The end of the age of testosterone?

By Andrew McKenna

It’s goodbye shipbuilding, real estate, coal, steelworks, machinery, and hello social work, teaching, psychology and healing arts. A recent article sent to CI staff – and a recent trend – got us talking in the office. From Iceland’s Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, the world’s first openly lesbian head of state, who campaigned against the male elite she said had destroyed the nation’s banking system, to the latest research showing that companies and nations developing their feminine side do better, the evidence is pointing to a major shift in the way we organise our lives.

CI staff caught up in our favourite restaurant in Melbourne, Sapa Hills, after a seminar in Melbourne on how to read body language.

Lorne (IT): I’m not inclined to believe that it’s end of the Age of Testosterone. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan. US foreign policy is hardly about to start being all consensual.

Pat (Canberra): I don’t think you listened to a thing, Lorne.

Lily (OS correspondent): The issues aren’t so much about the warmakers in the world. No one’s going to reinvent the US military in a hurry.

Pat: Exactly. The post-industrial economy doesn’t care about men’s size and strength. But it does care about social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and to focus.

Lily: Not predominantly male traits.

Lorne: I can sit still and focus. I want the grilled squid this evening. In ink. And I’ll write ‘Guys rule ok?’ on the wall. Just there.

Lily: You’re such a boy.

Lorne: Apt choice of words.

Pat: Research shows that women are surging ahead everywhere. In poor parts of India they’re learning English faster than men to meet the demands of new global call centres.

Lorne: Now stop right there. How is that good? Women are going to be exploited more? Is that good? It’s the system, baby. And if there are women pulling the levers, like we’ve just seen in Canberra, but the game remains the same, then I don’t see what’s better. I’d rather it stayed the same. Men forging out into the world. Men being the breadwinner.

Lily: You only work part time anyway, Lorne. Your wife’s the one who brings home the bacon.

Lorne: I’m a vego, Lily.

Pat: What about squid?

Lorne: I allow myself a little shellfish from time to time.

Pat: Squids don’t have shells.

Lorne: Cuttlefish.

Lily: But the trend is irreversible everywhere. Women own more than 40 percent of private businesses in China, and what was the new status symbol for female entrepreneurs in China?

Lorne: The red Ferrari. But it’s the men who are out there building the roads so they can go squealing their brakes and pumping out CO2.

Pat: Precisely! That’s the point. The evidence is all around you. You see it in the GFC. In the US three-quarters of the eight million jobs lost, were lost by men. The worst-hit industries were male and identified with men: construction, manufacturing, high finance.

Lorne: Those jobs will come back.

Pat: I’ll have the tofu please.

Lily: I haven’t decided. What do you think Pat?

Lorne: Squid for me.

Pat: You enjoyed the quail last time. We could share.

Lorne: I’m not sharing.

Lily: I’m not surprised, Lorne. I’ll have the quail. We might get an extra plate to share?

Lorne: And a pot of tea. No better make that three pots. Individual pots … pretty waitress.

Pat: God. The waitress is not on the menu, Lorne.

Lorne: I just like winding you up.

Pat: Anyway, the GFC has just exacerbated a trend, a pattern of dislocation, an economic shift that has been going on for at least 30 years.

Lily: And the era of the firstborn son?

Lorne: I thought that was interesting.

Lily: Lorne feels threatened by this discussion.

Lorne: No, not threatened. Not at all. I’m completely comfortable.

Pat: Why are you sweating?

Lorne: I’m hungry. I sweat when I’m hungry. And when I’m in the presence of two beautiful women.

Lily: You’re incorrigible.

Pat: Patriarchy has been how our society was organised since the year dot. Go back to ancient Greece. Men tied off their left testicle to produce male heirs –

Lorne: Ouch. Did that work anyway?

Lily: Women have killed themselves -

Pat: Or been killed.

