It's a Man's World (Not)

"Sometimes it's hard to be a woman" was the opening lyric of the song "Stand By Your Man", sung so passionately by Dolly Parton.

Maybe so, but in the opening decades of the 21st Century, it is even harder to be a man.

The male of the species is in a rapid, spiralling decline in every area of his life and there are frequent articles in books, newspapers and other publications that talk of a "Masculinity Crisis", a "Boy Crisis" and one book has even claimed that, at their current rate of decline, men are fast becoming the "new women".

Every day it seems, there is an article that proclaims that women are better at something or other than men and other articles that illustrate how far men are lagging behind their sisters, and are falling further and further behind.

Men, it is now openly stated, are now the weaker sex. More boy babies than girls die in infancy or are sickly, women typically live several years longer than a man born in the same year as them, men cope less well with stress and find it harder to manage and process their emotions than women. Women have higher levels of endurance than men, which will one day enable them to do the unthinkable, to compete against and defeat men in the Olympics or in football and other high profile sports that have been the preserve of men for so long.

One hundred years ago, or even as recently as forty years ago, anyone who made a claim that females were the stronger sex would have been ridiculed. Back then, more males than females went on to further education and the workplace was completely male dominated. The norm was that a man got an education, got a job and then married a woman who was usually less well educated than himself, and whose role was to keep house for him and raise their children. His role was as provider and hers was as nurterer and homemaker.

But what has happened in the last thirty or so years is that "the norm" is slowly, but surely, being turned on its head. The reasons for this are numerous: Feminist agitation, bringing on increased educational opportunities for women, affirmative action in favour of women, changes in the law, a greatly changed global economy that demands different skills than in the past and the failure of men to adapt to a post-industrial world.

To be sure, even in a century that promises to be the century where women at last asserted their superiority over men, women still face problems, such as continuing discrimation and sexual harassment, and they have to now resolve the issue of balancing their careers with having children. Women are still victims of the gender pay gap and the glass ceiling is still in place.

But, despite these problems and issues, women are generally doing a lot better than men in the education system and in the economy. Men are facing problems that are undermining their traditional roles and even their identity. Men, in short, are in crisis.

Men's problems begin even before they are born. Once the sex of a baby is determined, boy and girl babies' brains take very different routes. The male brain, saturated by testosterene, is geared more towards aggression and sex, whilst in the female brain, communication and multi-tasking skills are greatly enhanced.

As a result, girls have a wider vocabulary and a longer focus than boys. They also mature earlier than boys so that by the time a boy and girl set foot in a classroom for the first time, she is already way ahead of him in reading, writing and verbal communication skills.

The advantages enjoyed by a boy over a girl are few. He has more upper body strength and has the edge in visual-spatial skills, a leftover skill from the days when the boy's distant ancestors still hunted woolly mamooths for food.

From day one at school, on average, girls, due to their greater maturity, self-control and focus, do better than boys at school in the current learning by rote method employed by schools. Under this system, boys become restless, easily distracted and disruptive, and as a result fall further and further behind their girl classmates. Girls are a pleasure to teach because they are attentive, obedient and diligent. They often take more time preparing their work than boys and pay close attention to detail, traits that will stand them in good stead for when they enter the workplace.

Boys, however, are regarded by the education system as a nightmare by comparison.

From being a minority of college students, university undergraduates, graduates and post-graduates in the late 1970's, women now comprise a solid majority. Males are dropping out of the education system at an increasing rate and it is predicted that if the drop out rate continues, the last male student will collect his high school diploma in 2068.

Male academic underachievement has become so widespread across the globe that there is much talk of a "Boy Crisis" and concerns that half of the population will leave school without an adequate education to equip them to be the workers that the 21st economy needs. Efforts to encourage males to remain in or re-enter the education system have had little positive impact and meanwhile the gap in achievement between girls and boys widens.

Boys, once so much valued over girls, now live in the shadow of their academically brighter sisters. Mothers look at their children and know that girls are bright enough and strong enough emotionally to cope with whatever life throws at them. But when they look at their sons they become worried and fearful for their future. In their own mother's eyes, it is the boys who need help and protection more than their sisters.

In the 21st Century, being well educated is crucial for getting not only a good, well paid job, but holding down any job at all. It is little wonder then, that it is now women who are now close to dominating the professions and white collar jobs whilst the men are becoming a minority in those areas and are becoming an underclass of blue collar workers and the majority of the unemployed.

More and more women are graduating from the universities and gaining the high status, well paid jobs that men once took for granted as being theirs by right. Young women now outearn men of their own age group and are becoming the new high status consumers, buying houses and luxury commodities at a greater rate than any other socio-economic group.

Even for those men fortunate enough to be in the workplace, they are finding that their masculine qualities, which would have been an asset in an earlier era, are working against them. If they show aggression, this is interpreted as a lack of self-control or even evidence of bullying. If they show a competitive spirit, they are accused of not being team players or trying to show up their colleagues. However, if a man tries to be a co-operative, even submissive, team player, he is labelled as a wimp.

