In an article that has attracted plenty of flack from readers, Hanna Rosin describes the end of men.
More women go to college, get degrees and jobs than men, and their jobs are more crisis-resistant. And their qualities are increasingly valued by employers: “A 2008 study attempted to quantify the effect of this more-feminine management style. Researchers at Columbia Business School and the University of Maryland analyzed data on the top 1,500 U.S. companies from 1992 to 2006 to determine the relationship between firm performance and female participation in senior management. Firms that had women in top positions performed better, and this was especially true if the firm pursued what the researchers called an ‘innovation intensive strategy,’ in which, they argued, ‘creativity and collaboration may be especially important’ – an apt description of the future economy.
“It could be that women boost corporate performance, or it could be that better-performing firms have the luxury of recruiting and keeping high-potential women. But the association is clear: innovative, successful firms are the ones that promote women.
“The same Columbia-Maryland study ranked America’s industries by the proportion of firms that employed female executives, and the bottom of the list reads like the ghosts of the economy past: shipbuilding, real estate, coal, steelworks, machinery.”
Source: Atlantic Monthly, July 2010
I mentioned this phenomenon to a young woman at the CBC the other day and she did not react well. Women it seems are just better than men, in part because they learn languages earlier and work harder than men, who are lazy. Soon test tubes will make us redundant and evolution will sweep testosterone into extinction.
I am hiring the Black Boc to fight back.
Just look at the bee hives and ant colonies. Even worse the spiders eat their mate. What a depressing future.
Cheer up! Angela Merkel was out-manned at the G20 gathering!
There is likely an evolutionary reason for women becoming the dominant gender. Up until recently, they have been both reluctant to dominate and have yearned to dominate, and now many seem ready to take on leadership and responsibility in ways that suit them, and in ways that are better for the businesses, institutions and societies they function in. They have seen how men fail, and how men are unhappy, and are determined to do it differently. They want to be collaborative because hierarchical and arbitrary authority neither feels good, nor is it effective. However, even though the trend towards women at the top is clear, the ascent will be gradual, intermittent, and not precipitous. And if men respond sensibly, it will be about power sharing, not domination.
But will they share power with us? I was expelled from my kitchen sixty-two years ago.
I would speculate that rather than women becoming dominant, women are simply becoming a slightly more important part of the management teams of those companies. This may be bringing much needed balance rather than a swing to the other extreme.
I will never yield!