Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Are Women Leaving Men Behind?


A while back Hanna Rosin wrote an article for the Atlantic called "The End of Men." ( click here from FB) Needless to say it caught my attention. Sorry Hanna but although you made some great points in the article about the rising economic power of women, I truly hated the title. Hated it. The idea that when women rise men must fall is just plain wrong and truly damaging. It is not an either/or, but a both and.

Today this oped appeared on CNN and it links to Hanna's talk at TED Women, a conference I recently attended. Sorry again Hanna, but I really did not like your talk for the same reason I did not like the title of your article. It was too anti-men. Watch it for yourself and leave a comment.

Men need to be our partners in advancing gender equality. I truly believe that when women more equally share in all forms of power in our society, we will have a more just and equitable one, and a growing number of men believe that too. So please Hannah, no more putting men down and making them feel like the 'losers.' Last time I checked, despite all the facts you quote ( which I fully agree with), men still do run the world, and we need them to support us running in it with them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Claiming that the current state of advancing women is not pressing down on men doesn't make it so. In many ways it is a zero sum game, you simply must look at it segmented, not as some large nebulous blob. Within a segment, where there IS a tangible pie, one side gets a bigger slice. And, actually thats OK, its trying to simultaneously promote the bigger slice, while claiming rising tides lift all boats or some such mantra that problems arise.

The evidence is right there, obvious, before our eyes. But you shove it aside and look deeper leaving the facts on the surface and swimming in the minutea.