Post Date December, 03 2023
The economic crisis has spawned many interesting social phenomena in the United States: affluent New Yorkers live by picking up trash, not shopping, not driving, and refusing any consumer behavior; More and more capitalists are acting as "living Lei Feng" in the financial crisis, sending money to their colleagues in the neighborhood
However, economic recession affects not only individuals or small groups, but society as a whole. Recently, some economists, sociologists, and media professionals in the United States have issued a warning: As the male unemployment rate has hit a record high, more and more women are becoming the economic breadwinners of the family, while men are becoming "family leaders.".
The exchange of gender roles has led to cultural changes, and more scholars have coined the sensational new term "The Great Recession" in response to the "Great Recession"!
Male blue-collar jobs have plummeted, while female white-collar jobs have steadily increased
Tony Hawkins, 48, from North Carolina, has been working at a local truck factory for 22 years. After the financial crisis hit the factory, Hawkins was laid off. Hawkins described the impact of unemployment on him like this: "Although I am ready for unemployment, when it truly comes, it's like an explosion of 'bang', and my life has completely changed!"
His wife, Zhuang Ni, is a librarian. Her husband's unemployment has forced her to increase her workload, while Hawkins is responsible for all the chores at home. He said, "Now cooking and washing clothes are all my jobs. Taking care of the front yard and repairing the house have become my 'new job'. Busy household chores can at least alleviate the pain of unemployment."
Mr. Hawkins' situation is a microcosm of modern American society. According to statistics from the United States Department of Labor, the unemployment rate in the United States reached 9.4% in May, a 25-year high. Among them, 10.5% of the unemployed are men, while women account for only 8% of the unemployed. The gap in the proportion of unemployed men to women is the largest since 1948.
Before 2007, the number of unemployed men and women was almost equal, while in the two years since the financial tsunami, four out of every five unemployed people were men.
Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan in the United States, believes that the financial crisis is coming with a ferocious momentum and has an unprecedented impact: as men are the first victims of the unemployment wave, it may even change the entire social structure.
In response to the "Great Recession", Perry coined the new term "The Great Depression" to describe the dilemma facing American men today.
From the two charts provided by Perry, it is not difficult to see that from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s, the unemployment rate of women in the United States has been significantly higher than that of men, and women are at a significant disadvantage in the employment situation; But since the mid-1980s, the unemployment rate of American men has begun to "catch up" with that of women, reaching an all-time high of 2.5% in the past two years
The phenomenon of the "great shift in the world" in the unemployment situation of women and men in the United States does not arise out of thin air, but is justified.
The real estate boom that began in the early 21st century in the United States has fed a large number of construction workers, of whom 97.5% are male. Although they have a relatively low level of education, they can earn an average of 814 dollars per week (about 5561 yuan) in high wages.
However, the subprime mortgage crisis has pierced the foam of the false prosperity of real estate. Americans are unable to bear huge housing loans, the housing market has plummeted, and the financial chain of real estate developers has broken. People who buy and sell houses are all burdened with debt, and people who build houses are naturally not guaranteed their jobs.
According to the statistics of the United States Department of Labor, the overheated real estate industry has created at least 3 million jobs in the United States, and has also led to a boom in cement production, truck transportation, construction, and other related industries, all of which happen to be "male intensive industries.".
"Everyone is honored and everyone loses.". With the deepening of the sub prime mortgage crisis, the financial crisis has spread to the real economy, and the US manufacturing industry has also fallen into recession. Seven out of every 10 manufacturing practitioners are male. The fall of these two industries has made a large number of male unemployment an inevitable consequence of the economic downturn.
In sharp contrast, American women are engaged in relatively stable white-collar jobs, mainly distributed in public areas such as healthcare and education, and funded by government departments.
According to the Women's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor, the most popular jobs for women include administration, nursing, primary and secondary school teachers, cashiers, retail sales, and so on. These industries rarely experience such ups and downs as the real estate and manufacturing industries.
Although the average weekly salary of female dominated medical and nursing jobs is only $510, and the weekly salary of retail jobs is $690, which is more than 30% lower than that of construction workers, these jobs have been able to maintain stable growth over the past 10 years, which is particularly valuable during the economic crisis.
Women have a higher level of education, and men are at the bottom of the workplace pyramid
Mr. Hawkins mentioned above is a "teenage father". After graduating from high school, he started social work and took on the responsibility of supporting his family. His wife, Zhuang Ni, continued to study at university.
"I gave up my studies and went abroad, but it turned out to be nothing," Hawkins said of many American men. Jobs in the construction and manufacturing industries often do not require a high degree of education, with low barriers. Men do not have to receive higher education to easily obtain a highly paid job. However, when they lost their jobs during the financial crisis, they were unable to compete with highly educated women for jobs in other industries.
