@FreeDuck,
On the overall topic, this post from the other thread still represents my opinion of the article
engineer wrote:Once upon a time a capable man had every chance to succeed, a capable woman less so. Slowly we are reaching the point where a capable person has every chance regardless of whether that person is a man or a woman. That may mean more competition for men, but that doesn't mean "woe is Man". The pendulum is not swinging so that men are discriminated and capable men are denied jobs in place of less capable women. I think this article is really just an observation that men no longer have as much of a gender advantage as they historically did and that we can envision a day where there is no advantage.
I've seen articles like this before that use a poorly explained statistic as a basis for a doomsday scenario: Men are more impacted by this recession than women. True, but this is exactly what you would expect because the older end of the workforce is overwhelmingly male, so early retirements and the continued erosion of manufacturing jobs will hit men much harder. I seriously doubt that men in their twenties are disadvantaged to women in their twenties with similar education. What we should expect is that instead of a workplace predominately occupied by men, we should expect more balance in the future.
I think that 40 years ago, people who were less inclined either through choice or ability to pursue higher education had outlets. For men, it was blue collar jobs and for women, it was the home. (In fact, often for women the home was the only choice.) Several things have come along to shift that equation. First, blue collar jobs are becoming more scarce. Second, manufacturing jobs that used to be designed for a strong, 200 lb man (with the idea that when you wore him out, there were plenty more behind him) are now being designed to be done comfortably by a 100 lb woman. This opens up a lot of jobs for women that they might have not considered in the 70's. Finally, just as men are losing their outlet, women are losing theirs as well. Many women are being forced into the workplace as more households require two incomes, as divorce rates rise and as men's job stability becomes more tenuous. Those blue collar jobs that were once pretty much only for men are now supporting both sexes. That doesn't mean that men are doomed, only that they have competition where once they had a free ride. Still, it is worth noting that a good number of women remove themselves from the workplace when they start families. Of the dozen or so dual career couples that started work here about the same time I did, over half are now single career couples. Part of this is having the financial wherewithal to do it, but this is still a place where men have a systemic advantage in the workplace, one that carries over throughout a career.
On education, I think young boys as a group might be slightly disadvantaged in elementary school where the ability to sit still and function in groups is key, but I think any advantage girls have here is completely gone by high school where the focus is on individual achievement over group dynamics and where boys have significantly more outlets for their energy. I'd appreciate some educators' views on that if we have any secondary teachers out there.
Finally, I think demographics are in our favor as a society. The issue twenty years from now is not going to be mass unemployment, it will be a surfeit of jobs. As baby boomers retire and leave the market, we are not replacing them fast enough. I think we will be thankful that we have a hard working, educated female workforce available in the future and that those who work hard will be able to find suitable work regardless of their sex.
