a0taking advantage of corporate policies designed to give better opportunities and outcomes to women may find themselves enjoying a glittering career in an organisation that is being bypassed by small companies of men who collectively wield far more clout. It’s all very well being fast-tracked up the corporate ladder to the rousing applause of your fellow female colleagues, but it won’t mean much if they’re working for the equivalent of Blockbuster Video and Netflix\u00a0has just launched.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow is International Women’s Day and no doubt the Western media will be filled\u00a0with puff pieces on women in politics, business, and education\u00a0(unlike in Russia where the girls turn up in short skirts and knee boots, get given flowers, and then go out at lunchtime to get smashed on cheap champagne). I’ll do my best to ignore them, but I reckon in another generation there will be a few household names who will wish they hadn’t chased the men away quite so quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Twitter I stumbled across this blog post about the grim future facing young boys in a world seemingly hell-bent on promoting women simply for being women: I must say that when I read of Hillary Clinton\u2019s recent video proclamation…that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,79],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4281"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4286,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281\/revisions\/4286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}