The End of Men and the Rise of Women

by Hanna Rosin

  Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo: Philip Zimbardo, “The Demise of Guys?” TED Talk, March 2011. http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge.html.

  This is the argument: Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs, Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986).

  More recently, Baumeister put that theory: Roy F. Baumeister, “Gender Differences in Erotic Plasticity: The Female Sex Drive as Socially Flexible and Responsive,” Psychological Bulletin 126, no. 3 (2000): 347–374.

  writer William Saletan points out: William Saletan, “The Ass Man Cometh,” Slate, October 5, 2010.

  THE SEESAW MARRIAGE

  TRUE LOVE (JUST FOR THE ELITES)

  In 1970 women in the United States: Richard Fry and D’Vera Cohn, “Women, Men and the New Economics of Marriage,” Pew Research Center, January 19, 2010. http://pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/11/new-economics-of-marriage.pdf.

  Now the average American wife: Heather Boushey, “The New Breadwinners,” The Shriver Report, Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, p. 36. http://shriverreport.com/awn/economy.php.

  also known as “alpha wives”: “Alpha Wives: The Trend and the Truth,” The New York Times, January 24, 2010.

  For the 70 percent of Americans: 30.4 percent of Americans twenty-five and over hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to data from the 2011 Current Population Survey.

  In Washington, DC, for example: Heather Boushey, Jessica Arons, and Lauren Smith, “Families Can’t Afford the Gender Wage Gap,” Center for American Progress, April 20, 2010. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/pdf/equal_pay_day.pdf.

  But for the elites: W. Bradford Wilcox, ed., “When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America,” The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, December 2010. http://stateofourunions.org/2010/when-marriage-disappears.php.

  the “private playground of those already blessed with abundance”: Wilcox, ed., “When Marriage Disappears,” p. xii.

  Sylvia Plath described: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (London: Heinemann, 1963; New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005), p. 4. Citations refer to the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition.

  In 1965 women reported: Suzanne M. Bianchi, “Family Change and Time Allocation in American Families,” Focus on Workplace Flexibility Conference, November 29–30, 2010. http://workplaceflexibility.org/images/uploads/program_papers/bianchi_-_family_change_and_time_allocation_in_american_families.pdf.

  Only 2.7 percent of Americans: America’s Families and Living Arrangements data for 2010 report an estimated 154,000 stay-at-home dads—married fathers with children younger than fifteen who have been out of the labor force for at least one year primarily to care for the family while their wives work outside the home.

  In Spain, marriages with foreigners: Albert Esteve, Alberto Del Rey, and Clara Cortina, “Pathways to Family Formation of International Migrants in Spain,” XXVI IUSSP International Population Conference, October 1, 2009. Abstract: http://iussp2009.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=92078.

  what Jessica Grose at Slate dubbed: Jessica Grose, “Omega Males and the Women Who Hate Them,” Slate, March 18, 2010.

  She published the results: Mirra Komarovsky, The Unemployed Man and His Family: Status of the Man in Fifty-Nine Families (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004). Originally published in 1940 by Estate of Mirra Komarovsky.

  as Barbara Ehrenreich outlines: Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1983).

  No wonder then that a young college-educated bourgeois male: Philip Roth, My Life as a Man (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), p. 170.

  Midway through Richard Yates’s 1961 novel: Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road (New York: Vintage Books, 1961, 2008). Citations refer to the 2008 Vintage edition.

  “Prostitutes don’t sell their bodies”: Flo Kennedy, Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), pp. 5–6.

  America’s divorce rate began going up: National Vital Statistics.

  when a wife works: Nancy R. Burstein, “Economic Influences on Marriage and Divorce,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 26 (2) (Spring 2007): 387–429.

  earns you playground pity: Katie Roiphe, “Single Moms Are Crazy!” Slate, October 5, 2011.

  On the verge of retirement: Maggie Gallagher, “Why Marriage Is Good for You,” City Journal, Autumn 2000.

