The feminisation of man

October 26th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

feminisation of man Over the last 20 years, there has been a marked increase in the number of women entering the marketplace. This is true of most western countries around the world. With this marked increase, there has slowly been a change in attitudes toward women. What has also happened is the influence women are having on boys and indeed men.

I believe women are no longer viewed as the weaker sex, aside from the diehard chauvinists out there and the ‘old school man’. Women have become the stronger sex and a gender bias is slowly creeping into all areas of our lives.

Now I can hear some women shout ‘about time’ I can hear you shout ‘we have a long way to go and it’s still a mans world’ and I can hear you shout ‘there are not enough women at the top of companies for it to be leaning toward a female society’. At the top of the tree, the statistics are grim with less than 1% of female chief executives in the UK with similar numbers in the US and the rest of Europe.

What I would like to talk about is the influence women are having on our young boys.

It is a logical assumption that boys are going to be more influenced at a young age than they are when they are older. Going on this assumption if we look at who our children are having the most contact with:

Nursery teachers
Primary school teachers
After school care workers
Pre school care workers

All of the above professions are predominantly female oriented. In the UK alone 85% of Nursery and Primary school teachers are female. Whereas 20 years ago only 60% of the nursery and primary school teachers were female.

Also with the rise of single mothers in the country and absent fathers, the amount of time boys are spending with male role models whilst they are young is decreasing.

I believe all this time spent with female influences is having a dramatic affect on the psyche of ‘boys’. I am by no means saying it is a bad thing that boys are being influenced by women, we need this to keep a balance. However, the positive male role model should be encouraged to keep that balance. I think with the rise in the reporting of Paedophilia it has put men off even thinking about becoming nursery or primary school teachers and this can be a huge setback when teaching young boys. Boys have a different style of learning, which, I believe, is not being picked up. It comes as no surprise to me that girls are now scoring higher in exams than boys.

The media, health care,

It seems it is more than education that is being feminised. In an article by Guardian, in August this year it states that for the first time more women are surfing the net than men are. This changes a lot when it comes to marketing on the web, there is a huge market out there for WAHM’s (Work at home mums) and advertising, website design, even writing styles are going to have to cater for this market.

Health care has always been predominantly a female oriented role and it is still the case today, perhaps not at the top of the tree, but certainly from the ground up.

So what?

I love the fact that western society is coming round to equality and it’s about time, and I feel it will be another 20 – 30 years before we see true equality. However, there is a downside and that is the feminisation of men and the masculinisation of women.

That might sound ridiculous now but in 20 years time are we going to have young men who are more feminine and women who are more masculine. we can see it now on our TVs every day. The line between feminine and masculine will become blurred.

An answer?

A five-point list of what we can do to keep the balance:

The government to actively encourage male primary school teachers
The government to actively encourage nursery school teachers
Absent fathers to take more of an active role in their child’s upbringing
Companies to actively recruit women into executive roles
The media, especially TV, to portray masculine men rather than feminised men (And I don’t mean gay men, I mean straight men acting feminine).

Your views?

What are your views on this topic? Do you agree that men have become feminised? Let me know be leaving a comment.

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There Are 14 Responses So Far. »

Comment by Jason on 27 October 2007:

I agree. The son of my girlfriend’s sister is raised predominantly be females (aunts, grandmother, nieces; her husband works abroad). The boy, now 3, is definitely showing feminine aspects in his behavior. Children need a healthy male/female ratio in their upraising and education.

Comment by David Burch on 27 October 2007:

You never tell us what you consider feminine and what do you consider masculine. There seems to be a lot of tip-toeing around stating that here–a lot of speaking of these things in the abstract, which makes it hard for me to 1) accept your view that it is a problem, and 2) accept your conclusions.

Comment by Lise on 27 October 2007:

Great article. As a woman who wants to see balance and equality for all, I think the pendulum (in some areas) has swung too far and for the wrong reasons. When I see in some areas the damage that has been done with too much testosterone (look at world politics) and ego run rampant I sigh and think if only women could get a go but patriarchy is not good for guys either. Yes women want men to be all touchy feely but really I think what makes men so attractive is that they’re not like us, ok I don’t want neanderthals but balance has to be key. Sad the way we’ve swung so far that no men are trusted with kids these days, for cripes sakes its ludicrous. How will the world change if Hillary Clinton gets in power, may be that’s a sign of the times. Even last night watching a show on the Jewish/Palestinian schools that are springing up in Israel (brilliant) in an attempt to educate these kids together so they see each other as friends, mostly created by women and yet when they showed the Israeli cabinet, only women amongst 10 was sitting there, we still have a long way to go!
Thanks for wonderful reading Steven!
Lise x

Comment by Steven Aitchison on 28 October 2007:

Hi Jason, I think this is going to be a big problem with a lot of boys.

Hi David, good to see you back. I did tiptoe around that area, in fact there was a lot of tiptoeing as it is quite a precarious subject to write about, but one which I am passionate about.

Hi Lise, thanks for your comments and thanks for the great example you gave about the Isreal project.

Pingback by Modeling » The feminisation of man on 29 October 2007:

[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptHowever, the positive male role model should be encouraged to keep that balance. I think with the rise in the reporting of Paedophilia it has put men off even thinking about becoming nursery or primary school teachers and this can be a … [...]

Comment by Dan on 29 October 2007:

It’s a trend I’ve noticed, with metrosexuals and all that, the world seems to be becoming androgynous at least in the west, kids don’t seem to spent time doing the type of things i did when i was a kid, no exploring and building forts etc. And I’m only 23.

