Considerations

Although this report is from Canada, I am sure the same is true for most of the West­ern world:

In the past year, men have lost nearly 180,000 jobs across Canada, jack­ing the adult male unem­ploy­ment rate to 7.5 per cent – almost two per­cent­age points higher than the unem­ploy­ment rate for women of the same age, and two points higher than one year ago.

Although women lost 15,000 jobs in March, they are for the most part main­tain­ing their over­all pres­ence in the work force – at least for now.

This is how reces­sions work, hit­ting male-dominated sec­tors such as con­struc­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and nat­ural resources jobs first. Women often hold jobs in the ser­vices sec­tor – nurs­ing and teach­ing, for instance – which is less vul­ner­a­ble to the busi­ness cycle.

This does not bode well for rela­tion­ships and soci­ety in gen­eral. As a result of evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­ogy and soci­o­log­i­cal upbring­ing, women want men to whom they can look up — in every sense of the word. Woman want boyfriends and hus­bands who are providers of resources, sta­tus, and secu­rity. Women do not want men who are weak and defeated.

Even before the cur­rent eco­nomic cli­mate, women were already begin­ning to earn more on aver­age than men. As a result, women are increas­ingly los­ing respect for men — and some­time hid­ing their own suc­cess. The cur­rent eco­nomic news will only make these feel­ings worse.

My prior essay: The Bat­tle of the Sexes

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Related posts:

1. Men at Work
2. Eco­nomic Issues: Jobs, Women, and Scarcity
3. Mater­nity Leave
4. Feminism’s Results
5. Unem­ploy­ment