Women in the United States receive more higher education than men, and 60% of college graduates are women.
American philosopher, ethicist, and feminist Christina Hofer Sommers believes that women have more advantages in a knowledge intensive economic system. In 2000, she published a generally controversial book, "The Secret of Vulnerable Girls," in which she wrote, "Boys are more likely to cheat in exams; they are also more likely to go to detention or drop out of school," all of which hinder men from pursuing higher education.
In addition to Sommers and Perry, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's campaign chief military adviser and CEO of Boya Public Relations, Mark Pan, also holds a similar view.
The billionaire, who once worked as a public relations manager for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, believes that the new generation of American men has "lagged behind", and since their twenties, their salary situation has no advantage compared to women. What's worse, they may also be at the bottom of the workplace pyramid due to their relatively low education level.
Pan wrote in the Wall Street Journal in early June that survey data showed that more and more men are facing difficulties in finding jobs or losing their jobs, while women's performance in the workplace is increasingly strong.
His key client Hillary Clinton failed in the presidential election and failed to break the "ceiling effect" in American politics (a metaphor for the obstacles faced by women trying to reach the top of a business or organization). Americans can no longer accept President Obama's appointment of a man as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Therefore, he ultimately chose a Hispanic female judge, Sonia Sotomayor, from among the six candidates with the overwhelming majority of women, to run the Supreme Court.
Crisis spawns female leaders, forcing Obama to adjust policies
Moreover, American journalist and former editor of the New York Times, Ryan Moster Salam, wrote in Foreign Policy magazine that "the capitalist financial system is a monopoly club for men, and the financial crisis is a fatal blow to this monopoly club." He also predicted that "the patriarchal world is about to come to an end.".
Salam believes that due to the overconfidence of male financiers and politicians, they have invested excessively in the capital market and pursued a false high return on investment, resulting in an irreversible financial tsunami.
This view coincides with John Koz, a professor at Cambridge University in the UK: Koz's research shows that men's excessive testosterone secretion leads to irrational behavior and greed, that is, testosterone is partly responsible for the foam of the stock market when investment banks and other financial institutions launch various subprime derivatives that triggered the financial crisis. Men produce 10 times as much testosterone as women, which in turn leads them to be more prone to aggressive mistakes than women.
Men make mistakes, women correct them
Taking Johanna Sigurzadoti, Iceland's first gay female prime minister, as an example, Salam demonstrates that people are seeking to change the "failed patriarchal world.".
Iceland was the first country to fall in the financial tsunami, with three major banks controlled by male bankers declaring bankruptcy, while a few small and medium-sized banks controlled by women were still able to repay their debts. Seeing the successive failures of the male dominated investment bank and the government, the Icelandic people finally chose a female politician to save the situation.
Soon after, Lithuania, plagued by debt, also elected its first female president, Dalia Grybauskate. On the day the karate black belt expert took office, the front page of the newspaper in the capital Vilnius was prominently printed with the headline "Lithuania needs to be saved by a woman".
Although there are still very few female political leaders in the world, it is an indisputable fact that the status of women has been generally improved after the outbreak of the economic crisis. US President Barack Obama is well aware of the importance of women's groups.
In addition to investing in industries where male workers are concentrated, such as infrastructure construction and high-speed train tracks, his rescue plan will invest more funds directly or indirectly in education, medical care, and other social service projects.
In the United States, there are nearly half of female workers in the biomedical field; Nearly three quarters of medical workers are also women. Obama understands that the balance of society is shifting from men to women. He told the New York Times that although construction and manufacturing jobs will not disappear together in the future, "they will only occupy a small portion of the entire economy.". "In the future, women are likely to replace men as the main economic pillar of the family," Obama said
Voice
"The new generation of American men has' lagged behind '. In their twenties, their salary situation has no advantage compared to that of women. They may also be at the bottom of the career pyramid due to their relatively low education level." - Mark Pan, chief military adviser of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his election campaign and CEO of Boya Public Relations
"Construction and manufacturing jobs will not disappear together, but they will only occupy a small portion of the entire economy in the future.". Women are likely to replace men as the main economic pillar of the family in the future—— US President Barack Obama said in an interview that with the adjustment of the economic structure, women will play an important role in the future US economy.
"For the first time in the history of the United States, women occupy half of the country's labor force, and it is also a revolution in which the most women take on the responsibility of supporting their families." - Maria Shriver, wife of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, launched an organization called "The Nation of Women" in April to track and study the impact of the economic crisis on gender relations and women's status in the United States.
