http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...d-of-men/8135/

although switzerland has a more traditional household unit with a man at work and woman at home with kids, how long will this last for?

in the US, there are already more women than men in the workforce. 50% more women than men get a degree (in the US).

jobs requiring skills such as being able to lift heavy objects and squish bugs with newspapers are fewer.

are men becoming obsolete?

Sorry, but this is completely oversimplified.

a) define "in the workforce". You will find far too many women doing the crap jobs.

b) a degree does not mean a thing: From my high school year, more girls than guys went to university as well. By now many got married and as soon as the family planning time arrives, the career is second priority. Therefore are far less women in higher positions, even in countries less conservative than Switzerland.

I know already that now all the stereotypes of glass roofs and so on will pop up. The reality as I have experienced it is that women, if they decide to focus on a career, have it even easier to progress then men - yet they do not very often. Not because they are in any way inferior, but I believe many choose not to - at the time in life where it would require to go full speed in the career, during the 30s, they often opt for work-life balance instead. I personally could do the same, but many men instead are willing to spend crazy hours at work and willing to give up a lot to move up in the corporate world. So my view is: women make more degrees, yes, careers - less so.

And anyway how would that make men obsolete? Leaving aside the question of glass ceilings and women taking over all levels of the workplace, if their participation in the workforce increases, I would expect the participation of men at home will have to increase, at least for those couples with children (or needy pets).

Plus everyone needs a little eye candy around from time to time...

[but seriously I guess I wonder what you define as 'obsolete']

I think you're missing the essential point of the article. Men created the current work environment including the hoops to be jumped through to advance in a career. With more women as managers that is changing and so the conditions will change, making it easier for women to advance with their less severe and more balanced view of life and work.

Also they are changing how business should be advanced. So again, tilted more towards their skillset/goals.

I have worked for several female managers in the past and did not see any significant difference. I had great and rubbish manager, both in the male and female versions... and the ladies that did decide to focus on their careers and spend crazy hours at work expected this just as much from their employees as the male managers did.

I thought this was interesting:
Do you think there is actually such a trend? That something in the way the imbalance of power followed by the feminist movement led to this current difference in children's attitudes towards success (or how to get there)? Or does the article hit on something real when it talks about women having (perhaps) a better natural ability to 'sit still and concentrate'?

Again, we're at beginning, so most people will still run into women managers that had to follow the old system to succeed.

And if they were German women managers ....

It will be a slow subtle change in the corporate setting. We'll have to see how big a change it is 20 years from now. The style is different in academic settings for sure.

I do think that girls in school have a better natural ability to sit still and concentrate, and that this accounts for why girls tend to do better than boys in primary & secondary education.

I have two boys, aged 9 & 7. They are fit, energetic and boisterous - just as you would expect from boys that age. It's an absolute nightmare for them to sit still in class and pay attention to subjects that don't really interest them. During the holidays and weekends, they run, play and climb ALL DAY. We know to climb them up a big hill or take them on a long cycle ride to burn their energy but that's impossible to do on school days.
They're both well above average intelligence but it is hard for them to get good school reports. I just don't think it's natural to expect boys to conform to the "sit still & concentrate" school system. The systematic lack of male teachers doesn't help either.

(I haven't had time to read the whole article)
As the western economies become more and more "knowledge-based", the jobs available become more office based. Women are well suited to the office environment and have some superior relevant abilities compared to men. eg. multi-tasking, communication and people-handling skills
What counts against women is their tendency to do well in education, get great jobs then drop out of the workplace aged 30 to start a family, rarely to return. Their male counterparts are still around to get promoted and further their career.
At my workplace (large corporate), the difference in the number of women aged 20 - 30 (50%) versus the number aged 30 - 50 (10%) is astounding.

I'm tempted to hypothesize (feminists, get ready to shoot me) that for many women the major advantage in obtaining a good education is to give them access to high-earning potential husbands. Then they simply don't need to return to work after starting a family and so can spend more time with their children, which in the end makes them happier than spending their days in a demanding office.

Additionally, there will still be be roles for men in those areas that men tend to do well in, like risk-taking & technical, so I don't see the end of us men just yet.

In spite of my feminist tendencies (surprised, aren't you?) I don't completely disagree. Although I don't think every woman goes to school to 'catch' a high-earning potential husband (as you so eloquently put it ), I do think there are many women for whom the family side of the equation outweighs the career side. I, for one, went to school because I've always liked it, my work fascinates me, and I can't imagine not having a career that's an integral part of who I am. But there are women I have worked alongside or attended university with who entered with me just as interested in the work but later decided that a family took precedence.

