Gone are the days when a woman was to be found barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen preparing her husband’s meals, raising the children and knowing “her place.”
Today’s women have grown up with the benefits of the previous era of feminism. They are confident, often purposeful and usually want more out of life than just staying at home and cleaning a house and cooking food; and most guys will agree with me when I say that it’s a good thing.
After all, today’s women are a lot more interesting and fun to be with than their predecessors. Humans have always seemed to develop new ideas and ways of thinking to match the increasing complexity of what it means to be human.
So, it’s great that women are stepping up, becoming more integrated and influence. However, not everything about these “new” women is great.
With all their new-found independence, modern women have left a lot of modern men confused about their role and use in a woman’s life. The modern woman doesn’t just fall in line and do whatever the man says anymore because he’s the one “bringing home the bacon.”
These days, in response to the lack of strength of purpose from men and the lack of emotional leadership, women will often take on that role and begin behaving and thinking more like a traditional man would. In fact, it almost seems that a lot of men and women are actually exchanging roles.
Men are being encouraged to be more “feminine” – to “get in touch with their feminine side,” to use traditionally feminine products such as moisturizers and even makeup, and to do more traditionally “female” household chores such as the laundry, the dishes or the cooking.
At the same time women are being told (by their feminist sisters) that they have to be as tough, and in many cases even tougher, than men to survive in a man’s world.
Yet, what is REALLY happening to men and women in today’s world? Is the relationship dynamic between them still balanced, or are the women becoming the new “men”? And if this is the case, what will happen to relationships in the future? Can men keep up or are they simply going to roll over and let the women take over?
Here Come the Women
Historically, men have led the way. They have been the inventors, the builders and the protectors.
They have been the ones to carve out new ways of living for themselves and for humanity, and they’ve been the ones with the plans and the ones to take action and make those plans a reality. But not anymore.
Women today are just as likely to be inventors, work in construction or be in the army, as well as still dominate in areas that are traditionally perceived as “women’s work.” Today, especially in developed countries, women make up approximately 50% of the workforce.
According to data compiled from the Census Bureau, women’s presence in the labor force has increased dramatically since 1970. Statistically women made up 37.97% of the labor force back in 1970 compared to 47.21% between 2006 and 2010…and that’s not all.
Since 1970, women have also made significant gains in certain occupations. For example 1970 Census data showed that there were very few women accountants, police officers, lawyers and judges, doctors, surgeons, and pharmacists.
However, the 2006-2010 data shows women are quickly catching up to men in these fields, and in some cases even overtaking men – with 60% of accountants being female.¹
Women now earn almost 60% of university degrees in America and Europe, and even in male dominated holdouts such as the Mediterranean countries things are changing rapidly. In Spain the proportion of young women in the labor force has now reached American levels.²
But what does this all mean? The feminists would like you to believe that this means that women are finally getting the rights they deserve.
Yet, there is a much deeper issue that is not being directly addressed: Do women believe they have to BECOME men in order to succeed? Does it mean that for women to get ahead, men have to become more like women? Suddenly no one is sure how to behave and what it really means to be a man, or a woman, in today’s world.
In the modern world, most men have been negatively influenced and confused by the fictional male characters in movies, TV sitcoms and TV commercials that portray men as “slackers” who don’t care about the future and who are weak and pathetic around women. They receive hours and hours of “programming” where they are being told that: It’s okay for men to cry. Women don’t really want strong men, they prefer loveable losers. Etc.
Guys are growing up watching these “lost” fictional characters that have no clear goals for the future and who are bumbling along through life playing video games, watching TV or being stuck in dead-end jobs instead of being leaders, getting married and raising strong families and starting a business or doing something to make a difference in society; and they believe that it’s okay for them to be the same.
Due to the mixed messages from the media, many modern men often lack a clear, effective education on what it means to be a man.
Meanwhile, today’s women have grown up with the benefits of the previous era of feminism. They are confident, often purposeful and usually want more out of life than just staying at home and cleaning a house and cooking food.
What Caused Women to Become So “Manly”?
From what we’ve covered so far, it’s quite clear why men are losing their masculine identity; but where did it all start? How did women go from being content housewives and mothers, to being aggressive and in direct competition with men?
Naturally, partly responsible for women’s great transformation were World War’s I & II. According to historian Gail Braybon, “for many women the war was a genuinely liberating experience” because it made them feel useful as citizens and also gave them the freedom and wages only men had enjoyed up to that point.
