Top Ten Predictions About Women and Men
10. Domestic Violence:
Domestic violence will slowly emerge as a two-sex issue. As the male-perpetrator
assumption is questioned, the addition of shelters and hotlines for men will
lead to treatment programs placing greater emphasis on prevention via
communication skills. Men will gradually feel more welcome into the social work
profession against.
9. Marriages of Executive Women and Multi-Option Men:
Men will more frequently seek the option of caring for the children and working
out of the home, and making proportionately less money than wives who have
away-from-home careers. Simultaneously, being the primary breadwinner will
become a strategy for top-executive women to attain the support they need to
break through the "glass ceiling." These marriages will be about average in
stability, but breakups will often be high profile and establish legal
precedents as to whether laws designed to protect women will also protect these
men. Most of the breakups will be catalyzed by women having affairs with men
they meet through work, and men complaining about being taken for granted.
8. Female Team Sports:
Female team sports will grow in popularity so that the average person will
recognize the names of the heroines of female team sports (not just the heroines
of individual sports like tennis, ice skating, gymnastics, swimming). Girls will
play more unsupervised, unprotected team sports before and after school, sandlot
style. Girls' soccer, basketball, and volleyball will make the first
breakthroughs. Girls' participation in team sports will have a positive impact
on girls' happiness in life, success at work and marital happiness.
7. The Lace Curtain:
Of the four major components of the Lace Curtain (media, academia, government,
and helping professions), the media will lead the way in balancing their news
coverage with attention to the personal stories of men and men's issues. The
government and helping professions will follow suit, with universities dragging
behind. It will take more than a decade for men's studies programs to focus on
the real feelings of most men rather than feminist perspectives on the problems
men cause. Lawsuits will initiate some of these changes in all four areas.
6. Discrimination Against Women and Its Irony:
Companies' fear of sexual harassment lawsuits, sex discrimination accusations,
and demands for flexible hours, child care, and maternity leave will lead to
underground discrimination against women as in-house employees, especially in
low- and mid-level positions. Fear of sexual harassment lawsuits will make the
mentorship of women by executive men less common. Women will be hired more as
independent contractors, and on a project basis. Ironically, this discrimination
against women will ultimately benefit many women who will develop new ways of
looking at financial security (many clients rather than one employer), and more
self-starting and risk-taking skills. Many will feel more in common with many
men.
5. Discrimination Against Men:
Lawsuits will allege discrimination in hiring men as elementary school teachers,
nurses, flight attendants, cocktail servers, secretaries, and receptionists.
Male affirmative action will become a political issue. The pay-equity debate
will reemerge, but this time with both sexes alleging discrimination. Guidelines
to determine discrimination will become more complex. (this will be the subject
of my book 25 Ways to Higher Pay.)
4. Protecting Women:
The legal system will confront the constitutionality of male-only draft
registration, the Violence Against Women Act, the "learned helplessness"
defense, the rape shield law, Women, Infant, and Children Programs, Offices of
Women's Health, and other laws that protect women more than men.
3. Relationship Language and our Children:
Grammar schools will make the four "relationship language" skills (experiencing
empathy; communicating empathy; giving criticism so it can be easily heard;
hearing criticism so it can be easily given) part of required curriculum. Some
schools will give these as much priority as computer language and teach these at
the same age children learn reading. Many schools will be stimulated to provide
these programs after mass shootings by teenage boys who feel rejected and unable
to gain attention constructively and therefore do it destructively, often
followed by suicide. When relationship language curriculum stems this tide best
it will be when the curriculum also integrates male-sensitive outreach programs,
and as fathers become more involved with their sons, providing a balance of
nurturance and discipline.
Comment: This sounds to me more like wishful thinking than responsible
forecasting.
2. A Men's Birth Control Pill:
A men's birth control pill will alter men's lives and male-female relationships
almost as much as the female pill did for women: it will reduce commitment borne
of women becoming pregnant without the man's agreement, and therefore reduce
men's fear of commitment and increase men's trust in women; it will lead to many
fewer premarital pregnancies; there will be fewer abortions; it will lead to men
taking more responsibility for children; it will be used by poor men more than
people believe. A men's birth control pill will sell better than Viagra.
1. Fathers:
Fathers' issues will be to the early twenty-first century what women's issues
were to the late twentieth century. Fathers will have greater success obtaining
joint and primary custody. Denial of "visitation" will be treated more
seriously. More men will ask for paternity tests. Single dads will increasingly
work out of their home and will continue to be less likely than women to receive
child support, either from the mother or the government, even when he has sole
custody of the children. Single dads will become between 25 and 30 percent of
single parents by 2015.