So here is the part where I agree with you: because this is not an insignificant portion of the female population, there will continue to be a place for men in the workplace. However, I also agree with the statement in the article that the workplace 'character' may change as women become a larger part of management.

Also, the speed at which this happens will also depend to some extent on how willing society will be to see a change in the role of men in the home. Until people are willing to see men as the stay-at-home caregiver without a stigma there will be a continuing tendency for men to value their careers more. As far as hormonal drives go, it may take some time for both sides to overcome 'natural roles.'

__________________
Let's not and say we did.

IMO, this will never happen - I think there will always be a stigma.

Theres a stigma? Never noticed it.

Agreed. Even if there is no stigma, I don't think the majority of men would naturally feel happy and fulfilled in that role.

Women are biologically biased to the caregiver role and men are biologically biased to the provider role.
However, the strict separation of the provider vs caregiver roles that we've seen in recent history (peaking in the 1950's) is not a natural situation either. I believe that what we're seeing now is actually a return to a more natural situation.
I believe that throughout our evolutionary history, couples bonded and worked together as a team to further their goals, without any defined "roles". There was probably much overlap between provider and caregiver depending on the situation at that moment. They just did what they were both good at and what made them happy.
I hope that society is bouncing back to a less rigid structure.

Regarding jobs for men: there will always be jobs for men that allow them to provide for a young family. If the current jobs are taken by women, then new equivalent ones will arise, even if that means that (male) garbage collector earns as much as the (female) CEO. This has to be the case for society to continue to function.

Here's a very interesting and relevant article:
Is There Anything Good About Men?

interesting link!

Unless something changes radically, we're going to need men for a good while to be geeks. The proportion of women who are prepared to be obsessive about science, technology & engineering is too small to cover the world's needs. Why that is so is a good question. Maybe they find it too boring. Neither do you find many women playing video games (the proper ones - not Second Life) or stamp collecting or train spotting or bird watching. Women have difficulty being obsessive about THINGS. So men are different & useful!

This is your European view. My Asian wife studied IT and I have visited her university: I'd say half of the students in computer sciences were girls! (And this computer science department was significantly bigger than anything I have seen in Europe...) She loves gaming more than I do...

And I guess you are either single or not serious about your THINGS comment: Have you ever been shopping with a female? If they can be so obsessed with things as handbags, they could just as well be obsessed with more scientific things.

that's true. men are more obsessive. the link the lux gave suggested men were at the more extreme ends of things.

Women are "biologically biased" as caregivers? Because they give birth to the child? Maybe, but I don't really think so. I think it is more of a social bias (with that, I mean a social acceptance and social norm) than a biological bias. But I do agree with you that their roles are becoming more neutral.

Again, this is more of a social acceptance thing. Women were never "supposed to be" smart. So it does take time for this to evolve. But as Treverus said above, there are increasingly more women going to college in geeky science and engineering (if only we could get them out of biology and into more "useful" fields; and yes, I am being just a little sarcastic here).

Trust me Treverus, men are *way* more obsessed with "things" than women. There may be exceptions to this rule, but women tend to thrive off human interactions and connections more than inanimate objects. And because of this, most women don't like to be (or don't want to be) in a lab all day. They want to be able to see the changes they make; to reap the benefits of what they sow... And by harboring "things", they can't really do this.

Another similar article that came out today in The Independent

The new girl power: Why we're living in a young woman's world


My opinion is that by continuing to allow the education system to focus more on girls because they are easier to teach, and not investing in the education of boys, western societies will face a severe shortage of educated workers.
The reality is that women spend far fewer productive years in the workplace than their male counterparts. For society as a whole, the best return on the education investment is to focus on those that are likely to generate the most in tax revenues, and cost the least, in the course of their lifetime.

Or the other option would be to make it possible for parents to have both children and jobs, like in Scandinavia for example, which could include measures like decent parental leave (to be shared as the parents see fit), decent affordable child care and so on. So we would not have to "waste" all this education on girls?

I think this is a great idea, and kinda dissapointed that it isn't more standard.

As for child care, my opinion is that's the parent's job (mother or father) and should be almost entirely their responsibility (the odd baby sitter for a night or so).