Over the past half-century, societies around the world have made great strides in elevating the status of women and expanding their educational and employment opportunities.
If the government guaranteed screenings for ovarian cancer but not for prostate cancer, I don't think you could necessarily call it sex discrimination. There's an obvious objective rationale, which is that ovarian cancer is a more serious disease.
But screening for the same condition (anxiety) is available if you're female but not if you're male? How has that not been taken to court already?
Where you say in the 80s that women felt they had to 'become like men' to get to the top and now that's gone, which I'd agree that it has, that has not been an unalloyed good thing. It has led to a certain amount of 'feminization of the workplace' especially in institutions (certain parts of the public sector, higher education where I work for example) where women start to predominate. This is characterized by a move from a focus on teams and collegiality to a focus on cliques, 'call out culture', emotionality, and a retreat from taking responsibility. This idea is being fleshed out by Lorenzo Warby and his substack and also in the posts cross-posted on Helen Dale's see for example the essay on Weaponising emotion from Dec 21 last year. Having been a woman working in a largely male area for 25+ years and then seeing a feminized administration and ever-expanding HR take over our institution and destroy academic collegiality and influence I am inclined to vote for winding back the feminist revolution a bit.
This is a loaded topic, as it's a very short step from criticizing "feminization of the workplace" to pining for the return of the old boys' network. Further, these complaints have to address the inconvenient fact that most workplaces continue to be run by men. Still, I think there's a "there" there: there's no doubt workplace norms are in flux, and it's inevitable that during this time both men and women will sometimes feel at least sometimes that the current mix of norms pinches unfairly.
Fair point because I do see some on the online right wishing for that return. But it's more that even if there are still men "in charge" or even over-represented in a certain field, the ethos has still gone over to this weird censoriousness, focus on relationships, rather than getting the job done. The smart men have sensed the change and go with it to get ahead.
I'm hoping that what is attributed here to "feminization of the workplace" is more due to recent academic ideological extremes that have emerged in the social sciences, and have had an impact on culture among young people. I'm waiting for them to grow out of it. In the meantime I do my best to challenge indications of the "retreat from responsibility" when I run across it on Reddit. I generally come across as too parental to be effective, but at least we can put language to the problem. Frank Bruni's new book addresses this in "The Age of Grievance".
Brilliant post as usual, between two of my favorite writers. Thank you so much for hosting your engaging and deep discussions—and thank you, likewise, for taking the time to make a transcript.
Here's to a large audience and major positive impacts for Reeves' book.
I've been mulling over these issues for decades, and often end up thinking about how men and women have evolved ourselves biologically and psychologically. To some extent, biology IS destiny. All the sensible caveats and qualifications apply to the following, but here's a starting point—If we've evolved men essentially to be warriors, how have they been motivated throughout history to perform according to their society's needs? Through threats of violence, strict military hierarchies combined with competitiveness and camaraderie, along with more general rewards like wealth and status. I suspect that throughout history, any schoolboys who weren't motivated by intellectual curiosity to sit still and listen have been slapped and caned until they could (kind of) pay attention. Strict school discipline only started fading out of our culture in the 1950s.
In the meantime, the uneducated classes learned hands-on skills that gave meaning and purpose to their lives. That motivation would have been avoiding starvation and a sense of responsibility towards family. Pride, ingenuity and the prospect of greater wealth and leisure are also there.
Working class boys haven't been in the schoolroom for that many decades. My Peace Corps host family had a 14-year old boy who was quite uninterested in school (the post-Soviet system focused on the smart kids anyway.) And yet I often observed him standing for hours along the river fishing. The only time I saw him fully engaged was when Grandpa was making wine: he was learning one of the many skills that men still practiced in that country (women had their share of expertise as well.)
I read somewhere that many boys learn better if their hands are busy (I think of it as kind of current flowing between hands and brain.) If I could have clustered the boys around an auto engine for English lessons, yes, they would finally have learned "I am, you are, he is." All the more so for math, of course. The ideal school system would have a large set of methodologies and curricula for hands-on learning. Schools would have multiple, flexible workshops with lots of interesting tools. Shop would take up at least half the days' classes and cover several lesson objectives in various subjects. (And who knows, maybe that would attract more male teachers.)
