A Sexist Report from the World Economic Forum on Global Gender Equality

Over at the Good Men Project, John Edale exposes the sexist data collection and interpretation model used by the World Economic Forum in their Global Gender Gap Report. It's strange that the authors of the study chose a skewed assessment model over a seemingly balanced model an gave no explanation for their choice.

From page 4 of the report:

“To capture gender equality, two possible scales were considered. One was a negative-positive scale capturing the size and direction of the gender gap. This scale penalizes either men’s advantage over women or women’s advantage over men, and gives the highest points to absolute equality. The second choice was a one-sided scale that measures how close women are to reaching parity with men but does not reward or penalize countries for having a gender gap in the other direction.” 

Without explanation, the authors chose the 2nd measure - and although it says it does not reward or penalize countries for a gender gap in favor of women, it also penalizes REAL gender equality.
 
Their report becomes mere nonsense when their model is applied to individual areas of assessment.

When measuring enrollment in tertiary education (college, university etc) this produces some bizarre results. The number one ranking nation is Qatar with a staggering female to male student ratio of 5.60. The US comes in at 32nd place with a ratio of 1.41, while the UK is 36th with a ratio of 1.38. Over half of the countries surveyed have more female than male students. Apart from suggesting that the term “reverse gender gap” may be a misnomer in this particular area, it also means that those countries which currently have a perfect 1.00 ratio (Switzerland and Guatemala) are relegated to the bottom half of the table.

It gets even weirder in the healthy life expectancy category. The Russian federation, with a 10-year gap between female and male life expectancy comes in first place, despite the fact that in that country females live to be 65 and men only make it to 55.

Yet in Japan, where women live to be 78 and men live to 73, with only a five-year gap, Japan placed 36. People live longer and the men are closing in on the women in life expectancy, but they are penalized for approaching equality.

How is this about gender equality where any real equality - like Switzerland and Guatemala having a 1:1 ratio of men and women in college education - is penalized because the women are not surpassing the men? 

This smells like radical feminism and not even remotely related to gender equality.

A Gender Gap Is a Gender Gap Is a Gender Gap

November 17, 2013 by John Edale


 

The World Economic Forum published a report on gender gaps throughout the world praising countries in which men lag behind women. John Edale deconstructs this report and advocates for true equality not just a different inequality.
Last month the World Economic Forum published its annual Global Gender Gap Report. The report measures the progress that has been made in reducing gender gaps throughout the world in areas such as education, literacy, health and earnings. It then combines the data from these different indicators to produce a Global Gender Gap Index, ranking countries according to their overall performance.

The report received a significant amount of press coverage in the UK, with the BBC even scheduling a month-long “100 Women” season of programs and events to coincide with its release.

The main conclusion of this year’s report is the welcome news that many of the disadvantages facing women around the world are slowly being overcome.

However, for me, the usefulness of the report, and at times even its validity, is undermined by the fact that it takes a strange and openly one-sided approach towards gender equality.

Earlier this year I wrote about the problem of educational underachievement by boys in the developed world, and how reluctant we seem to be to even acknowledge this as a problem let alone try to get to grips with it. I was therefore interested to see what approach the report would take towards this particular gender gap.

The beginning is certainly promising. When explaining the ways in which the Index was calculated the report states that it “ranks countries according to their proximity to gender equality rather than to women’s empowerment. Our aim is to focus on whether the gap between women and men in the chosen indicators has declined, rather than whether women are ‘winning’ the ‘battle of the sexes’.” (page 4)

However, on the very same page, the report goes on to explain :

“To capture gender equality, two possible scales were considered. One was a negative-positive scale capturing the size and direction of the gender gap. This scale penalizes either men’s advantage over women or women’s advantage over men, and gives the highest points to absolute equality. The second choice was a one-sided scale that measures how close women are to reaching parity with men but does not reward or penalize countries for having a gender gap in the other direction.”

One might imagine that the first scale would be the obvious, common sense choice, and the only one compatible with the aim of ranking countries according to their proximity to gender equality, and yet the report’s authors opt instead for the second “one-sided” scale.

If you are wondering what the reasons for this were then I’m afraid you will have to keep on wondering.

“We find the one-sided scale more appropriate for our purposes” is the only explanation the reader is given.

The report is almost 400 pages long. One might imagine that a paragraph or two could have been spared to provide some kind of glimpse into the rationale behind a decision which fundamentally alters the nature of the Index, and contradicts its stated aim.

Whatever the reasons, one of the results of using the second scale is that the large gender gap in educational achievement that has existed throughout the developed world for over two decades simply vanishes. Countries where women achieve more than men educationally are all given the maximum possible score in this category (1.000) when calculating their overall place on the Index.

As well as the main Index, the report goes on to provide separate tables ranking countries according to their performance on each individual indicator. At this point even the commitment not to reward cases in which women are outperforming men is abandoned.

The countries which are ranked highest in each category are not those which have the smallest gender gap, but those which have the largest “reverse” gender gap.

When measuring enrollment in tertiary education (college, university etc) this produces some bizarre results. The number one ranking nation is Qatar with a staggering female to male student ratio of 5.60. The US comes in at 32nd place with a ratio of 1.41, while the UK is 36th with a ratio of 1.38. Over half of the countries surveyed have more female than male students. Apart from suggesting that the term “reverse gender gap” may be a misnomer in this particular area, it also means that those countries which currently have a perfect 1.00 ratio (Switzerland and Guatemala) are relegated to the bottom half of the table. Beneath these are the minority of countries which have more male than female students, with Chad being at the very bottom of the pile with a dismal ratio of only 1 female student for every 4 males.

Perhaps the oddest thing about this whole odd table is that the size of the gender gap in the worst country is surpassed only by the size of the gender gap in the “best.”

Sometimes the language used in describing the results becomes distinctly Orwellian. At one point the report states that “Philippines is the only country in Asia and the Pacific that has fully closed the gender gap in both education and health.” (page 21)

At enrollment in primary education, Philippines has a female to male ratio of 1.02. At secondary education this has risen to 1.19, and at tertiary education to 1.24. By what definition can this be described as a “fully closed” gender gap?

The WEF’s methodology produces some surreal results in other categories too.

In the Healthy Life Expectancy table, the top ranking country is the Russian Federation, where women can expect to enjoy an average of 65 healthy years, compared to only 55 for men.

However, Japan, which has the highest figure of all for women (78 years) is way down in 36th place. Japan’s problem is that its pesky menfolk aren’t lagging far enough behind. They are stubbornly hanging on for an average of 73 healthy years, which is spoiling the country’s ratio.

Thus we have a situation where a country in which both genders enjoy longer, healthier lives, and where the gap between the genders is smaller, is actually penalized in the rankings precisely because the gap is smaller.

If the validity of this logic is accepted then the best thing any man can do to make his country a more equal place is to throw himself under the nearest bus.

Does this back-to-front approach to gender equality really benefit anyone?

Surely organizations like the World Economic Forum are running the risk of discrediting the very notion of a struggle for equality in the eyes of many people who might otherwise have been supportive?

The crime writer Raymond Chandler once said “If you believe in an ideal, you don’t own it, it owns you.”

Too many of today’s guardians and gatekeepers of Equality don’t seem to see things that way. They believe the ideal is theirs to tweak, twist and reinvent as they see fit.

Maybe we need to become more willing to ask them why?

