The Forgotten Men

January 27, 2005

The Forgotten Men

My colleague Robin Hanson has schooled me in the ABCs of the Men's Rights Movement. Bottom line: There are a lot of things that a lot of men could reasonably complain about, but don't, because they would be greeted with derision rather than sympathy. Here is a striking example from Kingsley Browne's Divided Labours: An Evolutionary View of Women at Work:

On average, jobs held by women are rated as slightly higher in status than jobs held by men, because, although men hold the highest-status jobs, they also hold the lowest ones. Moreover, although women hold many of the lowest-paying jobs, men have a virtual monopoly on the least attractive jobs. Warren Farrell has pointed out that twenty-four of the twenty-five "worst" jobs as rated in The Jobs Rated Alamanac (judged on a combination of salary, stress, work environment, outlook, security, and physical demands) were 95 to 100 percent male; the twenty-fifth job was equally male and female.