  A recent study conducted by the Canadian Medical Association: Clare L. Atzema et al., “Effect of Marriage on Duration of Chest Pain Associated with Acute Myocardial Infarction before Seeking Care,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 183, no. 13 (2011): 1482–1491.

  Statisticians Bernard Cohen and I-Sing Lee: Bernard Cohen and I-Sing Lee, “A Catalog of Risks,” Health Physics 36, no. 6 (1979): 707–722.

  THE NEW AMERICAN MATRIARCHY

  THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS A SEX CHANGE

  Since 2000, the manufacturing economy: Total manufacturing employment in the United States was 17.3 million in January 2000, and hit a low of fewer than 11.5 million in January 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2011, the number of manufacturing jobs grew by 1.2 percent, the industry’s first increase since 1997.

  The housing bubble masked this new reality: Lawrence Katz, “Long-Term Unemployment in the Great Recession,” Testimony for the Joint Economic Committee, US Congress, April 29, 2010. http://www.employmentpolicy.org/topic/10/research/long-term-unemployment-great-recession-0.

  During the same period, meanwhile: More than two million people are now employed in education and health services, up from less than 1.5 million in January 2000, according to seasonally adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  In 1967, 97 percent of American men: Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, “The Problem with Men: A Look at Long-Term Employment Trends,” Brookings Institution, December 3, 2010. http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/1203_jobs_greenstone_looney.aspx.

  New York Times columnist David Brooks: David Brooks, “The Missing Fifth,” The New York Times, May 9, 2011.

  In 1950, roughly one in twenty men: According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey, the employment-population ratio for men between twenty-five and fifty-four was 95.3 percent in 1950 and 81.4 percent in 2011.

  When asked by The New York Times: Andrew Goldman, “Larry Summers, Un-king of Kumbaya,” The New York Times Magazine, May 12, 2011.

  reveals the real McDowell County: Bill Bishop, The Big Sort (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), p. 128.

  Starting in the 1970s: William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Knopf, 1996).

  African-American boys whose fathers: Keith Finlay and David Neumark, “Is Marriage Always Good for Children? Evidence from Families Affected by Incarceration,” Journal of Human Resources 45, no. 4 (2010): 1046–1088.

  the greatest gender gap in college graduation rates: Ralph Richard Banks, Is Marriage for White People? How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone (New York: Dutton, 2011).

  This is the first time that the cohort: Richard Fry and D’Vera Cohn, “Women, Men and the New Economics of Marriage,” Pew Research Center, January 19, 2010. http://pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/11/new-economics-of-marriage.pdf.

  The divorce statistics alone tell: “Ups and Downs: Americans’ Prospects for Recovery after an Income Loss,” Pew Economic Mobility Project, January 2012. http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_Ups_and_Downs_FactSheet.pdf. In 1970, 67 percent of divorced women experienced an income loss of at least 25 percent. By the early 2000s, just 49 percent of women—and 47 percent of men—suffered a comparable loss. Income increases by at least a quarter for 20 percent of women and 16 percent of men.

  one of the highest proportions of citizens:
Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey found that 49 percent of adults in Alabama affiliate with the Evangelical Protestant tradition, compared to a 26 percent national average. http://religions.pewforum.org/maps.

  Yet despite a steady increase in population: Household marriage data taken from “Population Trends,” published by the Alabama Policy Institute, and from the 2010 Census. http://www.alabamapolicy.org/issues/gti/issue.php?issueID=255&guideMainID=8.

  The sociologist Kathryn Edin: Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005).

  After staying steady for a while: The National Center for Health Statistics reports that 41 percent of children are now born to unmarried parents. In 2002, that figure was 34 percent, according to Stephanie J. Ventura, “Changing Patterns of Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States,” NCHS Data Brief No. 18, May 2009. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db18.pdf.

  now the “new normal”: Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernise, “Unwed Mothers Now a Majority Before Age of 30,” The New York Times, February 17, 2012.

  chronicle in a groundbreaking report: Wilcox, ed., “When Marriage Disappears.”

