Deliverable Male

• Publication year: 2011
• Citation: Vol. 34 No. 03

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND LAW REVIEWVolume 34, No. 3SPRING 2011

Deliverable Male

Katharine B. Silbaugh(fn*)

In the summer of 2010, the Atlantic Monthly declared that we have reached The End of Men,(fn1) explicating, in direct and unvarnished language, an idea that's been brewing for some time.(fn2) That article claimed that we are in an era that puts the wind at the back of women in every way, and that "[o]nce you open your eyes to this possibility, the evidence is all around you."(fn3)

Joan Williams's rich book, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter, similarly investigates the surprising fragility of men's role in twenty-first-century America.(fn4) For a generation, feminists-Williams included-have fought direct and individual discrimination, as well as structures having a disparate impact on women, across all fields of law. In light of where we started, it is startling to witness over the past several decades a negative impact on the economic, educational, and family life of men.

Feminists have long noted that gender stereotyping constrained men as well as women. Stereotyping limits choices and stunts the realization of individual potential, so men needed to explore their feminine side just as women were discovering their masculine one. But something different is now being explored. In the conventional masculine areas where men used to dominate women handily (e.g., employment, educational attainment), men are now falling so far behind that we need to worry about them as a class. The chorus of anxiety about this point is unmistakable; and while the evidence is not one-sided, as to some issues there's considerable support for the cultural concern.

Williams provides a nice exploration of the double-binds men find themselves in with respect to work-family balance. The first side of the double-bind relates to the breadth of their roles. Whether due to a shift in egalitarian ideas or a deflation of the family wage, men's wives are now in the workforce. As a result, men now shoulder some of the family-care work.(fn5) Men also have economic anxieties associated both with traditional breadwinner identity pressures and with the economic decline of traditionally male fields such as manufacturing and construction.

These phenomena are incredibly important to the work-family puzzle. To understand how, we need to consider the second half of men's double-bind: men do not own up to their family responsibilities to their employers and coworkers the way women do.(fn6) Working-class men in particular "walk the walk" on egalitarian family care without "talking the talk."(fn7) This Essay will focus on a tension underlying this second phenomenon: Should we support the dignity men experience when expressing traditional masculinity(fn8) or instead coax men to abandon the trappings of what increasingly looks like a losing strategy at work, school, and in the family?

Williams works through an incredible cache of union arbitrations involving men disciplined or dismissed because their family care conflicted with what their employer asked of them.(fn9) It's a persuasive story of families deciding whose job is more at risk and of men stuck in the same situation with their employers that we've come to understand so clearly for women. In these databases, Williams finds men to be less willing to provide their employers with the reason for their absence if family care figures in.(fn10) If the men expose their care responsibilities to their employer, they may be treated less generously than women employees, and that might be a rational explanation for their reticence. But perhaps men don't explain because something about those family-care responsibilities embarrasses them.

Williams pays particular attention to the way men negotiate a masculine self-image that sits uneasily with the reality of family care.(fn11) How should this tension be managed? Williams favors some form of preserving masculine self-image by reframing the subject to one of worker empowerment rather than family care.(fn12) This strategy aims at political efficacy and coalition building. Asking men to imitate women's successes, it might be argued, is interesting but too threatening to be attractive. This Essay nonetheless leans in that direction.

This Essay will first look at the evidence for the decline in men's status. Williams investigates the evidence in the workforce, and I'll highlight some particularly interesting evidence from recent years. I will add to that evidence from elementary, secondary, and higher education, and elaborate a bit on the evidence from men's role in families. From this section emerges the "end of men" hypothesis that begs the important question: What can be done to reverse the trend? Williams recognizes the challenge of the task and sees the difficulty in the choice to either support traditional masculine performance or to transform it. This same tension is visible in the greater literature about masculine anxieties.(fn13)

I will argue that, as painful as it may be, Williams is right that the economic success of men depends on the transformation of masculinity to incorporate a desire for the skills currently gendered female in the workforce, family life, and educational institutions. In places, Williams seems to embrace a "covering"(fn14) strategy for men that might sit between traditional masculinities and reformation, one that seeks to accommodate the affront to men's dignity implied in transforming their masculine performance. I incline more toward ripping off the Band-Aid, but I embrace Williams's general emphasis and will explicate some of the implications for extending her agenda into the debates within education in particular.

I. The Decline of Men

The catalog of indicators suggesting men may be in trouble is significant. There is much to quibble with in this research. In particular, nothing in the research undermines evidence of employer discrimination against women. But the underlying point is hard to avoid: boys and men do not enjoy every advantage over girls and women, even in traditionally male spheres. We're familiar with some of the seemingly disconnected indicators: Men are four times more likely to commit suicide(fn15) and fourteen times more likely to be in prison.(fn16) But a systematic walk through major spheres of life-family, work, and education-reveals a more pervasive fragility than any individual indicator can show.

A. Men at Work

Unemployment for men is greater than unemployment for women.(fn17) Men have suffered job loss and sector loss in fields that traditionally employed more men than women: factory work and construction.(fn18) The most recent labor-force contraction has been dubbed a "Mancession"(fn19) because its impact on men has been so significant that they are on track to become a minority in the labor force very soon.(fn20) Even when the recession ends, the outlook remains bleak for men. The manufacturing jobs they may wish would return can be permanently outsourced, while women-worker-heavy service jobs in healthcare and education cannot.(fn21) At this time, women have greater job security than men. And while overall wages for occupations that are sex-segregated male are higher than wages for occupations that are sex-segregated female, it is difficult to see how this division can last as wages in construction and manufacturing stagnate.

For older workers in particular, the wage gap between men and women persists, as it does in Williams's "mothers and others" division.(fn22) But the wage news that appeared last fall must have caught some young men by surprise: until burdened by parenthood, women have closed the wage gap. Media reports this fall covered one unreleased study claiming that these women earn 8% more than their male counterparts.(fn23) Some rushed to point out that higher wages for women result directly from their greater educational attainment; a pro-male wage gap still exists for men and women with equal educational qualifications.(fn24) Intended to remind us that employment discrimination against women is still evident when qualifications are compared, this caution nonetheless feeds rather than quells anxiety about men's status because it illustrates that they now have weaker qualifications than their female counterparts.

Employers still discriminate against women,(fn25) but women have overcompensated in skills development to the point that even the advantage given to men by discrimination is inadequate to maintain workforce dominance.(fn26) This development is not to say that women's workforce status is superior in terms of positions or wage. It is only to say that looking into the not-too-distant future, a plausible scenario has women dominating in positions and wages just as they are dominating in job security and educational attainment today.

B. Men in Families

For years, policy-makers have expressed concerns about men's detachment from family life. An early focus on African-American men(fn27) remains in the discourse, but in recent years, policy-makers have placed less emphasis on race in promoting marriage and encouraging men to reattach, as race is not a telling indicator of family attachment for men.(fn28) Many view marriage as a mechanism for supporting women and children. But a skeptical chorus has countered that the marriage movement serves men by reaffirming their masculinity.(fn29) Like the realization that men need help in educational...