Letters to the Editor
leftychris
Published Letters: 354 Editor's Choice: 4
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@Splendide (In re: "I'm skeptical of these numbers")
[Read the article: Bringin' home the bacon, but no boyfriend]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Good post. You raised some excellent points that fill in more pieces of the puzzle, and lead to a more complete picture.
One of the big blue collar jobs that pays well and that men are greatly overrepresented in is construction. Missed that one.
But you also may have overstated the "blue collar high paying jobs" angle. All those jobs you listed (and including construction) have ALWAYS been exclusively or overwhelmingly male, and they've all been around for a long time. If anything, the percentage of male workers in those fields has declined in recent decades as women have moved into fields from which they were traditionally excluded. In my wide personal acquiantance, for example, I know a female electrician, a female plumber, a female auto mechanic, and two women who work in construction (one is a bricklayer/masonry worker).
Also, let's not forget that for most of the 20th century, the path to higher wages and a middle class existence for the greatest number of less-educated men (i.e. no college degree) was through unionized work in manufacturing. Since the 80s, however, the number of unionized jobs and manufacturing jobs in the US has dropped sharply, and most of those losses affected men. Blue collar job growth since then has been heavily concentrated in low-skill areas that don't pay as well, with fewer benefits, and in part-time and temp employment. These areas are often those in which women have predominated and continue to enjoy an advantage.
The point is, there's probably much less of an adequate economic outlet, relatively speaking, for men who lack college educations as there was for most of the previous century.
One other point in relation to your post (and also my previous post about male educational performance): There are undoubtedly many factors that account for the vastly disproportionate higher education gender ratio that favors women, but one that I neglected to mention before is that many males in the key college-age demographic of young adults are enlisted in the military (males still make up the vast majority of military personnel, and they are predominantly young aside from the officer corps). Obviously college, to them, is either not a concern or is a concern for the future. Also, sad to say, our nation's incarcerated population is over 90% male, and as with the military, disproportionately young. So, combining those two factors you'd have to subtract a rather sizable chunk of males from the key college-age demographic of young adults who are both willing and able to attend college. Taking into account those factors, as well as the economic and job-related points you made, it's possible that among young adults who are both willing and able to attend college, and who meet the qualifications, the numbers of males and females who actually DO attend college are more nearly equal. There's just a larger pool of willing and able females in that age demographic, and so females tend to be overrepresented on campuses.
It certainly deserves further study, as it's still possible that males are underrepresented even taking those factors into account. It is a very complicated issue, that's for sure.
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Stooping?
[Read the article: Bringin' home the bacon, but no boyfriend]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Seriously, is there nothing they won't stoop to to keep us underpaid and subservient?
Yes, I'm sure that was the secret, conspiratorial agenda of those who put together these studies and stats and who wrote the articles. They were all motivated by one supreme, overarching goal: OPPRESSING WOMEN!!!! (And preferably, keeping them barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, natch.)
Grow up, please.