Musings & Amusings

For decades, women have battled for equality, but what if equality was not the end point? What if we are heading for a future of female dominance?

So runs the thesis of what promises to be one of the year’s most sparred-over books. In The End of Men, the American journalist Hanna Rosin says that males have ruled the roost “since, well, the dawn of mankind.” Now, she argues, the balance of power is shifting “with shocking speed.” From one perspective, the decline of the male is his own stubborn fault, a result of his bewildering failure – or refusal – to adapt to a shifting global economy. Men, says Rosin, have become casualties of the end of the manufacturing era. They used to hold macho labour-intensive jobs. In the post-industrial world, where “thinking and communicating have come to eclipse physical strength and stamina as the keys to economic success,” they are floundering.

“The attributes that are most valuable today – social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus – are, at the minimum, not predominantly male,” she says.

As Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, put it last year: “A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women.”

Economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson have shown that women are less happy today than they were in 1972, both in absolute terms and relative to men.

Even the author is concerned about the ramifications of change. “A lot of women in America are now going it alone,” she said.

“They are not finding men who are suitable marriage partners, so they are raising children, working,  carrying the whole burden in ways that are exhausting.”

Source: Sunday Star Times