Women on Top

No dirty ideas now.

I had recently read a few articles in various different news sources saying that the gender gap is closed or is closing, depending on the context, and there even seems to be signs of reversals in some situations. There were also various articles talking about how this current generation of young men are becoming less ambitious and opting to be unemployed or stay at home longer than their female counterparts. More boys opt to be NEETs (not employed, in education, or training) as the Japanese call them. Boys also seem to be beaten down by girls when it comes to educational test scores and more females enrolling in higher education than men now.

With this trend continuing and the upcoming retirement of the old (white) men leading the world today I can’t help but wonder will women end up on top within the next generation or two. Once women sweep into various different leadership roles like political and corporate leadership it will only be a matter of time before things tip over. So, is this the time when women come out on top in the first time in human history?

A. I highly doubt this would be the first time in human history a female has come out on top.

B. This thread would be much more interesting if “Women on Top” meant what I took it to mean when I clicked here.

Coming out on TOP
has both good and bad consequences.

I am more for cooperation.

Everything has good and bad consequences, including “cooperation”.

I agree.

If you agree that cooperation has good and bad consequences, as does coming out on top, what is the appeal of cooperation as opposed to coming out on top? I understand that sometimes four heads are better than two are better than one, etc etc, but cooperation requires compromise on the part of all those cooperating together. While this certainly isn’t a bad thing, why is it more desirable than not compromising, getting what you want and coming out on top?

Ah, who’s on top is just cyclical. Also, it depends upon how you define ‘top’ and what the conditions of the world are at any given point in time. It was okay for men to do the plundering, pillaging, p*ssing on bush stuff when there was lots of territory and not so many people. These days, however, women are maybe coming out “on top” because they have skills and behaviors are better suited for our long-term survival given the current state of things. Otoh, men’s behavior (at least the ones who have the power to make real change) isn’t adapting as well to the high number of changes in the last 100 years or so, changes that are turning us into a global population and the myriad other factors that pose a potential threat to the human race’s thriving.

Well I didn’t mean a singular woman. There have been plenty of historical figures to prove that, but as a general overturn of overall dominance. Men have always been at the top of the pyramid of power and this might be the first time when roles are reversed.

It is true that we live in a more socially oriented world and women tend to thrive more in these situations for whatever reason whether it be evolutionary or genetic. I was just curious what a female dominated world might look like and get some insight into that since we obviously have never had such an occasion.

What ingenium said.

I think women on top is definitely a good idea.

My back is killing me in my old age.

A good place to start would be to examine what is taught in Humanities departments. It’s mostly all far left-wing stuff. However, there are plenty of men teaching this stuff as well.

turtle wrote----
I agree.

savant wrote—
If you agree that cooperation has good and bad consequences, as does coming out on top, what is the appeal of cooperation as opposed to coming out on top? I understand that sometimes four heads are better than two are better than one, etc etc, but cooperation requires compromise on the part of all those cooperating together. While this certainly isn’t a bad thing, why is it more desirable than not compromising, getting what you want and coming out on top?

turtle wrote----
generally speaking women may do certain thinking differently.
generally men may do certain thinking differently.
you may need both cooperating.
i personally believe that it is best to haave two different parents to bring up a child, and they need to cooperate.

What Tab said.

What’s “higher education”, exactly? Anything after high school (does it include community college… associates degrees, etc?) Which states/countries were sampled?

I have a tough time believing data would show a statistically significant gap, with “more females now enrolling in higher education”, unless “higher education” was limited to “College”, as must of us view it in the U.S.

A lot of men start working right our of high school (without a huge amount of prior “book learning”) or starting in their early 20s, in “construction”… which I use as a general “catch all” for the various trades relating to the construction and proper functioning of buildings, external and internal, not just refer to the image of “construction workers”. There are A LOT of men working in these areas. The bulk of them aren’t making big bucks, but those with more specialized knowledge are. And a lot of them don’t have to spend very much on school before getting started, which in a way is like a mentorship, and you can take night classes over extended periods of time, to get further learning and credentials to move up to higher positions of authority (more money). I am not sure, but I think a lot of other countries have social programs/schools (set up) like this… at relatively young age (16? probably 18 for some) children either go to a vocational school (for like 4 or 5 years?), or an academic school. At the vocational schools they end up studying how to do a pretty specific kind of job and trade. But in the U.S. our school institutions, tv shows and other cultural voices don’t really emphasize these things… it’s more just “get into a good college”, which most people see as undergraduate education.

Anyway, I imagine those research results are mostly from universities (academic institutions). Sure, you can say that the data doesn’t include a lot of women who are in (for the most part) women-specific vocational schools (like “beauty” schools), but you have to consider the large male majority in law enforcement, “construction” (which as I said isn’t limited to those “construction workers”, but plumbers… both the “come to your house and fix something” plumbers and the blueprint and construct the plumbing systems for new buildings plumbers, electricians, etc.), as well as technical and graphical design schools (I’m not being sexist, fact is more guys seem to enjoy computers and the latest computer technologies enough to spend a lot of their time becoming competent with them before going onto to professional training in related areas).

