Men are the biggest losers in the new economy
Robert W. Patterson
This article was first published June 14, 2011, at WashingtonExaminer.com.
Since President Obama moved into the White House, the unemployment picture has gone from bad to worse. Unless things turn around, 2011 may be the third consecutive year with unemployment exceeding 9 percent, a first since the Labor Department began tracking the stat in 1948.
Yet more troubling are the higher rates of joblessness — and bleaker employment prospects — for men ages 25–54 relative to their female peers. Unemployment in this critical demographic may not seem like an outlier (also around 9 percent since 2009).
But it follows a steady drop in the labor-force participation rate of these men of nearly 7 percentage points since 1970, along with declines in their relative wages. In all, one fifth of men in their prime have either dropped out of the workforce or are unemployed.
Meanwhile, women are not only experiencing lower unemployment (about 7.5 percent since 2009), but also a leap in their labor-force participation rate, per the adjacent chart, of more than half since 1970, along with rising relative earnings. In fact, the participation rate of married mothers has more than doubled since 1965.
Set aside whether these labor shifts have strengthened the market or home economy. Is the reversing of sex roles what Americans really want? While politicians of both parties and the media have cheered the movement of women out of the home and into paid employment, the Pew Research Center has found that most Americans have second thoughts.
In a 2007 survey, before the economy tanked, Pew found American mothers expressing a largely negative attitude to their new roles as working stiffs. Only 22 percent of at-home mothers, and 34 percent of employed mothers, consider increases in maternal employment good for society.
Loading ...
I think the economic situation particularly in California has required two incomes to achieve the “American” dream since the ’70s. Cost of living is so high that many people cannot afford to have a sole breadwinner. Unless you bought your home 20+ years ago, your house payment alone requires two incomes. The average cost of a car in the ’70s was around 5K. Now, you’re lucky to get away with 20K for a mid sized car. Add to this inflation a hugely materialistic and status based society thanks to media bombardment and you have a situation where people feel unable to downsize. It takes a real commitment to be a stay at home mom when you’re of just middle class income. You have to own a small home (if you can afford it), cheaper or older cars, no fancy vacations, forget designer clothes, you’re stuck with a public school despite their assault on family values (unless you home school), and so on. Add to that that California sadly has become a frontier for Christianity and Judeo-Christian values and faith, so you’re wide open to worshiping the gods of money, fame and status, and there’s a real problem.
This just seems like a basic economic principle. Women are–whether it’s good or bad–cheaper workers. They are equally educated and modern technologies equalize their physical deficiencies. When business is rough, the proprietor ought to look for ways to cut costs. Employing more women than men seems like a good way. They receive a lower starting salary and are less likely to request wages. It’s no shock that they would begin to replace men in the workforce. Basic triage principles, but instead of across borders or money it’s across sexes.
Perhaps the shift in higher unemployment for men has less to do with women entering the workforce or a “reversal of gender roles” and more to do with the fact that US business policy has made it better for businesses to operate production operations abroad rather than domestically?
We’ve transformed our economy from a manufacturing to a services economy, which is smaller and not as strong as the former. For the past few decades, we’ve seen a large number of production jobs, typically worked by men, be sent abroad.
On a side note, I wonder if these figures exclude stay-at-home dads from the results. As for ‘reversing the sex roles’… it seems irrelevant. Given cultural, patriarchal undertones it is no wonder that men are more content with working than women. Obviously, when faced with the prospect of spending more time with one’s children, parents would uniformly prefer that.
Mgregory is correct in his first assessment: in modern America, dual-incomes are more and more required to maintain the “American dream”. Should we become less materialistic? Absolutely. Adopting an abandonment of materialism, however, would cause additional detriment to the economy. He loses me on the adoption of Judeo-Christian values as an economic template given that the current rising economic power (China) is absent those values.
As always, the insights of Pope John Paul II’s theolgy of the body can be very helpful on this subject. Gender is not irrelevant. Rather it is essential. It is everything because it is precisely through gender that human beings participate in the very order of Creation, in fact, in the very interior life of the Holy Trinity.
Whether it is the economy, health care, marriage, family, sexuality or whatever, there is always a fundamental “why” behind things, a certain order to them. When we decode or read that order and then interface with those things in a way that is congruent or honest with that order, things go well. When things do not go well it is because we are ignoring that order and proceeding in a way that is incongruent or dishonest to it.
The entire order of creation is based upon a fundamental complementarity and this comes to its fulness in the human person as male and female. The human person, as male and female becomes the starting point even of the questions of how to have a good economy.
For instance the theology, the “language” of the female body-person is built around a fundamental orientation toward connectedness, integration, relationship, immanence. An economy that becomes more and more based on service and communication is one in which the fundamental gifts of the feminine will be more amenable. However, womanhood also has a distinctive gift that is unique to womanhood. It is the one distinctive character of womanhood to which so much of her entire physiology is designed around–the capacity for motherhood. Pope John Paul II warned that while women can certainly make their contribution in society and in the work force, it should never come at the expense or compromising of that one genius that sets womanhood apart. She should not compromise her feminine genius in favor of being as much like a man as possible in the work force. If the unique feminine genius is ignored by society the consequences will not be good for society.
Over the last several decades women were fed the line that their worth would be measured only to the degree that they could imitate men, be where only men traditionally were, act like a man, compete with a man and to see her distinctive feminine genius as totally irrevelant, in fact, at times as excess baggage. Now we have burn out , heart attacks , depression and suicide among women in rates never before seen. Something essential has been compromised to the detriment of womanhood itself, family and therefore of society and of course to men.
The theology, the “language” of the male body has a fundamental orientation toward externality, acting upon the environment, defeding, protecting, accomplishing. Even comedian Steve Harvey in his book, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man” emphasized that one of the most crucial values to a man is to know that he can provide for his woman and family, that he measures up. He can get the job done. Because of the fundamental order of masculinity, manufacturing jobs were more amenable to the gifts of manhood. Now that there is less need for those gifts, men are left with a fundamental sense of worthlessness. Unlike womanhood men do not have that other particular genius to fall back on for a sense of fulfillment and worth. For the man, self worth is largely defind in accomplishment, producing, providing.
The male physiology is designed more for the external world, for taking the hits, so to speak, of being out there in the dog-eat-dog world. Fundamentally womanhood was not designed for and this is irrefutably and universally seen in the very language of her feminine body-person. However, we have convinced womanhood to force itself into the male configuration with the corresponding fall out to the health of women, marriage, family and society. And now we are seeing this fallout reflected in our economy.
We told women to have less children and but make more money and have more things. But the elephant in the room of economic discussion that few want to mention is that our economy has tanked in large part because there physically not enough people, especially of a certain age to contribute to the economy. We contracepted and aborted away an entire generation of potential consumers and producers. There are not enough young people with enough money to buy all of the “McMansions” that now stand empty or ready for foreclosure. There are not enough young people to contribute toward infrastructure costs in our culture, health care, social security, etc.
Gender is everything and understanding the fundamental “why” behind it and interfacing with that “why” honestly is essential, even for the economy.
–Fr. Thomas J. Loya, STB., MA.
Tabor Life Institute
Thank you for that, Father.