Photo/ Flickr— Neela

Male Workers Support Cracking Glass Ceiling

I have long suspected this to be true, but now there is research to confirm it - male workers support having women as their bosses.The funny thing is that men support women becoming CEOs more than women do.

Full Citation:
Semykina, A, Linz, SJ. (2013). Job Satisfaction and Perceived Gender Equality in Advanced Promotion Opportunities: An Empirical Investigation. Kyklos, 2013; 66 (4): 591 DOI: 10.1111/kykl.12038

Men Support Cracking Glass Ceiling

Nov. 12, 2013 — Male workers appear to support women becoming CEOs even more than female workers do, finds new research on the proverbial glass ceiling and job satisfaction in six formerly socialist countries.

The study, co-authored by Michigan State University economist Susan Linz, found that both sexes actually report higher job satisfaction when they believe a woman has a chance of becoming chief executive of a company or organization.

"Promoting gender equality at the top has positive consequences for job satisfaction for both men and women," Linz said. "So it's worth it for firms to create environments where women have opportunities to advance, as higher job satisfaction means higher productivity, higher revenues and a healthier bottom line."

The study, which appears in the international research journal Kyklos, is one of the first to examine the link between job satisfaction and advance promotion opportunities at a time when more women worldwide are reaching the upper management ranks in spite of significant barriers.

In a surprising twist to the findings, men generally reported higher job satisfaction than women when it came to gender equality in the top job.

"We find little evidence that men dislike working for a woman or view women's advancement to upper-level positions as creating a more competitive work environment," Linz said.

Instead, she said men may view women's ascension to the top as an indicator of their own promotion opportunities. "In other words, if they can do it, I can do it."

For the study, Linz and Anastasia Semykina of Florida State University surveyed more than 6,500 workers from 700 employers in the socialist-turned-capitalist countries of Russia, Serbia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The researchers asked how likely it is that a woman could hold the position of director and linked the employees' answer to his or her response on job satisfaction. While results from individual countries varied, overall the researchers found that men and women tended to support gender equality in the workplace.

"Even in cultures where women may still not be considered equal," Linz said, "there is a positive link between job satisfaction and perceived gender equality -- and it's particularly strong among the younger generation."

Linz said it would be interesting to see similar studies conducted in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Is Norway Turning Little Boys into Little Girls?

Norway has some of the most gender equal laws, cultural norms, and educational structures in the world. In another Scandinavian country, Sweden, one political party wants to legislate that men urinate sitting down.

Now, a new study of young boys (6-12) shows that these boys are more open with their feelings, and at the youngest levels (6-8), the boys engaged in "positive touching," such as holding hands at recess and scratching each others backs.

Still, the older boys (9-12) had to be wary of being called "gay" or otherwise "effeminate," so it's unclear if they youngest boys will adopt these beliefs and behaviors as they age, or if they represent a new model of masculinity.

This part of the study is great to see.

Physical strength, excelling at football and wearing fashionable clothes could win popularity points. But the most important factor for securing a high position in the boys’ hierarchy was being a nice guy – someone who is kind, funny, extroverted and relaxed with a “good personality”.

On the other hand, these same boys have become extremely body conscious. They have also taken on the traditionally female concern with body image (fitness) and appearance. A boy’s position in the "hierarchy" determines how much flexibility he has to be fashionable or try new looks.

“The fear of being called ‘gay’ works like kryptonite on the boys’ attempt to construct their masculinity,” explains Overå.

Boys have to care about their appearance (for example, using hair wax seems to be a requisite part of daily grooming), or risk being considered lazy or nerdish. But those boys who who care too much about their appearance risk being called feminine or gay.

However, according to the authors, two of the coolest boys wore eyeliner. But a less popular boy could not do this and get away with it. Social status seems to provide more latitude in how boys express their masculinity.

Another more concerning issue, at least to me, is that despite all of these changes, it is not "cool" for boys to care about their studies and their education. They have to minimize the time they spend studying in order to, apparently, (1) make it look effortless, and (2) hide the fact that they study hard and grades matter. This seems to apply to their appearance as well:

“The boys did a great deal of unseen work, both with regard to their appearance and to their schoolwork. Many of them worked a lot at home, but claimed before a test, for example, that they had only studied for five minutes. They had to hide how much it meant to them to do well and look good, and how much effort they put into it.”

In general, it seems the trend toward greater gender equality in Norway and other Scandinavian countries is a good thing. However, it is concerning that it appears to also be instilling in these boys some of the issues with appearance and popularity that girls have long struggled with - issues that we know leads to eating disorders (or use of steroids in teen boys) and other mental health challenges.

Gender equality creates new school boys

19 September 2013
KILDEN - Information Centre for Gender Research in Norway

Boys in primary school talk about their feelings and hold hands. And they are very, very concerned about their bodies and appearance.

According to new Norwegian research, decades of gender equality measures have helped to change children’s upbringing and their understanding of gender.

“It’s not that boys used to be naughty and now they are nice,” says Stian Overå.

“But compared with previous classroom research, I’ve found a change in how boys relate to emotions. Being personal and talking about feelings was not problematic or feminine in their eyes. It was almost an ideal. And it was more important to be kind than to be strong.”

Overå, a social anthropologist, recently defended his doctoral thesis on gender in primary schools. For an entire year he followed two groups of pupils aged 6–12 in a modern primary school in a suburb of Oslo. The area does not have a distinct working-class or middle-class profile. About 15 percent of the pupils had a native language other than Norwegian.

Gender equality measures work

Much of what Overå found was known from previous research. His study documents gender-stereotyped behaviour, such as girls who prefer to play in pairs and be best friends and boys who play in larger groups and have visible hierarchies with clear leaders.

But the boys observed by Overå behaved differently than the boys described in previous studies. So differently that it makes sense to talk about a change in the way boys behave

“Gender equality measures work,” Overå states.

“Gender roles in the Nordic countries are changing. Several new Nordic studies have had similar findings. Gender used to be rooted in tradition. Today it is more fluid.”

Scratch each other’s backs

According to Overå, the boys aged 6–8 had the most relaxed attitude towards feelings and touching. These boys had “positive touching” as a daily school activity in which the pupils learned to touch each other. The objective was to create a sense of belonging to a group where everyone can touch and stroke each other regardless of whether they know each other and regardless of gender.

“The pupils liked it a lot. It was not strained in any way,” says Overå.

“The youngest boys could scratch each other’s backs and hold hands during recess.”

When Overå presented the phenomenon of “positive touching” for a group of researchers at the University of California-Berkeley, they were flabbergasted.

“It’s not coincidental that these measures are developed in Norway or the other Nordic countries,” says the researcher.

“I think the changes I’ve observed are connected with Nordic ideals of gender equality and measures that are introduced as early as pre-school.”

Considerate boys

The older boys, aged 9-12, did not have such a relaxed attitude towards bodily contact. They had to be on guard for being called “gay”.

In spite of this, both the younger and older boys were considerate towards each other.

Other studies have found that boys’ interactions are characterized by rough attitudes, aggressiveness and rule-breaking. In contrast, the groups of boys observed by Overå were friendly, inclusive and good-natured. And they talked about their feelings.

“Boys are not aggressive or emotionally incompetent. That is not my experience. In many situations the boys talked openly and thoughtfully about girls they had crushes on, difficulties at home, and anxiety and expectations about the future,” says Overå.

“When one boy opened up, the others tried to support him and shared similar stories about fear or vulnerability.”