So I wouldn’t say the data suggests women “on top”. I mean I went to a respectable University, got a double major in four years, and I’m making about 12 an hour… working about 30 a week because the company restricts most of us to less than full time so they don’t have to give us benefits. A friend of mine didn’t go to college, but works as an electrician and has taken night class once a week for a couple years and is now certified so he oversees the electrical work in studios and various other large-scale buildings. He makes about 5x as much as I do per hour. So, as you are defining it, I am certainly not “on top”. Also, he’s actually DOING something with his job. Lighting is a very solid, needed thing. I have absolutely no pride in the results of my work… which really only is a kind of “work” because Capitalism exists.

Unless you plan on goings for a masters and/or PHD (or any further vocational program), a University pretty much comes down to a ridiculous amount of money required to give you the equivalent of what a high school diploma was decades ago. All it does is make you more attractive for jobs involving communicating with others and having to think (with some logic) for yourself every once and awhile. I learned alot, it served a good educational experience for me, but in terms of making money it hasn’t amounted to THAT much. Though I admit SOME of it comes down to my own idiosynchracies that have prevented me from pursuing and keeping “more successful” “careers”. Just saying, it’s not like the degree assures you a middle class income or anything.

I suspect that women coming out on top is just a devious plot of putting the girls out front so the boys will have someone to blame for their fuck ups. OK, maybe not. :-"

I’d like to see women given the opportunity and POWER to effect real changes in the way we do things because it might be more about people than profit. But as western culture wains and Islamic and Asian cultures continue to gain strength, I’m not too hopeful that women on top will be much more than a blip on the screen. I forgot to add Indian hinduism as another rising culture that will make women on top less viable globally. If you toss all the dominant world cultures in a bag, shake 'em up, and snake one out, chances are you end up with a culture that has traditionally repressed female involvement in decision making. I guess we can hope, but it doesn’t look long-term promising.

What anon said.

There have been matriarchal societies, so even taking for granted that the world is evolving as you suggest, it won’t be the first time (cf. wiki).

But I think a binary situation of one gender “on top” of the other is an oversimplification. There are certain situations in which women have held power, such as sex (more on that later), and others in which men have held power, such as politics. Women are certainly making inroads into political and economic power. MattHatter, a college degree does predict future earnings to a great degree[1]. Surely it’s not necessary, and it’s not guaranteed, but across all employed workers, those with a bachelors degree earn more on average (the same is even truer for higher degrees).

And women are starting to edge out men in higher (post-secondary) education, but that doesn’t correlate to economic success in the same way. Women are much more likely to voluntarily leave the job market when they have children, and they tend to self select away from positions of power. That’s not to say that the haven’t been institutionally excluded from power; they have, but they also tend not to seek it out to the same degree as men (nature or nurture arguments aside). The numbers do not indicate that this is changing at the same pace as proportion of college graduates is changing.

Furthermore, returning to the point about female sexual power, even if women make up the ground they have been denied in political and economic areas, they cede control in other areas. As women have gained prominence in acadamia and earnings potential, they have lost power in controlling sexual norms. Monogamous marriage primarily benefits women, because men can have children with multiple women simultaneously. Women are benefitted by securing for themselves all the resources a man brings to the table. In a male-run economy, high-quality women are a scarce resource, and can limit their sexual availability to gain power of social institutions. However, as women become co-equal breadwinners, high-quality men become a scarcer resource, and so they gain power over sexual norms.

That’s just one example of how on-top-ness is not an all or nothing game. Women can gain all the economic and political power in the world, but men will continue to be physically dominant. Men will always have a near monopoly on sexual violence, and women will always be more incapacitated by the child-bearing process.

That said, women are gaining political and economic power. They are far from equal: look at the gender breakdown of congresspeople and upper management of Fortune 500 companies, and it’s clear that we have a long way to go before we reach anything like equality. But the next generation of high school graduates will favor women in terms of the percentage of social resources spent on education, and in terms of resultant social capital.

[1][tab]I say “predict” because it’s hard to say whether it’s causal. The children of wealthy and well educated parents tend to go to college, and they also tend to be score higher on many metrics that might influence economic success. Those who go to college tend to be the most capable of that set as well, but it is hard to say if they would do as well without a college education. It is very difficult to control the data to rule out other factors.[/tab]

Ahh, but women in those countries are starting to stand up for themselves. Frankly I would rather see an even steven arrangment on leading. Half male, half female. All countries having their power divided up in that way.

Shrug. How does this argue against anything in my post?

It doesn’t necessarily argue against it, but it rebuts the implication of the anecdote about you and your friend and your 1:5 salary ratio. I do not intend to discredit the validity of your experiences, only to point out that they are exceptional.

Rather, the goal is to support the syllogism of the OP: if more women are graduating from college (and high school, for that matter), while fewer men are, then we can expect women’s income to rise relative to men’s because a college education is predictive of higher salary. And, if the trend continues, we could see women’s average income surpass men’s, because on average college-educated women make more than do men without a college degree.