For women, aggression and competitiveness are seen as positive qualities. Women are also naturally more co-operative team players, obedient when the occasion calls for it, better at communicating and multi-tasking than men. It is acknowledged, even by men, that womens' drive, capacity for work, focus and ferocious attention to detail in the workplace are superior to that exhibited by men.

The workplace of the 21st Century now places far greater value on the skills and talents of women than on those of men. Women are entering the workforce in increasing numbers and rising through the ranks rapidly, whilst men are increasingly being laid off.

The world of academia and the world of work in the 21st Century has become in a couple of generations, places where women hold a considerable advantage over men.

The self-esteem and status of men was for centuries defined by his ability to be a provider. For many men, victims of recessions and the changes in the economy that make it more female friendly, they have lost their roles as providers. This induces feelings of guilt, shame and self-loathing in many men, who find it almost impossible to be able to define themselves as men without being the provider also. Being a man and being a provider have become intertwined over many centuries. To a man, one cannot be a man if he cannot provide for his family, and once he loses his job, his mind is in conflict and turmoil as he tries to come to terms with the reality of his new status and existence. By his own logic, he is no longer a man, so what is he? There is no answer.

To make matters worse for men already in this nightmarish dilemma, it is likely in an economy that prefers female talent, that whilst he has lost his job, his significant other has held onto hers. Added to the reality that he cannot deliver on his traditional role as provider is the knowledge that his female partner has by default taken over that role and that, contrary to the traditional gender role he was brought up to fulfil, he is now the one who is financially dependent and she has become "the man". The feelings of shame and inadequacy become almost unbearable for men in this position.

With the emergence of the new economy, where women are becoming more successful and more highly paid than men, many men who cannot fit into the new economy are becoming full time househusbands. Once a rarity, the phenomenon of the male homemaker has become both more commonplace and more accepted. The number of househusbands in the UK increased tenfold in the period 2000-2010 and the number of househusbands looks set to increase as women continue to outperform men in the universities and in the workplace.

This is not an easy transition to make, either for the man or the woman. The man has to give up his ingrained traditional masculine role and become the junior partner in the relationship. He feels guilty that he has failed to live up to his traditional role and has to rely on his partner to fulfil that role and provide for him. The woman feels guilty that she is not able to spend more time with her partner and children and can even become resentful of her partner because he cannot provide for his family and jealous of him because he is able to spend more time with their children than she is allowed to. In the worst case scenarios, the female partner will come to despise the man, who she sees as a failure, and the man will come to despise himself for the same reason. Seperation and divorce are inevitable events from that point and it is invariably the woman who wins custody of the children and the man is only allowed limited access rights.

The legal issue of child custody is probably one of the most unfair areas for a man. In almost all child custody cases, unless she is incapacitited or there is strong evidence that she is an unfit mother, the woman is granted custody. Men have formed protest groups around this one area which they feel very strongly is discriminatory against males. In one famous incident, some costumed men staged a protest on this very issue by trespassing in Buckingham Palace, the residence of the Queen, causing significant embaressment for the security services, but thankfully the protest was a peaceful one.

If a man is unable to validate himself as a provider, then surely he can increase his self-esteem and self-worth as a husband and father. But with the number of marriages falling and the number of divorces rising, even this is becoming less of an option. Women tend to seek mates who are as well educated and who are as successful and highly paid as they are. Increasingly, men cannot meet these expectations. Women are less inclined to marry and quick to divorce, especially as women are now more often financially independent of a man, so men no longer have guaranteed roles as husbands and fathers.

Indeed, increasingly men are finding themselves excluded from a normal family life as life bachelors and divorcees. Many women are also either choosing to remain single or to become single as a result of divorce. Women are also increasingly preferring to be single parents rather than include a man in her family unit.

Governments across the world are aware of the crisis of male identity in an altered world. They are especially concerned by the gender gap in education and say that they intend to take positive action to close the gap. However, the reality is that those same governments are wrestling with budget deficits and mass unemployment, the fallout from the last recession. They have bigger problems to worry about than what is happening to men, so whilst they make grand policy statements of intent, the easiest (and cheapest) option, is to appear to be doing something about the problem but actually doing nothing. Men will ultimately have to help themselves as the governments of the world don't have the time or resources to bail them out.

In the space of only forty or so years, the world has been transformed from being a man's world into a world where men have become relegated to being the second sex, struggling at school whilst the girls excel, seeing women being more valued than them in the workplace and men being excluded from the workplace, having to consider a new, alien, feminine role as a homemaker, becoming lonelier and isolated from their own families and their minds constantly at odds trying to reconcile the ideal masculine role he was brought up to play with the reality of his existence as a "non-man" or even as "a woman in all but name" struggling to define himself and his role in a topsy-turvy world that is reversing traditional gender roles and expectations.

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman, but in the 21st Century it is even harder to be a man.