Strong and kind

There was a lot of play fighting and other physical tests of strength as well, but this was mainly done at the beginning of the school year, before hierarchies were established.

“The boys organize themselves in a hierarchy with a clear pecking order and role differentiation with regard to leadership. Some would interpret this as a sign of aggression. I perceived it more as a game and a friendly form of contact,” says Overå.

Physical strength, excelling at football and wearing fashionable clothes could win popularity points. But the most important factor for securing a high position in the boys’ hierarchy was being a nice guy – someone who is kind, funny, extroverted and relaxed with a “good personality”.

The importance of hair wax

However, a boy’s position in the hierarchy determines how much latitude each boy has, such as how physically intimate or fashionable he can be.

“The fear of being called ‘gay’ works like kryptonite on the boys’ attempt to construct their masculinity,” explains Overå.

Boys who cared too little about their appearance risked being called childish, boring or a nerd. The ones who cared too much risked being called feminine or gay. Two of the coolest boys wore eyeliner.

“Their masculinity and heterosexuality was not threatened by it,” says Overå.

A less popular boy, however, should not try to do the same. The general rule was that boys do not wear make-up. Their hair, on the other hand, should be styled.

“Boys have fewer cards to play than girls when it comes to aesthetics, so their hair becomes a sacred domain,” says Overå.

In a group interview, the boys talked about a day at school when a cool teacher had let them eat cake during home economics class. “I remember that! It was the day when I didn’t use hair wax!” exclaimed one of the boys. The researcher was taken aback, and the boy explained: He got so much grief from the other boys that he understood he had better not go to school again without wax in his hair.

“It’s not new in itself that boys are concerned about their bodies and appearance. What is new is the extent of their concern. They talk about it a lot. And there is a great deal of unseen work involved,” explains Overå.

Metrosexual role models

A strong, well-defined, athletic body was the ideal for the older boys, who talked incessantly about each other’s bodies in the locker room. One boy had read that football star Cristiano Ronaldo does 3,000 sit-ups every day, so he had started to do sit-ups every evening. He thought his ab-muscles were becoming more visible already and gladly lifted his shirt to demonstrate for the other boys.

“For young people today it’s legitimate to try out new masculine expressions inspired by metrosexual idols like Ronaldo and David Beckham, who have their own lines of hair products and boxer shorts. This is different compared to 20 years ago when the role models were more traditionally masculine,” says Overå.

Effortlessly successful

The boys need to be concerned about their bodies and appearance, but this concern must not show. In the same way, they should do well at school, without giving it prestige or putting work into it.

“It was an ideal to succeed in an effortless kind of way,” says Overå.

“The boys did a great deal of unseen work, both with regard to their appearance and to their schoolwork. Many of them worked a lot at home, but claimed before a test, for example, that they had only studied for five minutes. They had to hide how much it meant to them to do well and look good, and how much effort they put into it.”

The problem with boys

The focus of Overås’ thesis is gender as such, but he has chosen to focus mainly on boys for two reasons: Descriptions of boys’ lives and perspectives are underrepresented in the literature from school research, and today’s society is especially worried about the situation for boys in school and society at large.

The debate about boys as losers in a gender-equal society and the feminized school arose in the 1990s. In the 2000s, stories about boys who did poorly in school dominated the debate.

But the differences in school have more to do with socioeconomic class, particularly when it comes to school performance, according to Overå. The fact that girls perform slightly better than boys in school has been known since measurements began in the 1950s. Concerns about boys arose only after girls started to maintain their advantage at higher educational levels.

Socioeconomic class more significant

“It’s a mistake to let the overall discussion focus on gender when large-scale qualitative and quantitative studies show that socioeconomic class is far more significant than gender with regard to grades in school,” says the researcher.

Overås’ data confirm previous studies that find that girls handle the demands of school better than boys. A few more girls than boys were moved to higher levels in those subjects in which the school offered this.

“But when I controlled for class, it was clearly more significant whether a pupil came from the working class or middle class than if the pupil was a girl or boy,” says Overå.

“It’s problematic to talk about differences in the schools only regarding gender. Just as there are boys who do very well, there are girls who struggle. Using gender as an explanation for this is discriminatory for both sexes.”

The Two Sexes - Bookforum Omnivore

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, a new collection of links on men, women, gender equality, boys, differences in how men and women process visual stimuli, and high heels.

The Two Sexes

MAR 1 2013

2:00PM

• Marie Sarlet, Muriel Dumont, Nathalie Delacollette, and Benoit Dardenne (Liege): Prescription of Protective Paternalism for Men in Romantic and Work Contexts. 
• Patricia A. Seith (Stanford): Congressional Power to Effect Sex Equality. 
• Vera Trappmann (Magdeburg): Being Unemployed: Masculinity, Change Competence and Identity. 
• Anca Gheaus (Sheffield): Three Cheers for the Token Woman. 
• From Contexts, Niobe Way, C.J. Pascoe, Mark McCormack, Amy Schalet and Freeden Oeur on the hearts of boys. 
• Where men see white, women see ecru: Neuroscientists prove what we always suspected — the two sexes see the world differently. 
• Why do women wear high heels? Because men did. 
• Is fourth-wave feminism all about boobs and beauty? Hadley Freeman reviews Sexy Feminism by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Heather Wood Rudulph.

Empathy is Masculine: An Interview with Christian Veske - Good Men Project

This excellent article comes from the Good Men Project. Christian Veske is part of the European Institute for Gender Equality (Networking and Communications Assistant). He speaks out against domestic gender violence and calls for all men to take action, and this photo (below) comes from the EIGE project, “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.”

At EIGE, we work with the topic of gender based violence mainly in terms of research, but the campaign on Facebook was a grass root initiative. This is something anyone could do. It can happen in any organization. All it takes is the courage to step forward and propose the idea.

Exactly.

He doesn't specifically address empathy in this brief interview, but it's an important part of their campaign. We must feel empathy and concern for the victims - women, children, and other men - if we are ever going to change this and reduce violence in the home. 

For what it's worth, many women/wives beat their partners/husbands, it just isn't as apparent and men tend not to report it because of the shame that comes with being beaten by a woman. We need to end domestic in general.

Empathy is Masculine: An Interview with Christian Veske

DECEMBER 12, 2012 BY GINT ARAS

Christian Veske of the European Institute for Gender Equality speaks out against domestic gender violence and calls for all men to take action.

The photograph shown above appeared in my Facebook news feed on November 28th. Christian Veske, pictured, is a Networking and Communications Assistant for The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE); the photo made its rounds as part of EIGE’s participation in “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.” Christian included the following caption: As a child I witnessed on a regular basis how my friend’s father beat up his mother. I remember how frightened we were when his father was drunk for we knew that this meant that shouting and beating will happen too. I don’t think any child should experience seeing their mother get beaten up. Never. The key to end violence against women is in the hands of men. Men must change and we need to stand against violence against women. Together.”

I had a chance to speak to Christian this past week.

I was very moved by the photograph, and I applaud your efforts to raise awareness of domestic violence. Of course, the men who are abusing their wives and families are not necessarily those who saw your photo and were moved by it. In what way will raising an awareness among the general population about the prevalence of domestic violence help to reduce it?

I think it is very important to make the issue of domestic violence visible. Men need to stand against violence because most of the perpetrators are men. Therefore men, as a group, should take responsibility to improve the situation. If men dared to say that violence towards other human beings were unacceptable, this could hopefully lead to change in behaviour patterns of the perpetrators.