Pingback by Inability of Adult Parent to Provide Needs of Children : idaremyidea.com on 1 November 2007:

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Comment by Ansur on 11 November 2007:

I have seen a lot of the feminisation of men now not just in 20 years. We have epidemic of AD/HD not that it is not a trash can diagnosis but it is being noticed. There are many design differences between men and women hormonally so it wouldn’t surprise most that there are learning style differences. I being a male with ADD on the side of just being over alert have to deal with the distraction of information. As I got older and started studying things like anthropology I understood how to learn what to filter but there were no men who were really there who knew what I would mean when I would talk about not being able to shut the noise out.

Girls do not neurally have this tendency to scan the horizon as much it does not tend to be their learning style. I learned that I only tend to learn by solving problems that actually mean things similar to applied math, app chemistry, app physics, and computers as long as I could actually touch the problem in someway. Girls tend to get language quirks faster than men do so communication skills tend to be highly developed.

Naming a programming language that hasn’t changed in the last ten years is hard but there is one that I know of and it was written by a woman. COBOL Is this something that could mean that men really do not have a place in the manipulation of information and communication.

Also men have a higher statistical rate of mental illness than women, so having men that know how to deal with their mental capabilities and teaching boys how to deal with these differences effectively is something we desperately need. When my wife describes social order issues they make me laugh and when I try to describe to her why I know what is wrong with her when I say something literally does not smell right. That is something that I have noticed that most women tune out more that I can not so, I use it.

To smelling sick people and hearing when a light bulb is going to burn out.

Boys can tune it out so why not teach them to tune it in like symphony music. Sadly, the people who would teach that no longer apprentice.

just thoughts

Comment by Lucy Lastic on 18 November 2007:

I like my men ‘manly’ - I think most straight women do - and can see where you’re coming from. However, there were two periods during the last century (which isn’t really that long ago) when boys were brought up almost entirely by women because most of the men had left to fight a World War. As far as I know, this absence of male role models did not result in two generations of feminised men.

If men are any more feminine these days, I suspect that it’s down to more intrusive or accessible media communications, all trying to spread the word for a multitude of commercial reasons that what women really want is a ‘New Man’. On the other hand, perhaps men have always secretly hankered after an ironing board and a pair of rubber washing-up gloves. In which case, they can have mine, and I’ll get off down to the pub

Comment by Soumya on 2 December 2007:

I think the first thing you should be doing while writing such an article is defining exactly what you mean by masculine and feminine, and what exact characteristics or behaviour lead to ‘feminisation of men,’ so that there’s not much scope for misinterpretation of what you want to convey. Anyway, my two cents on what I understood from the article:

“That might sound ridiculous now but in 20 years time are we going to have young men who are more feminine and women who are more masculine. The line between feminine and masculine will become blurred.”

First of all, this is the very problem: defining men as the embodiment of that what are called ‘masculine’ qualities (strong, assertive, aggressive, analytical, home-builder, outspoken, leading, competitive, dominating, self-reliant, etc.), and women as that of ‘feminine’ qualities (gentle, sensitive, compassionate, nurturing, graceful, intuitive, homemaker, quiet, passive, cooperative,etc.). We may be born as male or female but not as masculine or feminine. If that wasn’t so, then ‘feminisation’ of men would not have been naturally possible in the first place. Masculine or feminine refer to a set of qualities which may be called X and Y for all we care! The very act of associating these words with a particular gender has created all the confusion.

Balance can only be created when both men and women develop both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ qualities to a healthy extent.

However, your point about encouraging more males to take up teaching and companies to actively recruit women into executive roles is good. These very acts will help break the custom of oppressive gender roles.

Comment by cheap wow gold on 12 December 2007:

However, your point about encouraging more males to take up teaching and companies to actively recruit women into executive roles is good. These very acts will help break the custom of oppressive gender roles.

Comment by Evaine on 22 April 2008:

Good post. You make some great points that most people do not fully understand.

“Now I can hear some women shout ‘about time’ I can hear you shout ‘we have a long way to go and it’s still a mans world’ and I can hear you shout ‘there are not enough women at the top of companies for it to be leaning toward a female society’. At the top of the tree, the statistics are grim with less than 1% of female chief executives in the UK with similar numbers in the US and the rest of Europe.”

I like how you explained that. Very helpful. Thanks.

Comment by Paul on 6 July 2008:

My worldview is that we’re very much out of wack because we’ve gotten far away from the things of God. I believe we’ve been seeing evidence of this for many years now. But it is a denial of what we as male and female were put on this earth for, which is to love each other. And because we were built differently, we ought to come back to our senses and live in harmony with our traditional roles. This perspective may be called sexist, but I know it to be the truth. True men desire dominance, and when a woman gives him this, she gets in return what her heart desires. Whatever is going on in the world that strays from this may work, but it won’t be love.

Women, do you really want the man to be a cream puff…honestly??
It is our responsibility to be the leader of our homes…but that doesn’t mean being an idiotic control freak quick to anger and abuse! It means being a humble GENTLE-MAN. It doesn’t mean that the woman can’t call any shots, but it means letting him lead and trusting that he’s making the right decisions for both.

It was once said by a conservative man, “You can have power, you can have love, but you can’t have both.”

Comment by Bobo on 7 July 2008:

Go to any blog anywhere in the net, pick a topic, any topic, it doesn’t matter and sooner or later some jackass will impose god on the conversation. Paul, you are this blog’s jackass. Congrats.