Albert Mohler weighs in on Hanna Rosin’s cover story in The Atlantic, which is boldly entitled The End of Men. Rosin’s article poses the question: Is our postmodern, postindustrial society simply better suited to women than to men?
Consider the following:
1. Sex-selection technologies in the West are now more often used to select a preference for girls than for boys.
2. The current global recession has disproportionally impacted men. In the United States, 75% of the 8 million jobs lost were lost by men. Moreover, many of these jobs will probably not return, given the rapidly changing economic landscape. The worst-hit industries were overwhelmingly male and deeply identified with “macho”: construction, manufacturing, and high finance.
3. On a whole, women outnumber men in the work force.
4. Of the fifteen job classifications marked for future growth, men dominate only two, janitorial services and computer engineering.
5. Rosin writes:
…..[women] make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45 percent of associates in law firms—and both those percentages are rising fast. A white-collar economy values raw intellectual horsepower, which men and women have in equal amounts. It also requires communication skills and social intelligence, areas in which women, according to many studies, have a slight edge. Perhaps most important—for better or worse—it increasingly requires formal education credentials, which women are more prone to acquire, particularly early in adulthood.
6. Women now earn 60 percent of master’s degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees, and 42 percent of all M.B.A.s.
7. Women earn almost 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees—the minimum requirement, in most cases, for an affluent life in our modern economy. This trend is acceleration: For every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will do the same.
8. [Other studies show that girls are more likely to graduate high school than boys. Girls also outperform boys in virtually every subject from junior high on.]
There is no problem with intelligent, hard-working, accomplished women. The issue is the under-performance of men. As Dr. Mohler writes: “This pattern has vast implications for marital prospects, since women express a strong preference to marry a man of equal or greater educational and professional potential.” The problem is compounded for women who want to someday be the primary caregivers for their children.
Rosin’s argument is articulate, well documented, and persuasive. All who have an interest in the next generation would do well to challenge young men to be studious, hard working, decisive, commitment-oriented, delayed gratification-minded, mature, responsible, self-controlled, self-starting, industrious servant leaders. [Such qualities are not mutually exclusive with emotional intelligence, tenderness, and people skills.] Men like this will make good employees, good managers, good entrepreneurs, good leaders, good husbands, and good fathers.