Naturally, as you pointed out, quite often it might be that the perpetrators do not see these sorts of campaigns, but I believe the more people, the more men, dare to stand against violence, the greater the effect can be. I also believe that everyone can do this. At EIGE, we work with the topic of gender based violence mainly in terms of research, but the campaign on Facebook was a grass root initiative. This is something anyone could do. It can happen in any organization. All it takes is the courage to step forward and propose the idea. From our institute’s side we can make problems of violence visible through the research we do and this is something that potential future campaigners could use. Of course, one should not stop only with campaigning, but one should also extend these principles to one’s everyday life. What I mean is that when you see or hear something that may you lead to believe that someone’s physical integrity is in danger, do not hesitate to call the police. Too often people still feel that they are intruding to other people’s personal sphere, but this is not true. One should not leave these things unnoticed.

You mentioned in the caption attached to the photo that you witnessed a friend’s father beat his mother multiple times. Do you know what prevented your friend’s mother from leaving her partner?

I do not remember much of my childhood, only some strong emotions. The thing I remember in this particular case was the fear. I think every child in the house where I lived was afraid of this man. So, I can’t speculate about her reasons; as an adult, I can only guess. Violence against women has historically been rather too commonplace in Estonia. There are numerous proverbs that show this—violence has been considered as a private matter of the family. I believe that when a woman wanted to leave husband, that had a stigmatizing effect on that woman: she had to consider the consequences and deal with gossiping.

You also mention that the father was often very drunk. To me it seems impossible to address an issue like domestic violence without also addressing alcoholism, especially in the Baltic States where rates of alcohol abuse are very high. How do you see this relationship? Isn’t alcoholism essentially a cause of domestic violence?

I don’t think that the issue of domestic violence should automatically be related to alcoholism. There are cases nowadays in my home country, Estonia, which clearly show that alcohol had nothing to do with violence. Yes, it might have a triggering effect, but the issue still is about power relations and how some men feel the need to exercise their power on the ones that are vulnerable.

I know some men believe they have to show who is the master of the house. I believe this has nothing to do with masculinity. On the contrary: when a man needs to assert his masculinity through violence, it only shows this man’s insecurity and reveals very serious self-esteem and confidence issues. In my eyes violence makes men look weak; when you resort to violence, you show you lack brains enough to solve issues in civilized manner.

That is also a bit of a circle. To break the cycle of associating this kind of brutal “power” with the masculine, we need to work with boys at an early age. We need to make them understand that what makes them best is not that they have control over others (a “boys will be boys” mentality), but teach them to understand other people, what others may feel as a result of their actions.

What else is EIGE doing to spread awareness?

We are planning to work much more on the issue of men and gender equality, as this remains an important topic. Soon we are publishing a report of a study on men for gender equality in the European Union, and we will also make public a database on organizations in Europe that work with men and gender equality. Over the next year, we are planning to have online discussions on our web platform, Eurogender. We hope these and other efforts work to continue spreading public awareness.

Photo by Christian Veske

Maria Bustillos - Men Aren’t Ending - A Response to Hanna Rosin

As I have mentioned here a couple of times, Hanna Rosin has a new book out based on her 2010 article in the The Atlantic, The End of Men. Reviving the title of her article, the new book is The End of Men: And the Rise of Women.

In the September 11, 2012 issue of the LA Review of Books, Maria Bustillos offers a rebuttal to Rosin.

Men aren’t ending

Hanna Rosin's loosely organized new book makes serious omissions in its presentation of research

By Maria Bustillos, LA Review of Books

This article originally appeared on the L.A. Review of Books.

AFTER CENTURIES OF OPPRESSION, women have won the day at last and “pulled decisively ahead [of men] by almost every measure.” This is the key argument made by Hanna Rosin in a new book, The End of Men and the Rise of Women. Mainly, it turns out, she means that there are more women enrolling in and graduating from college now than there are men, and that their ranks in the business world, in the professions, and in politics are swelling: natural enough developments in an increasingly egalitarian society that has seen its male-dominated manufacturing sector decimated in recent decades. The big question for this reader is why — at the very moment when we almost have people respecting one another as equals — we would be talking about “The End” of anybody. I don’t want anybody to end; I don’t buy for an instant that Men are Ending, and I can’t bring myself to believe that much of anyone else will, either.

Rosin makes her case in a series of chapters loosely organized around the idea that economic power has irrevocably altered the various roles of women in U.S. culture. In “Hearts of Steel: Single Girls Master the Hook-Up,” she praises the freedom that young women have gained as a benefit of what she calls the “hook-up culture” of modern university life, making a contrast with her own college days in the late 1980s. Her claim is that this new sexual freedom makes it possible for women to pursue their careers more effectively, with less distraction. “The most patient and thorough research about the hook-up culture shows that over the long run, women benefit greatly from living in a world where they can have sexual adventure without commitment or all that much shame, and where they can enter into temporary relationships that don’t derail their careers.”

This description has fit U.S. sexual mores for women for over 50 years. From the moment contraception became widely available to American women, they have been able to enjoy sexual freedom “without commitment or all that much shame” and to avoid marriage if they choose. The salient point, then and now, is not so much “without commitment” as “without fear of conception.” Women still face the same basic questions: career vs. family; commitment vs. fancy-freedom; finding a mate who will support our ambitions, and whose ambitions we, in turn, can support. Many of us who came of age during the time of great sexual permissiveness before the advent of AIDS find the current generation much like our own, or if anything a little bit more careful: a mixed bag, with some very “adventurous” people and some far less so. There’s nothing new, in other words, about “hook-up culture.”

Serious omissions have been made in presenting some of the research in The End of Men. For example, Rosin cites an article in the New York Times (‘For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage‘) as evidence that women don’t need men as much as they used to. They’re having babies “outside marriage.” But the article in question says that “[a]lmost all of the rise in nonmarital births has occurred among couples living together.” This would suggest that it’s the institution of marriage, not the presence of men, that has declined.

Rosin goes on to quote UVA sociologist Brad Wilcox: “The family changes over the past four decades have been bad for men and bad for kids, but it’s not clear they are bad for women.” So, is it fair to say that Wilxox thinks “the erosion of marriage” is a positive thing for women?

Not so fast. Just a few weeks ago, an essay appeared in Slate citing a battery of recent studies and concluding unequivocally that “it’s worse to be raised by a single mother, even if you’re not poor.” The author? UVA sociologist Brad Wilcox:

Children from poor and working-class homes are now doubly disadvantaged by their parents’ economic meager resources and by the fact that their parents often break up. By contrast, children from more-educated and affluent homes are doubly advantaged by their parents’ substantial economic resources and by the fact that their parents usually get and stay married.

How, exactly, can changes in society that harm children possibly benefit their mothers?

In the book’s most bewildering chapter, “A More Perfect Poison: The New Wave of Female Violence,” Rosin says that women are becoming more aggressive and powerful not just in the courts of Venus, but on the field of Mars. It opens with the story of a California woman who killed her husband by drugging him and stuffing him into a vat of acid, followed by several accounts of women who poisoned their husbands, and who are “remaking the lady poisoner archetype to fit with the upheaval in our modern domestic arrangements.” Such a poisoner might be a chemist, for example, with “an impressive job at a biochemical or pharmaceutical company.” That means she wouldn’t be availing herself of “household staples accessible to the average unhappy housewife” in order to kill anybody. Exactly what of any value might be learned about gender politics from such monstrosities isn’t really made clear.