Lily: For failing to bear sons. Simone de Beauvoir suggested that women so detested their own “feminine condition” that they were irritated and disgusted by their newborn daughters. Did we order spring rolls?

Pat: No. Lorne, would you be so good?

Lorne: Sure. But can I just say, existentialism was always crap in my book. La Nausee – god that was bullshit. I had to read it in Uni. Meaty spring rolls, girls? Or vegetarian?

Lily: Girls?

Pat: What do you think?

Lorne: I’ll get both.

Lily: de Beauvoir and Sartre influenced a lot of people. But that centuries-old preference for sons is eroding, reversing. We want daughters because we like who we are.

Lorne: I’ve got nothing against daughters.

Pat: You’ve got four boys Lorne.

Lorne: Yeah, the age of testosterone’s not over in my house. You should see us at dinner time.

Lily: Frightening. Would you mind trotting over to order the spring rolls? We forgot to order.

Lorne: Sure, I’ll just trot over. Anything else madame would like?

Pat: Bit of a neck massage?

Lily: There’s the example of South Korea. Over centuries, South Korea, built a rigid patriarchal society. Often women who failed to produce male children were abused and treated as domestic servants; some families prayed to spirits to kill off girl children.

Pat: That’s right. And in the 1970s and 80s the government encouraged women to enter the labor force. Women moved to the city and went to college. They advanced from industrial jobs to clerical jobs to professions. The traditional order began to crumble. And that’s been happening in the West over the whole of the twentieth century.

Lily: And in 1985 about half of all women in a national survey said they ‘must have a son’. That percentage fell slowly until 1991 and then dropped to just over 15 percent by 2003. Male preference in South Korea is over.

Pat: And in the West, and the same shift is now beginning in other rapidly industrialising countries such as India and China.

Lorne: Here they are. They had some ready.

Pat: Oh, you’re back.

Lorne: And excruciatingly cheerful. Look, guys are who brought us the world wars, the GFC, deforestation, slavery -

Pat: Exactly. And that’s over with.

Lorne: Don’t be so sure. Men have been the dominant sex since, the dawn of mankind.

Pat: See, even your language is dinosaurian. Mankind! Who uses that word any more?

Lorne: I’m not going to sit here apologising for my sex.

Lily: No one would expect that from a man. Especially not you, Lorne.

Pat: For the first time in human history men are no longer dominant. Cultural and economic changes, the global economy. For the first time in herstory humans are no longer choosing to have male children.

Lorne: Herstory?

Lily: Women live longer than men. They do better in the new economy. More graduate from university. We do everything men do, and usually much better.

Lorne: I must have missed that bit. About male children. But I did apply for a publishing job once. I looked at the board of employees while I was waiting and every picture there was of a woman. There was one guy working at this company, and he was, well guess where?

Lily: I don’t know. Dispatch?

Lorne: Exactly. In the warehouse.

Lily: Thinking and communicating are more important than physical strength for economic success. The societies that take advantage of the talents of all their adults, not just half of them, have pulled away from the rest. The feminine virtues of patience, perseverance, attention to detail and accuracy –

Lorne: Sounds like Lionel, my gay friend. Some feminists would have it that men aren’t needed at all.

Pat: Well, you’ve said it yourself. You’ve screwed up the planet.

Lily: Politics and culture are Darwinian, and societies either follow suit or end up marginalised. In 2006, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development devised the Gender, Institutions and Development Database, which measures the economic and political power of women in 162 countries. And you know what they found?

Lorne: Hit me with it Lily. These spring rolls are good. I like the peanut sauce.

Lily: The greater the power of women, the greater the country’s economic success. Aid agencies have started to recognise this relationship and have pushed to institute political quotas in about 100 countries, forcing women into power in an effort to improve those countries’ fortunes. In some war-torn states, women are stepping in as a female rescue team. Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, portrayed her country as a sick child in need of her care during her campaign five years ago. Post-genocide Rwanda elected to heal itself by becoming the first country with a majority of women in parliament.