  As Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The End of Men? A Hard Look at the Future,” AlbertMohler.com, June 22, 2010. http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/06/22/the-end-of-men-a-hard-look-at-the-future.

  mulling over a passage in Proverbs: Proverbs 31:10–23 (NIV).

  James Chung stumbled on a data set: Interview with James Chung, September 2010.

  Chung’s findings made the cover of Time magazine: Belinda Luscombe, “Workplace Salaries: At Last, Women on Top,” TIME, September 1, 2010.

  PHARM GIRLS

  HOW WOMEN REMADE THE ECONOMY

  Pharmacy is one of the many middle-class professions: Women now hold 55 percent of pharmacy jobs, according to 2011 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey.

  In 2009, for the first time in American history: According to revised employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women outnumbered men in the workforce in February, March, November, and December of 2009.

  About 80 percent of women: Claudia Goldin, “The Rising (and then Declining) Significance of Gender,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 8915, April 2002. http://www.nber.org/papers/w8915.pdf.

  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Job data for 2011 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey. Law firm associates data from “Women in Law in the U.S.,” Catalyst, January 2012. http://www.catalyst.org/publication/246/women-in-law-in-the-us.

  In the UK, women are poised: Mary Ann Elston, “Women and Medicine: The Future,” The Royal College of Physicians, June 3, 2009. http://www.learning.ox.ac.uk/media/global/wwwadminoxacuk/local-sites/oxfordlearninginstitute/documents/overview/women_and_medicine.pdf; and subsequent lecture by Jane Dacre, “Medicine: Sexist or Overfeminised?” The Royal College of Physicians, 2011 (quoted in http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html?id=20006082.)

  Women made up about 8 percent: U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1960: “Occupational Characteristics: Data on Age, Race, Education, Work Experience, Income, Etc., for the Workers in Each Occupation” (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961). http://www.worldcat.org/identities/nc-united%20states$bureau%20of%20the%20census$18th%20census%201960.

  dubbed this the typewriter paradox: Interview with Alice Kessler-Harris, 2009.

  Harvard economist Claudia Goldin uses a different term: Claudia Goldin, “A Pollution Theory of Discrimination: Male and Female Differences in Occupations and Earnings,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 8985, June 2002. http://www.nber.org/papers/w8985.

  the editor of the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education wrote: Rufus A. Lyman, “The Editor’s Crime,” American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 1, no. 209 (1937).

  Una Golden, the heroine: Sinclair Lewis, The Job (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1917).

  Of the thirty professions projected to add the most jobs: Comparison of 2011 employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey and BLS occupations with the largest projected employment growth, 2010–2020.

  In 2009, men brought home $48,000 on average: Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, “Have Earnings Actually Declined?” Brookings Institution, Up Front blog, March 4, 2011. http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0304_jobs_greenstone_looney.aspx.

  the truth is even more dismal: Greenstone and Looney, “Have Earnings Actually Declined?”

  But this polarization has affected men: David Autor, “The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market: Implications for Employment and Earnings,” The Center for American Progress and The Hamilton Project, April 2010. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/job_polarization.html.

  “practically noisless [sic], and pours out”: Arthur Colton Company catalog (Detroit, Michigan, 1902).

  As novelist Sherwood Anderson would write: Sherwood Anderson, Perhaps Women (New York: Liveright, 1931), p. 45.

  An 1893 article discussing the prospect: Metta Lou Henderson, American Women Pharmacists: Contributions to the Profession (New York: Haworth Press, 2002), pp. 11–12.

  this love-struck and utterly condescending poem: Henderson, p. 21.

  the first commencement speaker opened the graduates’ eyes: Henderson, p. 7.