But female aggression in general is on the rise, according to Rosin. “Since the United States passed mandatory arrest laws for domestic violence in the late 1990s, arrest rates for women have skyrocketed, and in some states reached 50 percent or more of all arrests.” We used to think that women weren’t competitive or dominant, but “they are breaking through even that last barrier, with the force of the Lady Gagas, Katniss Everdeens, and schoolgirls with cleats and bruises.” I honestly can’t tell whether or not Rosin sees this as a good thing, but again: we have had brawling women as well as brawling men since the days of Boadicea, if not earlier. Maybe the desperation among women has gotten worse in tandem with their rising responsibilities in the working world. If it has, that’s clearly a bug, not a feature.

There are some bright spots in the book, notably the investigation into how women are adapting to a changing world not only as students and in business, but as mothers. Describing a group of female undergraduates, Rosin writes: “[...] basic expectations for men and women [have] shifted. Many of the women’s mothers [...] established careers later in life, sometimes after a divorce, and they had urged their daughters to move more quickly to establish their own careers.” This seems both true, and interesting: it seems likely that modern parents, themselves raised in vastly different circumstances, have been forced to improvise a different kind of preparation for their own children in order to give them a better shot at happiness. I’d love to see more written about how parenthood is changing in response to twenty-first century pressures.

There’s some unintentional humor, too. Rosin describes Auburn-Opelika, a town in Alabama, as a “feminist paradise” where women dominate in a “feminized economy: a combination of university, service, and government jobs, with a small share in manufacturing.” In this “modern-day Herland,” the local Chevy dealership “tried to tempt people to a weekend sale with the promise of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies,” Rosin says, adding, “What man would fall for that?” Of the many whoppers in this book, I believe this one staggered me the most. How is it that Hanna Rosin is married to a man, has two sons, and can ask this amazing question?

Every single man I know would fall for that. No seriously, I have sat here and tried for the last 10 minutes, and I can’t think of one single man who wouldn’t high-tail it to a car dealership (or basically anywhere) that was handing out chocolate chip cookies.

¤

By far the biggest problem with The End of Men is its gender essentialism. The title isn’t a bit misleading; this is manifestly a misandrist book. The men depicted are an incredibly sorry lot, it’s true. Rosin shows one of them how to manage the complexities of the microwave at 7-Eleven. Another, a lazy stay-at-home dad, is unperturbed when his toddler son pees on the floor and smears poop on the walls; when his high-achieving lawyer wife gets home, she cleans everything and everybody up and cooks dinner like a “whirlwind” as her no-count man sits on a stool to “watch her work”.

These guys have been fired, laid off from manufacturing jobs, they’ve become OxyContin addicts, they’re violent, they don’t pay child support. They go fishing all day and drip fishy water onto the floor.

“They don’t like to think too hard,” offers one woman, as an explanation of why men don’t want to go to college. And when they do, “guys high-five one another when they get a C, while girls beat themselves up over a B-minus.” Another, of her boyfriend: “He has no opinion at all. He wants me to tell him what to do.” Men! They spend hours playing video games! They can’t sit still! They are “the new ball and chain.”

This kind of thing makes Rosin come off like a mirror version of David Brooks, drawing improbable conclusions from pretend or crazily narrow, twisted bits of evidence or the most threadbare, throwback caricatures. “For most of the [twentieth] century men derived their sense of manliness from their work, or their role as head of the family,” we learn. “A ‘coalminer’ or a ‘rigger’ used to be a complete identity, connecting a man to a long lineage of men. Implicit in the title was his role as anchor of a domestic existence [...] They lost the old architecture of manliness, but they have not replaced it with any obvious new one.” In fact no, the architecture of manliness is exactly as it has ever been, the lineage unbroken. Unzip the fly of the nearest man (ask first, I guess) and you will find that nothing whatsoever has changed in this regard. How many “riggers” did Rosin interview for this book?

Equality is the pole star of my own politics, and that made it really tough going for me to read The End of Men objectively, or maybe even fairly, because it’s evident that Rosin believes women to be literally — and inherently — superior to men. This view is not only one I don’t share, it is anathema to me. It is the exact reason why I have never been able to call myself a feminist; it transgresses against my deepest conviction, namely, a belief in universal human equality. I believe that each of us — all human beings who share the same seemingly limitless abilities, and the same unfathomable doom — should be able to develop his or her potential and live freely and on equal terms in a condition of mutual respect and support. That is not quite the Rosin view. “It’s possible that girls have always had the raw material to make better students,” she writes, “that they’ve always been more studious, organized, self-disciplined, and eager to please, but, because of limited opportunities, what did it matter?” Or: “Many of us hold out the hope that there is a utopia in our future run by women, that power does not in fact corrupt equally.” (Really, “many” of us hold out this hope? I for one would be too scared it would turn out like that old Star Trek: TNG episode, “Angel One.”)

“When it comes to the knowledge, drive, and discipline necessary to succeed, women are the naturals with whom men have to strain to keep up.” Surely, generalizations like these are unhelpful at best. Demographic groups don’t compete, don’t study, don’t seek out the good life: individuals do. That is not even getting into the fact that by “success,” Rosin mainly means a better degree, a bigger salary, material comfort. Perhaps that kind of thinking produces more unhappiness even than the gender wars ever did. In any case, reading remarks like these is liable to prove painful to any reader of very profound egalitarian convictions; it’s like having the root that binds you to the universe hacked at with some kind of machete of Amazonian cluelessness.

In Rosin’s world, girls and women adapt, learn, and better their chances, but boys and men somehow don’t. If violence against women has greatly diminished, if “rape [has] declined sharply over the last thirty-five years,” Rosin seems to think that this is because women have changed, not because men have. Women have grown feistier, they have more power, ergo they are harder to victimize: they have learned they can “say no.” Surely, though, another possible reason for the decline in violence against women might be that men are learning, too: that the basic ideas of fairness and equality that have been promulgated in schools and media since the 1970s — of gender equality, race equality, respect for others — are working for men, as well as for women. The possibility that we’re doing a better job of teaching men not to harm women doesn’t even get a look in.

Beyond this, it appears, we have arrived at the crux of the matter. How on earth can things be “better” only for women, but not for men, or for children? Surely things can only be considered “better” if they are better for everyone: the meanest intelligence in the world would scorn an “improvement” that left her own mate, or her own children, behind. How can we talk about “having it all” as if success were something to be achieved only by individuals, each in the vacuum of her own ambition, and not in families or communities, or marriages?

While we are on the subject of “having it all”: though I admired Anne-Marie Slaughter’s celebrated Atlantic essay, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” I was appalled to see Touré’s equally valuable response in Time go almost completely ignored. “Men are more likely than women to choose work at a cost to family,” he wrote. “Perhaps they suffer less emotionally over that [though, wait — why would anyone think so?], but there’s still pain there. We just push the feelings down and don’t complain. That’s why our side of this story rarely gets told.”

Progress is not a zero-sum game. Society gains when the injustices against men are addressed equally with the injustices against women. Surely it would be wrong to hold one kind of progress hostage to the other. I hope we haven’t forgotten how many young black men are in jail, or how many gay men are discriminated against, or how many poor men are denied a decent education. If we concentrate on the problems that all kinds of people are having, rather than dividing everyone up into the equivalent of rival football teams, won’t we have a better chance of setting things to rights?