Lorne: A woman in power in Iceland. Oh. Cold.

Pat: Men have really screwed up.

Lorne: And that’s very confronting. And aren’t men – and particularly adolescent boys – suffering as a result? It’s all very well to applaud these changes, but it leaves boys in a particularly vulnerable place. Youth male suicide is rampant. I don’t know the figures, but it’s everywhere. I worry about that as a father of four boys.

Lily: Suck it and see.

Lorne: What’s that supposed to mean?

Lily: That’s the position women have been in for thousands of years.

Lorne: That’s rude.

Lily: As it has been for women for thousands of years. I hear what you’re saying. It puts men and boys in a particularly vulnerable place. This is a rebalancing.

Lorne: Is that all it is? A shifting of roles? What if the economics of the new era are better suited to women?

Lily: Women dominate today’s colleges and professional schools—for every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will. Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the US, all but two are occupied primarily by women.

Pat: Women still do most of the child care. And the upper reaches of society are still dominated by men. But given the power of the forces pushing at the economy, this feels like the last gasp of a dying era rather than a permanent situation.

Lily: Look at the men you know. Most of them at home while their wives are out their in the world. Guys are the new ball and chain.

Lorne: Oh, touché. I’d work ful time if I could. If you didn’t know even Castlemaine’s been hit by the GFC.

Lily: There’s always the bacon factory.

Lorne: Yeah, right.

Lily: What about that region in southern France? In Béarn, the eldest sons used to hold privileges of patrimonial loyalty and inheritance, but over the decades, changing economic forces turned those privileges into a curse.

Lorne: Oh really?

Lily: Although the land no longer produced the income it once had, the men felt obligated to tend it. And the women left in droves, lured to the city, incomes, careers, a life. They occasionally returned for the traditional balls, but the men who stayed behind had lost their prestige and become unmarriageable. This is the image that keeps recurring to me: at the bachelors’ ball, the men, self-conscious about their low status, stand stiffly, their hands by their sides, as the women dance away.

Lorne: Sounds like a Bachelors and Spinsters Ball here. Well, what is our role? Everyone’s telling us we’re supposed to be the head of a nuclear family. It’s toxic, and poisonous, and it’s setting men up for failure. Who’s the man? $60,000 is her salary, $26,000 is yours. Who’s the guy now?

Pat: Precisely. Who’s the guy?

Lily: In the US, six million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000. The housing bubble masked that for a while, creating work in construction and related industries. The GFC has seen to it that those jobs are gone too.

Lorne: Men are almost always harder-hit than women in economic downturns because construction and manufacturing are more cyclical than service industries. So are booms and busts.

Lily: And in the US men dominate just two of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most over the next decade: janitor and computer engineer. Women have everything else: nursing, home health assistance, child care, food preparation. It must be similar here. A white-collar economy requires communication skills and social intelligence, areas where women have the edge. Perhaps most important, it increasingly requires formal education, which women are more prone to get, particularly early in adulthood.

Lorne: Yeah, but men are still CEOs of companies. Near the top the upward march of women stops. Prominent female CEOs are as rare as hen’s teeth.

Pat: But that’s changing too. The perception of the ideal business leader is shifting. The old model of command and control, with one leader holding all the decision-making power, is so twentieth century. The new aim is to be like a good coach, channel your charisma to motivate others to be hardworking and creative. Now Lorne, here, he’s had a charisma bypass.

Lorne: Pass me my iphone? I might just call my therapist. She’s on call 24/7.

Lily: And what was that program at Columbia Business School? It teaches sensitive leadership and social intelligence, including better reading of facial expressions and body language. They never explicitly say, ‘Develop your feminine side,’ but that’s what they’re advocating.

Lorne: Don’t bother with the iphone. I’m just going to go and chat to the waitress. And before you say anything, she’s my Aikido teacher.