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
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