While I’m at it, how come everyone has his knickers in such a twist about how we women make less money, but nobody seems to care that the men still die younger than we do? Isn’t that at least equally urgent a problem? I’ve often thought that the shorter lifespan American men have traditionally enjoyed must have been owing to their having to go out to do battle in the wider world alone, to take risks that go unshared by their wives and children; theirs is a solitary, thankless struggle with a heart attack waiting at the end of it. If a man who operated as the head of a “traditional” family were to be fired, or get sick, lose his job, who was going to pick up the slack? It was all on him. Having grown up in such a household, and then establishing the kind where there are two of us out there contending on behalf of our family, it seems so clear that the latter way is fairer and saner for men, and for women too.

It’s tempting to cite last year’s NIH study showing that the life expectancy gender gap is narrowing as evidence of this. As women increasingly share the burden of bringing home the bacon for their families, the gap might eventually disappear altogether.

In short, why aren’t we asking that our society come to “have it all” together? Isn’t that the only way it would work? Is what we’re looking at simply a calcified failure of empathy and of imagination — the sad legacy of the Me Generation, which held that “self-realization” was the goal of life? How can we realize ourselves alone? How can we realize ourselves without one another?

¤

Rosin’s son, Jacob, gets a shout-out in the acknowledgements of The End of Men: “[He] asks me every day why I would write a book with such a mean title. I always tell him that I want to convince people that some men out there need our help, since it’s not always so easy for them to ask for it. He doesn’t quite believe me yet, but maybe one day he will.”

Count me on Jacob’s side of the question. How, exactly, does a book like Rosin’s convince us that “some men out there need our help”? It sounds a lot more like R.I.P. to me: an interpretation amply borne out by the book’s contents.

The dedication of the book reads, “To Jacob, with apologies for the title.” At least Rosin found grace enough to apologize to Jacob. The rest of us are still waiting.

Ozy Frantz and Noah Brand - What About the Men? Why Our Gender System Sucks for Men, Too

This article by Ozy Frantz and Noah Brand originally appeared at The Good Men Project and was reposted at Alternet. This article is from a book in progress by Brand and Frantz. I'll be curious to see the book when they complete it - it may be a welcome addition to men's studies.

What About the Men? Why Our Gender System Sucks for Men, Too

The tools of feminism can also be applied to the damage and deformation that men suffer in our sexist society. 

July 11, 2012  

 

 

If you are anything like us, you spent some time when you were younger playing with optical illusions: the vase that, if you looked at it differently, was two faces; the fish that were also birds; the old woman who was also a young lady.

If you were reading this in a book in a bookstore, and some malicious person had not moved it into the Local Birdwatching category, it would almost certainly be next to some other books about gender. (Yes, this is related.) Look at the other books, and you’d find they have one thing in common—they’re almost all about women. Women and work. Women and body image. Women and race. Women and sex. Women and feminism.

You’d think that only women have a gender.

For a long time, we’ve only been able to see half the illusion—we see the birds, but not the fish; the vases, but not the faces. We’ve noticed the thousands of ways, big and small, that our current gender system wounds women. Rarely, however, and often only as an afterthought does anyone remark on how the current gender system harms men.

 ♦◊♦

We live in a sexist society, one where gender programming starts at birth (though the advent of the sonogram has allowed parents to get a head start by painting the nursery pink or blue and stocking up in advance on gendered toys and clothes) and is so pervasive as to be inescapable. Feminism has done an excellent job analyzing and challenging the ways that these assigned and enforced gender roles damage and deform the lives of women. The same tools of analysis can be applied to the damage and deformation that men suffer. And that damage, sad to say, is severe.

The general term for the incredibly restrictive social codes on male behavior is hegemonic masculinity, though Paul Kivel refers to it as the “Man Box” in his work, and Charlie Glickman clarifies that to the “Act Like a Man Box” to emphasize the performative nature of the restrictions. We choose to use hegemonic masculinity as our term because it is less likely than “Man Box” to be used in a trend piece about how it’s okay for men to own steamer trunks now.

Indeed, the current cultural trend of terms like bromance, guyliner, mancession, and so on -- “bromanteaus” as we call them -- just demonstrates the power of hegemonic masculinity. Anything that might potentially be seen as outside the narrow bounds of acceptable male behavior, such as having a close relationship, wearing makeup, or being out of work, must be given a special name to assure people that it really is masculine, it’s not outside the box in any way.

So what is the box? What are the bounds of hegemonic masculinity? The essence of it is that the things we think of as “manly,” the things a “real man” does or is, are a mess of unreasonable, contradictory and impossible expectations and assumptions. A real man is supposed to be attractive to women, but not do anything for a woman’s approval or attention. A real man is supposed to be stoic and emotionless, but is permitted to show anger. A real man is supposed to be tall and have a big penis, for heaven’s sake, and if your genetic dice didn’t shake out that way, you’d better perform the rest of the list even harder to make up for your supposed deficiency.

Men who do not fit the box of hegemonic masculinity get all kinds of stigmatized. For instance, consider men who want to help raise their children. Stay-at-home dads and men on the “mommy track” often face disapproval and the belief that they “laze around all day” or “aren’t real men.” In public, men are all too often patronized as “Mr. Mom” or treated as though it’s exceptional and startling that they want to spend time with their children; it’s depressingly common for men openly interested in childcare to be called pedophiles.

 

Social pressure has astonishing effects on people’s behavior: just ask any teenager who drove home drunk from a party. Many people find it so unthinkable that men might want to have traditionally feminine jobs such as nurses or teachers that they tend to promote men out of those jobs and into more traditionally masculine positions such as administration; this sounds like an advantage, but most people become nurses to take care of patients, not to deal with paperwork, and it’s based in misandric stereotypes around what men can do. The social pressure to conform to the man box can be internalized, sometimes with tragic effects: unemployment increases a man’s risk of suicide more than it does a woman’s, partially because of the association between masculinity and success.

Even if they don’t experience social pressure, the expectations that they should act in a certain way can disadvantage men who don’t act that way. Straight men are all too often expected to approach women, ask them out, and pay for the date—which causes disproportionate pain to men who are socially awkward, shy or just broke. Male virgins are more likely than their female counterparts to feel shame because of their virginity.

Ultimately, the most important concepts in hegemonic masculinity are “strong," “tough,” and “winner.” Each of these is code for a wealth of symbolism and subconcepts, so that “tough” implies both “stoically emotionless” and “does not seek medical attention.” “Strong” covers “supports his family financially” and “bench-presses more than his bodyweight,” among other things. “Winner” is the key to a Pandora’s box of competition and inadequacy, where the twin concepts of “loser” and “failure” lurk, waiting to consume men’s sense of self at the least excuse.

Even for men who conform to these demands, these ideals of masculinity can burden them. Take toughness, for instance—it’s good to be tough, right? Chuck Norris is tough. Wolverine is tough. Toughness lets you survive in this hard world, keeps you from being weak and vulnerable. That’s a good thing to encourage people to be, right?

Turns out, not so much.

The ideal of physical toughness kills people. Especially men. Except for sex work, the most male-dominated jobs are the most dangerous, from lumberjacks to firefighters to soldiers, men are more likely to be injured on the job and suffer an astonishing 92% of fatal occupational injuries. Historically and cross-culturally, men’s life expectancy is shorter than women’s; in the United States, men tend to live four years less than women. While some of the discrepancy may be biological, much of it is due to socialization: in fact, the level of patriarchy in a society is associated with lower life expectancy for men. Men are encouraged to “tough out” pain and not go to doctors unless they absolutely need to.