That thing about the ACA... Really?
If the government guaranteed screenings for ovarian cancer but not for prostate cancer, I don't think you could necessarily call it sex discrimination. There's an obvious objective rationale, which is that ovarian cancer is a more serious disease.
But screening for the same condition (anxiety) is available if you're female but not if you're male? How has that not been taken to court already?
Where you say in the 80s that women felt they had to 'become like men' to get to the top and now that's gone, which I'd agree that it has, that has not been an unalloyed good thing. It has led to a certain amount of 'feminization of the workplace' especially in institutions (certain parts of the public sector, higher education where I work for example) where women start to predominate. This is characterized by a move from a focus on teams and collegiality to a focus on cliques, 'call out culture', emotionality, and a retreat from taking responsibility. This idea is being fleshed out by Lorenzo Warby and his substack and also in the posts cross-posted on Helen Dale's see for example the essay on Weaponising emotion from Dec 21 last year. Having been a woman working in a largely male area for 25+ years and then seeing a feminized administration and ever-expanding HR take over our institution and destroy academic collegiality and influence I am inclined to vote for winding back the feminist revolution a bit.
This is a loaded topic, as it's a very short step from criticizing "feminization of the workplace" to pining for the return of the old boys' network. Further, these complaints have to address the inconvenient fact that most workplaces continue to be run by men. Still, I think there's a "there" there: there's no doubt workplace norms are in flux, and it's inevitable that during this time both men and women will sometimes feel at least sometimes that the current mix of norms pinches unfairly.
Fair point because I do see some on the online right wishing for that return. But it's more that even if there are still men "in charge" or even over-represented in a certain field, the ethos has still gone over to this weird censoriousness, focus on relationships, rather than getting the job done. The smart men have sensed the change and go with it to get ahead.
I'm hoping that what is attributed here to "feminization of the workplace" is more due to recent academic ideological extremes that have emerged in the social sciences, and have had an impact on culture among young people. I'm waiting for them to grow out of it. In the meantime I do my best to challenge indications of the "retreat from responsibility" when I run across it on Reddit. I generally come across as too parental to be effective, but at least we can put language to the problem. Frank Bruni's new book addresses this in "The Age of Grievance".
Brilliant post as usual, between two of my favorite writers. Thank you so much for hosting your engaging and deep discussions—and thank you, likewise, for taking the time to make a transcript.
Here's to a large audience and major positive impacts for Reeves' book.
I've been mulling over these issues for decades, and often end up thinking about how men and women have evolved ourselves biologically and psychologically. To some extent, biology IS destiny. All the sensible caveats and qualifications apply to the following, but here's a starting point—If we've evolved men essentially to be warriors, how have they been motivated throughout history to perform according to their society's needs? Through threats of violence, strict military hierarchies combined with competitiveness and camaraderie, along with more general rewards like wealth and status. I suspect that throughout history, any schoolboys who weren't motivated by intellectual curiosity to sit still and listen have been slapped and caned until they could (kind of) pay attention. Strict school discipline only started fading out of our culture in the 1950s.
In the meantime, the uneducated classes learned hands-on skills that gave meaning and purpose to their lives. That motivation would have been avoiding starvation and a sense of responsibility towards family. Pride, ingenuity and the prospect of greater wealth and leisure are also there.
Working class boys haven't been in the schoolroom for that many decades. My Peace Corps host family had a 14-year old boy who was quite uninterested in school (the post-Soviet system focused on the smart kids anyway.) And yet I often observed him standing for hours along the river fishing. The only time I saw him fully engaged was when Grandpa was making wine: he was learning one of the many skills that men still practiced in that country (women had their share of expertise as well.)
I read somewhere that many boys learn better if their hands are busy (I think of it as kind of current flowing between hands and brain.) If I could have clustered the boys around an auto engine for English lessons, yes, they would finally have learned "I am, you are, he is." All the more so for math, of course. The ideal school system would have a large set of methodologies and curricula for hands-on learning. Schools would have multiple, flexible workshops with lots of interesting tools. Shop would take up at least half the days' classes and cover several lesson objectives in various subjects. (And who knows, maybe that would attract more male teachers.)
Fascinating discussion. Thank you for sharing.