THE EROSION OFMEN'S ABILITY TO EARN A LIVING 'UNDERMINE THE

[Daanyeer]

Source: mensdaily
Glenn Sacks

The erosion of men’s ability to earn a living ‘undermine the very definition of what it means to be a man’
2009-01-26 at 7:55 am · Filed under blog

Guy Garcia's book The Decline of Men has been getting a lot of press attention, some of it positive, some of it from the "men have everything how dare they complain?" school.

My own view is that both genders have advantages and disadvantages, but while we're all very much aware of the disadvantages and problems women face, the disadvantages and problems men (and particularly fathers) face are largely ignored.

Men are still judged by their ability to work and provide for their families, and men who can't do so will not be respected, no matter what their other virtues might be. Garcia notes the economic problems men face, particularly displaced blue collar workers, writing:

[Men's economic problems are] not just eroding the ability of men to earn a living and become contributing members of society but also undermining the very definition of what it means to be a man. No wonder that cable reality shows like Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch, which glorify men who do dangerous, physically demanding jobs, have struck a nostalgic chord in the zeitgeist.

America's gender divide starts in elementary school and progresses through college, where women now earn 60% of all degrees (51% of the total U.S. population is female). On American college campuses, women now outnumber men by more than two million.

"Women have been making educational progress, and men are stuck," Tom Mortenson, senior scholar for the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, told the Associated Press. "They haven't just fallen behind women. They have fallen behind changes in the job market."

While women on average still earn less than men, the gap in some areas has reversed itself. A study by the Citizens Union Foundation calculated that females between the ages of 21 and 30 earned 117% of male wages in the same age group; U.S. Census figures confirm that women in their 20s already make more than their male counterparts in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, and Dallas.

As many women's earnings have soared, incomes for men, including those with college degrees, have stalled or declined. Ronald Mincy, a professor of social policy at Columbia University, has spent a decade tracking what he considers a very ominous number. "We've seen no growth in the average hourly earnings of men in 25 years - and that is the biggest, most glaring statistic because as the earnings of men go, so go the fortunes of men," he observes.

One consequence could be a painful impact on family life. A pillar of male identity is the ability to work - to earn money and social status to help support a wife and family. "If you're a man," says Mincy, "you can't play house if you're not making enough money at your job."

Most disturbing of all, perhaps, is the drift of able-bodied unemployed men of all ages who are dropping out of the workforce altogether. Among American men in their prime working years - between the ages of 30 and 55 - 13% is not working, up from 5% during the 1960s, according to the New York Times. Most of those men, who number about four million, are former blue-collar workers who have been displaced. But a growing number are college-educated professionals in their 30s and 40s who have been out of a job for years.

All of this was written right before the recent economic downturn, which has made things worse.