Emotional toughness can also cause men pain; if you can’t open up emotionally to another person, it makes it more difficult to have friends. The social support gap is large and growing—men tend to report having fewer close friends and being less connected to their communities than women. For far too many men, romantic relationships are the only acceptable venue for them to express their feelings (and even there, the idea that men hate emotional intimacy limits them). In fact, men tend to report more distress due to a strained romantic relationship, possibly because women are far more likely to have a group of friends to help with the social support. The nervously joking societal construct of “bromance” arises from the notion that having a close male friend is something weird enough that it needs its own name.

Then there’s rape. When was the last time you heard men mentioned as rape or molestation victims in any public discussion of such issues? Despite the fact that 1 in 6 men are subject to unwanted sexual activity before the age of 18, despite the fact that 1 in 4 rape survivors in America is male, far too many people still believe a man cannot be raped, especially by a woman: the myth that an erection is consent, instead of a biological function, remains strong. The Centers for Disease Control’s own statistics draw a line between “rape” and “being forced to penetrate someone.” Not to be rude to the CDC, but we have a word for sex that someone is forced to have against their will. It’s called rape.

Even in cases of boys as young as 13 who are raped by teachers or other authority figures, many people congratulate them or call them lucky. Try to imagine anyone saying that to a 13-year-old girl who was molested by her teacher, and you begin to see how deep the gender gulf is here. In fact, some male rape survivors never acknowledge, even to themselves, that what they endured was rape. Rape of men is endemic within the prison system, which is not treated as a human rights outrage, but as an appropriate subject for jokes. Some even speak glowingly of prison rape as the real deterrent to criminal activity. It’s amazing how many people are downright enthusiastic about their government running rape camps, so long as the victims are male.

The ideal of toughness also impacts male survivors of abuse. Many people believe that men cannot be abused, because they’re “stronger,” or that if a man is abused it’s proof that he’s a wimp or a weakling; many believe that men who were raped are responsible for and enjoyed their rapes. Many of the guides to recognizing abuse are gendered with a female survivor and a male perpetrator, rendering abuse of men invisible. Many shelters do not provide services to male survivors (although some female-only shelters will put male survivors up in hotels).

Most men will never end up in prison, a majority will never be raped or abused, but the same societal expectations that allow us to laugh off the rape and abuse of men give rise to a thousand smaller micro-aggressions, all the little ways in which men are made to feel horrible in a gendered way. It sounds strange to say that the same system tells men that they are grotesque and laughable for being masculine, and simultaneously pathetic and laughable for not being masculine enough, but bizarrely, that is the case.

Of course, a few men do manage to perform hegemonic masculinity quite well and even avoid most of the negative consequences of masculinity.

Read the whole article.

Alex Taylor - Making Men Partners in the Mission for Gender Equality in Lebanon

It's great to see an article like this from a paper in Lebanon - it would be equally great to see more thinking like this in the mainstream of the U.S., rather than going for the shock stories like "The End of Men" and other similar fertilizer.

Too often efforts to align men with anti-violence campaigns ignore the socialization that men have received, treat the men as though they are or will be perpetrators, and simply fail to meet men where they are in their lives. I have long believed that the best way to reduce male violence against women is to help men better understand themselves.

According to the article, a primary purpose of the men’s center is to assist me in understanding "their own gender roles and how it has worked against them.”


From Lebanon's The Daily Star.

Making men partners in the mission for gender equality

July 06, 2012
By Alex Taylor

Abaad’s publicity campaign shows the stresses men encounter in many occupations.

BEIRUT: A real man is strong – he can recognize and express his emotions, and, yes, he may even cry. By establishing a men’s center to examine masculinity in Lebanese society and provide men with a place to talk about their stresses and needs, the Abaad Resource Center for Gender Equality hopes to help men become partners in addressing issues such as domestic violence and achieving a more equal society.

Too often, discussions about domestic abuse or women’s empowerment sideline or even demonize men, says Anthony Keedi, manager of the center.

“One reason there has been such resistance from men toward women’s human rights initiatives is because of a lack of targeting men as a demographic and understanding the gender roles that have also been dictated upon men as well as women,” he adds.

Keedi explains that commonly in the field of gender rights activists “seem to not address men at all or address men as the aggressors, or as having a negative or evil intent.”

A central goal of the men’s center, he says, is to “allow men to begin to see their own gender roles and how it has worked against them.”

“One very crucial part of the masculine gender role is about emotional expression or lack thereof. Men are not expected to seek help. In fact, they are a population where help-seeking behavior is seen as a weakness ... A man should have the solutions, a man should fight, a man should be strong and not let these things affect him. Speaking from a psychological point of view, that’s not characteristic of human nature – it’s human to be able to mourn or be able to cry or communicate,” Keedi insists.

In addition to workshops on stress and anger management, the center, located in Furn al-Shubbak, offers individual psychological counseling to help men reconsider the way they address problems in the home or daily stresses. The service is free, completely private and confidential.

One common stress cited by those who have already come to the center is financial pressure, says Keedi. While financial and work problems will be ever-present, the center’s work is to show ways to cope, rather than taking their frustrations home with them and further compounding their problems by creating discordance in their family.

“One problem can lead to problems at home, which will lead to feeling even more isolated, even more stressed, even more anxious,” Keedi says, which can, in some cases, “lead to violence or a psychological state where the man is unhappy and others around him are unhappy.”

Unfortunately, the reactions to stress that are considered “understandable masculine responses” are not very healthy, Keedi highlights.

“It might not be looked upon well, but it’s understood if they act violently or if they act out in anger in response to stress ... as opposed to saying we should sit down and talk about it.”

Through individual counseling, the center helps beneficiaries look at the ways they process stress and how it affects them and those around them.

“When you hurt someone you’re living with, you’re hurting the one who is supposed to help you through difficulties and is supposed to listen and be your partner in everything – whether the spouse or the children. So it’s not just affecting others around him, it’s affecting the man’s own life,” says Dr. Ghassan Assaf, the center’s psychologist.

Assaf says that many of the men who have sought counseling at the center begin to realize that their angry or explosive behavior is actually a weakness rather than a sign of strength or masculinity. They come to see that “to be strong is to handle all the family stress, all the life stress or economical stress ... not to explode all the time. This means they were weaker before.”

Despite the breakthroughs of some of the center’s clients, reaching out to men in Lebanon and encouraging them to seek help is not the easiest task, both Assaf and Keedi acknowledge. While Abaad has offered the counseling service to men since September of last year, the men’s center only launched fully in June with a nationwide publicity campaign.

Through billboards and TV spots showing men experiencing stress in their professions – whether as a doctor, electrician, taxi driver or vegetable seller – the campaign allows men to see that stress is common and men from all different backgrounds can experience problems that they can’t solve alone.

The response to the campaign has been overwhelming, says Keedi, with over 150 calls to the men’s center in the last few weeks alone. Other organizations are also becoming aware of the service and referring people to counseling at the center. As a result, Abaad is already looking to expand counseling hours and add another psychologist.

While not every inquiry to the center ends with that person scheduling or showing up for their appointment, Keedi believes the response is encouraging and an important first step.

“Men have been raised in a certain way their entire lives. Their entire lives they’ve been told, ‘don’t talk, don’t cry,’ and then all of a sudden they’re getting another message, which inherently feels true, because it’s a natural, human need to speak and relieve stress. But it’s not going to be easy ... because their whole lives they’ve heard the opposite.”

