Sunday July 4, 2010
It's a woman's world
By ZAINAH ANWAR
A news report titled The End of Men suggests that the idea of men being the dominant sex is changing, and the trends are there for all to see, even in Malaysia.
WHAT if modern, post-industrial society is better suited to women? What if men and women were fulfilling not biological imperatives but social roles, based on what was more efficient throughout a long era of human history? What if that era has now come to an end? More to the point, what if the economics of the new era are better suited to women?
Hanna Rosin poses these questions in her thought-provoking cover report in the July issue of The Atlantic magazine. Titled The End of Men, the lengthy report marshalled latest data and evidence to support the unprecedented role reversal now under way in the United States and in many parts of the world and its vast cultural and social consequences. The post-industrial economy is evolving today, indifferent to men’s size and strength. The “age of testosterone” is coming to an end.
To be sure, at the very top men continue to command disproportionate authority, wealth and power. And male college students from the highest-income families still perform as well as women, states Rosin. But change and the speed of change is for real.
Social skills
Social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus are attributes considered valuable today to succeed in the workplace and in life. And women have the edge in these skills.
A study of the top 1,500 US companies from 1992 to 2006 revealed that firms that had women in top management positions performed better, especially in firms where “creativity and collaboration may be especially important.”
Needless to say, the report has generated much debate in the war of the sexes, and which Rosin and her data seem to have settled on the side of women.
While there was criticism on the sensational title, and reality checks on the fact that women enter the job market in low-paying positions, and that women are stressed by the double burden of responsibilities at home and the workplace, the data revealed that the idea of men being the dominant sex, is, for the first time in human history, changing, and with shocking speed, Rosin asserts.
The global economy is simply evolving in a way that is eroding the historical preference for male children, worldwide.
She cites data from South Korea to show that in 1985, about half of all women in a national survey said they “must have a son,” but by 2003, this percentage plummeted to just over 15%. Clinics in the US offering sex selection of children report a high preference for girls. Similar trends have also emerged in many other countries.
As thinking and communicating have come to eclipse physical strength and stamina as the keys to economic success, those societies that take advantage of the talents of all their adults, not just half of them, have pulled away from the rest, says Rosin.
She looked at the OECD Gender, Institutions and Development Database, which measures the economic and political power of women in 162 countries, and found that with few exceptions, the greater the power of women, the greater the country’s economic success.
This is no surprise really. The 2007 Economic and Social Survey by Escap estimated that the Asia Pacific region is losing US$42-47 bil a year because of restrictions on women’s access to employment opportunities. If we were to add the uncalculated social and personal costs to this economic cost, we can imagine the huge loss of potential for growth and well-being caused by continuing gender discrimination in our region.
In fact, the Escap survey did a simulation study which showed that if Malaysia’s Female Labour Force Participation rate of a low 45% (compared to 79% for men) was increased to the US level of 86% (the highest among OECD countries), then Malaysia’s GDP would grow by 2.88%. It’s growth rate would rise by 0.77%.
For the first time ever in the US, women became the majority of the workforce earlier this year.
Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the US, all but two are occupied primarily by women. The majority of those in managerial and professional jobs today are women. For every two men who get a college degree in 2010, three women will do the same.
Girls preferred
American parents are beginning to choose to have girls over boys. Rosin says as parents imagine the pride of watching a child grow and develop and succeed as an adult, it is more often a girl that they see in their mind’s eye.
Rosin’s article may carry a tinge of triumphalism that women are inevitably winning the sex war. Men must adapt or become irrelevant.
But the point is, women don’t really want to live in a world where men are discriminated, oppressed and considered the inferior and irrelevant sex. We’ve been there, suffered that and we know it is not fair, it is not right and it doesn’t bring happiness or peace.
What women want is a world where we are all treated as human beings of equal worth and dignity, that we are not discriminated by law or practice just on the basis that we are born female.
Malaysia, of course, is way behind in terms of women’s achievement, but the trends are there for all to see.
The girls outperforming boys in school, the numbers of women outnumbering men in universities, the growth of women in the professions, women as breadwinners or contributing significantly to family earnings and expenses, the complaints by educated and high-achieving women of their difficulties in finding husbands equal to them, or that in spite of the woman being the main provider, the husband still expects to be treated like the privileged traditional man who does not have to lift a finger to help in the home and still controls decision-making in the family.
The bad news is that men are poor at adapting to changing circumstances in the way that women are flexible, resilient and level-headed about doing what is necessary to survive.
Women have been adept at breaking barriers — by entering the workforce, entering professions once dominated by men, multi-tasking as wife, mother, and income-earner, accepting new roles as breadwinners, as protectors and providers of the family, even as their men philander and disappear.
It does seem that while women take pride in doing what a man can do, the reverse is not so.
Not many men want to proudly claim that their wives earn more, that they enjoy being a househusband, that they would love to be teachers or nurses or even that they feel it is their duty to spend more time taking care of the children and helping with the cooking and cleaning.
At many of the Sisters in Islam training sessions on women’s rights and legal awareness all over the country, it is common to hear women describe the men in their lives as “missing in action”, “lost in space”, “gone with the wind”.
While we all laugh at the descriptions, the underlying pathos describes the reality of many women’s lives today.
So what is happening to all these men brought up to believe they are inherently superior to women, and that when they grow up, they will be “masters of the universe” in control of a stable job and a family, respected and feared by the wife and children as the leader, provider and protector of the family?
Brain differences
Well, the good news is that men are not hardwired to be all brawn and no brain, uncaring, competitive, and insensitive to the needs of others.
While brain differences between male and female are indisputably biological, they are not necessarily hardwired. Neuroscience research shows that experience changes brain structure and function. Thus the different ways parents raise boys and girls leave their stamp on their developing brains.
Early experience permanently alters the chemistry and function of genes inside cells, leading to significant effects on behaviour, says a special issue on the male and female brains in Scientific American Mind.
The article concludes that it is important to appreciate how sex differences emerge – they are not fixed but are flamed by the essentially separate cultures in which boys and girls grow up – and what can be done to reduce the dangerous stereotyping and minimise discrepancies to enable all children to more fully develop their diverse talents and interests.
Dare I say that encouraging boys to show fear, sadness and tenderness would turn them into adult men who will be more expressive, more attuned, compassionate and sensitive to the feelings and needs of others? And more successful in the new economy?