  “We [will not accept] the weakling cry”: Gregory J. Higby, “Emma Gary Wallace and Her Vision of American Pharmacy,” Pharmacy in History 40, no. 2/3 (1998): 67–76.

  Just as they do today, they graduated: Claudia Goldin, “America’s Graduation from High School: The Evolution and Spread of Secondary Schooling in the Twentieth Century,” The Journal of Economic History 58, no. 2 (1998): 361.

  who “would be dissatisfied”: Goldin, “Rising.”

  essentially acquired “secondary sex characteristics”: Goldin, “Rising.”

  Can you type? Goldin, “Rising.”

  A 1939 report on what was known: Arthur T. Sutherland, “Wages and Hours in Drugs and Medicines and in Certain Toilet Preparations,” Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, no. 171 (1939).

  Miss and other women’s magazines: Henderson, p. 87.

  for pharmacy school the tipping point: According to data from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, 1985 was the first year that female first professional degree recipients outnumbered males: 53.9 percent to 46.1 percent.

  “Where would a sense of maleness”: Elliott J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986, 2010), p. 192 (2010 edition).

  Joel Garreau picks up on this phenomenon: Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Doubleday, 1991).

  “Once pharmacy shed the Victorian view”: Henderson, p. 106.

  Robots can count tablets more accurately”: Albert Wertheimer, foreword to Social Pharmacy: Innovation and Development (Philadelphia: Pharmaceutical Press, 1994), p. ix–xi.

  In a 2005 international study: Lex Borghans, Bas Ter Weel, and Bruce A. Weinberg, “People People: Social Capital and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups,” IZA Discussion Paper Series No. 1494, February 2005.

  Now they also wanted to be innovative: Ruth Shalit, “The Name Game,” Salon, November 30, 1999.

  A 2002 study of the pharmacy workforce: David A. Mott et al., “A Ten-Year Trend Analysis of Pharmacist Participation in the Workforce,” American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 66, no. 3 (2002): 223–233.

  full-time women pharmacists do work: Surrey M. Walton and Judith A. Cooksey, “Differences Between Male and Female Pharmacists in Part-Time Status and Employment Setting,” Journal of the American Pharmacists Association 41, no. 5 (2001): 703–708.

  a close breakdown of medical professions: Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Cost of Workplace Flex
ibility for High-Powered Professionals,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 638, no. 1 (2011): 45–67.

  they pay a low “career cost”: Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Career Cost of Family,” Sloan Conference Focus on Flexibility, November 30, 2010. http://workplaceflexibility.org/images/uploads/program_papers/goldin_-_the_career_cost_of_family.pdf.

  Surveys of Generation Y reveal: Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Laura Sherbin, and Karen Sumberg, “How Gen Y and Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda,” Harvard Business Review, July 2009.

  DEGREES OF DIFFERENCE

  THE EDUCATION GAP

  The chart, which had originally appeared in U.S. News & World Report: Alex Kingsbury, “Many Colleges Reject Women at Higher Rates Than for Men,” U.S. News & World Report, June 17, 2007.

  Heriot wrote up a proposal: See full text of the proposal in “A Professor Proposes to Examine Gender Bias in College Admissions,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 31, 2009.

  The public reason they gave was “inadequate” data: See Daniel de Vise, “Federal Panel Ends Probe of College Gender Bias,” The Washington Post, March 16, 2011.

  Women earn almost 60 percent: See “The Condition of Education 2011,” NCES 2011-033, National Center for Education Statistics, 2011. http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2011033.

  Between 1970 and 2008: See David Autor, “The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market,” Center for American Progress and The Hamilton Project, April 2010. http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554.

  Among college graduates sixty-five and over: See “Field of Bachelor’s Degree in the United States: 2009,” American Community Survey Reports, February 2012.

  Women now earn 60 percent of master’s degrees: See Nathan E. Bell, “Graduate Enrollment and Degrees: 2000–2010,” Council of Graduate Schools and Graduate Record Examinations Board, September 2011.