Abaad is also in the process of conducting a nationwide study on perceptions of masculinity in Lebanon and will use the results to design more programming in the coming months.

Ultimately, Keedi hopes men will realize that they have nothing to lose, but everything to gain by calling the center and taking the time to invest in their own well-being, for themselves and the sake of their families.

“What they can pick up in the center is a greater understanding of themselves and perhaps ways they can keep stresses in one aspect of their life from negatively affecting other aspects or their life. Hopefully they will actually be able to enjoy those other aspects of their life a little more – such as their interactions at home with their loved ones and their family and friends.”

For more information contact the Abaad center 24-hour phone line at 71-283-820.

This sounds a lot like the MRAs in the U.S., but his agenda for men is hard to argue with.

TEDxLSE - Glen Poole - A New Gender Agenda

Glen Poole is a radical voice in the world of gender equality campaigning on issues like fathers' rights, men's health inequalities, male suicide, boys' educational underachievement, male role models and men and boys' personal safety. He first came to prominence as PR Director of Fathers 4 Justice and was described by the group's founder as "the most impressive campaigner" he'd ever met.

Glen is now the UK co-ordinator of International Men's Day and Strategic Director of The Men's Network, a dynamic social project based in Brighton and Hove that hosted the UK's First National Conference for Men and Boys in 2011.

Overlapping Gender Roles in College Students

In an article misleadingly entitled "Girly men are the new alpha males," Jake Adler writes that young men are not so confined by the traditional stereotypes of masculinity as were previous generations.

Part of what makes this interesting to me is that it does not come from a newspaper at the University of Washington (Seattle), the University of Colorado (Boulder), Reed College (Portland), or some small liberal arts school in the Northeast - no, it comes from Arizona State University in Tempe (a suburb of Phoenix).

Of the three state schools in Arizona, ASU is the least liberal (NAU and U of A are both more liberal). It may seem a small thing, but it's good to see more progressive ideas on masculinity coming from a school I would generally associate with a frat boy mentality.

It's a little annoying that the author still refers to art, cooking, and dancing as effeminate activities (and also that he does not use the serial comma), but I'll take small steps in the right direction for now.

Here is the latter part of the article:

The line between genders has started to blur, thanks not only to the media, but increasing male tolerance for the social equality of women, alternative lifestyles and LGBTQA peoples.

For decades, women have filled the shoes of doctors, lawyers and CEOs, and men have had to come to terms with the fact that they’re not the only ones who can hold high-ranking positions in the workforce or community.

This might have been alarming to some men initially, scared for the sanctity of their manhood, but lately, the strides taken by women have opened up new territory for men to express themselves as they really are, unrestrained by strict gender roles.

In other words, when women shattered their social shackles, they began to erode the bonds arresting men as well.

Today’s culture encourages self-expression and individuality, and as women increasingly break down the doors marked, “Boys Only,” men have begun to feel a little more comfortable entering the ladies’ room, so to speak. The image of the man’s man has certainly changed.

Hyper-masculine figures in the media such as rugged actors John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone and director Clint Eastwood and have been replaced by svelte actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Orlando Bloom and James Franco.

Television shows like “Glee” consistently challenge older norms of masculinity by featuring straight male characters who love to dance and sing their hearts out and show off their sensitive side.

Our culture has begun to tell men that it’s OK to express themselves, and frankly, to have emotions. This trend can easily be seen all over campus: Baggy T-shirts and basketball shorts have been exchanged for skinny jeans and form-fitting deep-V-necks.

Interests that have primarily been associated with masculinity, such as sports and cars, have made way for more effeminate activities, such as art, cooking and dancing.

As gender roles for men and women begin to overlap, the difference between the two sexes becomes indistinguishable.

Confidence is boosted and a weight is lifted when people are free to do as their heart guides them—regardless of sex and free of social norms.

We’re being pushed towards a more harmonized society. Harper Lee said it best in “To Kill a Mockingbird”: “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”

Feminists Are Not the Enemy

If you happen to stumble onto some of the male studies (as opposed to men's studies) or men's rights movement (MRM) blogs - especially the later - you might be led to believe that feminists and feminism are the worst things to happen to men since the invention of machine guns and mustard gas. There is some well-founded concerns that have become a nearly irrational hate (among some parts of the collective thing we call a men's movement) towards all forms of feminism and the feminists (of both sexes and all genders) who support them.

When we talk about religion and politics, people tend to quickly agree that all -isms are bad. In fact, when science gets dogmatic, it is now called scientism. So, obviously, when any set of beleifs become concretized into an ism, whether it's socialism, capitalism, feminism - or even masculinism - nothing good tends to come of it.

Many of the goals of feminism are simply crucial to a healthy culture and society. But when it goes too far (Warren Farrell quit his membership in NOW when he discovered one small faction was fighting to create laws that would award parental rights ONLY to mothers in cases of divorce, a patently insane idea), then we have a problem. There are many other examples of it having gone too far.

The MRM guys think it has ALL gone to far - and that all feminists are evil (this is a huge generalization, but it's "generally" true).

On the other hand, I know a lot of of younger feminists (under 50) who care about male rights and men's rights - and who oppose efforts to isolate men from their children, who oppose automatically assuming that any claim of sexual assault must be true, and who wonder when gender equality is going to begin taking men into consideration.

I found this young woman, Chelsea L,. by accident - but she represents the kind of feminist we need more of in the world. She posted this observation at We Are the Wave, a student blog of young feminist/gender studies students. My guess is that she is a minority among her peers - but good for her for posting this entry.

Real Gender Equality

In class, we've talked a lot about gender equality, but we focused on women, which is understandable, considering this is a women's and gender studies class. But what about men? If true gender equality is what we want, doesn't that include giving men the ability to do what they want, regardless of whether or not it conforms to the ideals of masculinity?

It has been my observation that more women are breaking gender barriers than men. Women are enrolling in college in greater and greater numbers, outnumbering men at many institutions, ours included (C of C is over 60 percent female). Law schools are very close to equal enrollment of men and women. But how many male preschool teachers do you know? I didn't have a male teacher until I reached 6th grade, and by the time I had left middle school, I had only had 2 male teachers (both, incidentally, science teachers).

This is not to say that women have broken all gender barriers. There are still obstacles to true gender equality. Women are still paid less than men for the same work. Women are still horribly underrepresented in politics. Women still have to fight to balance a career and family.

But I think gender inequality is a great example of how oppression harms the oppressor along with the oppressed. Take, for example, the recent recession, or, as some pundits like to call it, the "mancession". Because women were paid less for the same work, many businesses found it more economical to lay off men when cutting expenses. As a result, more men lost their jobs. And while women are fighting for maternity leave, paternity leave is a foreign concept for most Americans, at a time when more men than ever say that having a family is a priority.

While I am not arguing that feminism should shift its focus from fighting for a woman's right to work to fighting for a man's right to stay home, I do believe that those are two battles that would be more effectively fought together. If women are no longer the primary caretakers of children, employers would no longer be able to use that as an excuse to pay women less. Would many employers simply find another excuse? Yes. But as their excuses become weaker and weaker, more people will see the pay gap for what it is (institutional sexism) and demand change. And isn't that what we want?

Posted by Chelsea

Tags: men, gender equality, women, feminism, culture, We Are the Wave, Real Gender Equality, students, gender studies