While Googling around for a link for this post about young women in certain urban areas having higher local income than comparable young men I ran across a fairly provocative (ok, mostly provoking) op-ed by arch Men’s Rights Activist (and former National Organization for Women Warren Farrell. I’m not going to provide a link but it appeared on May 12, 2006, on Forbes.com.
Being an MRA, Farrell, of course, was writing to claim that women earn seventy-five to eighty-five cents on the dollar (up, by the way, from fifty-nine cents when he was with N.O.W.) because you don’t have as much work ethic as men… at least as measured by willingness to work outrageous hours, relocate, and seek work in the most lucrative (but also most grueling) industries. But stifle your irritation for a moment (I’ve got a post brewing on the misconceptions in that outlook) and let me get to a quote from the column that really leapt out at me.
Is there discrimination against women? Yes. There’s no denying that the old boys’ network is alive and well. But there’s also discrimination against men. For example, try getting hired as a male dental hygienist, nursery school teacher or cocktail waiter, or try selling clothing at Wal-Mart Stores (nyse: WMT – news – people ). (Even the employees in the men’s wear department are 93% women.)
Sounds pretty petty, right? Women get a glass ceiling they can’t rise up through, and men get a glass floor through which, often try as they might, they can’t descend through. Wah, right? Sort of like that “the law forbids anyone from sleeping under railway bridges which is just as unfair to millionaires as it is to bums.
Except…
Well, check out Norby’s comment to my post about “And the opposite of misogyny is…”
My husband works in the housing dept of a state university-he (we’re separated) lives in the dorm because he’s the hall director, responsible for overseeing the running of the building and making sure that everything is going smoothly.
You know what? He’s really, really good at it. The students really like him, his staff adore him. He’s older than than the average hall director, so when people find out what he does for a living and where he lives-they usually get a strange look on their faces. Like maybe he hasn’t grown up yet, or there’s something missing somewhere.
The guy has two master’s degrees, and there were many times when we were out that former residents and staff members would come talk to him because they had fond memories of him, so the judging that goes on between men, I don’t get it. Because the respect that he gets from those kids is a lot more important.
Summary: Older-than-usual man chooses a job where his advanced degrees “over-qualify” him to oversee the care and feeding of college students even though he likes the work and is liked in return. And is viewed with a gimlet eye for “letting his (financial) figure go.” (Compare this, by the way, to a banquet companion of Kochanie’s who was drilled so thoroughly by senior staff who were also in attendance that she had to remind them that ““X is not here for an interview. He came to enjoy the evening with me!”
So so what? Especially in the face of a mainstream feminist thrust for higher economic and social achievement for women why get upset that men face discrimination in traditional high-responsibility, low-wage, often traditionally women’s-role jobs like nurses, early-education teachers, and college housing supervisors?
Well, specifically in Norby’s partner’s case I’m pretty sure it was 90’s men’s role activist (quite different from an MRA) Robert Bly who pointed out how few proximal older male role models young men have, how few non-parental/non-creepy-partner male models young women have to form their own expectations of male responsibility.
The point being that yeah, with a double-degree and a little gumption Norby’s partner could bring in more income but — when multiplied across all college campuses, across high schools, across neighborhoods and churches and fraternities and (a reluctant nod to Farrell) even men’s clothing departments — at what social cost in the development of young people’s expectations of male adulthood?
So “glass floor” discrimination against men does matter, if not quite as bitterly and prominently as genuinely egregious “glass ceiling” discrimination against women then no less socially stunting to endure or culturally import to overcome.
[Note: My strong impression of where MRAs like Farrell have gone astray is in making legitimate claims to the unfairness of the dominant paradigm of women as the “no-sex” class without a) acknowledging that it’s the dominant male paradigm and, especially, b) while trying to keep all proposed solutions firmly entrenched inside that paradigm. The irony being that even if they did get their way their alienation and misery would increase rather than decrease. Something the more introspective MRAs grasp but inside their fear and resentment can’t see their way out of. —fl]