Between 1914 and 1918 approximately 1,600,000 women joined the workforce. Where mainly in the past women were servants, now they became employed in Government departments, public transport, the post office, as clerks in business, as land workers and in factories.
950,000 women were employed in the dangerous munitions factories, (as compared to 700,000 in Germany). By the end of the war, many of these women chose to work in factories rather than go back to being servants.³ World War II was much the same with women not only taking over jobs left empty by the men, but even volunteering to join the men on the frontlines.
By the end of the war more than 2 million women had worked in war industries, with hundreds of thousands having volunteered as nurses, members of home defense units, or as full-time members of the military. In the Soviet Union alone, about 800,000 women served alongside their men during the war.⁴
However, even though this explains how women came to be part of the overall global workforce, it does not fully explain why women are BEHAVING like men.
The Theory of Why Women Are Turning Into Men
Although social scientists are inclined to attribute the changes in women to “sexual liberation”, and although this definitely is a factor, there now seems to be a more scientific explanation as well. It seems that women are turning into men because of hormones. What?
According to a paper on the changing female body shape published in Current Anthropology by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan of the University of Utah, Cashdan believes that the optimal female body shape is not the hourglass figure as Western societies have been led to be believe by constant brainwashing from the beauty and fashion industries.
In fact, it seems that in most societies, especially in subsistence societies where food is scarce, women with wider waists are more attractive to men. This is also true in countries like Denmark and Britain where there is greater equality between men and women. But what does this have to do with women turning in to men?.
In societies where divorce is high, or where women are the sole breadwinners and are therefore under pressure to provide for their children, their bodies begin to produce extra testosterone. This extra testosterone production gives women extra stamina, strength, and competitiveness.
As a by-product this boost in testosterone, along with stress hormones, is not only making women develop a more masculine body, but is also making them ACT LIKE MEN!⁵
But there’s more…
According to a study released in Environmental Health Perspectives, prenatal exposure to Bisphenol A (BPA) makes little girls as mean and aggressive as little boys.⁶
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a carbon-based synthetic compound which is used to make certain plastics and epoxy resins and is commonly found in consumer goods such as water bottles, sports equipment, CDs and DVDs. Epoxy resins containing BPA are also used to line cans, including those used for popular soft drink beverages and also for many canned foods.⁷
Bisphenol A was originally proposed for hormone replacement therapy in the 1930s because it closely resembled the predominantly female hormone estrogen, and because most of the harmful effects attributed to it seemed to affect boys more than girls.
Estrogen has been found to “masculinize” the male brain at around the 11th or 12th week of pregnancy, and it seems if a pregnant mother has high levels of Bisphenol A in her system, the same may be happening to girls.
Neurobiologist Louann Brizendine and author of The Female Brain says, “In the developing brain, timing is everything. I’m worried that tiny amounts of this stuff, given at just the wrong time, could partly masculinize the female brain.”⁸ But what are the implications?
Well, according the above-mentioned study, girls were more likely to be aggressive if their mothers had high levels of BPA early in pregnancy or at about 16 weeks. The girls that were measured, using a commonly used test, had aggression scores very similar to those of boys. Boys on the other hand appeared to be unaffected by BPA.⁹
So it seems that although feminism is alive and well, something else, something beyond their control, is also driving women to behave like men.
The Battle Between the Sexes is Alive and Well
Even though women today will confidently say, “Whatever a man can do, we can do better,” the reality is definitely a lot different. Not because women cannot do what men do; in fact women are now taking over many previously male-dominated occupations, but because women think that to do what a man does they have to ACT like MEN too.
According to a study conducted by telecommunications firm O2, working women feel that they have to act like men to get ahead. In the survey of 2,000 women, one-quarter admitted to dressing in a masculine way and half said they felt it was necessary to hide their true emotions.
One in twenty women behaved exactly like their male colleagues, while one in four women reported that the senior women in their company conformed to a dominant and controlling “alpha stereotype”.¹⁰
It seems that whichever way you look at it women are becoming the new men.
In Australia, women are being encouraged to do more “blokey” activities such as play rugby, become miners or broker peace in conflict zones.¹¹ In Israel, Norway and Eritrea women are required to attend mandatory military service. In the UK women are doing jobs previously dominated by men such as being truck and train drivers, grips, mechanics and even butchers.
Yet with all this new-found “power” women are still not happy. Why? Because with women acting so much like men, and men feeling confused about how to behave around modern women; ultimately this reversal of power is affecting men and women where it hurts the most – in the bedroom.
Many guys no longer know how to make women feel like a real woman. In instances where a woman is “wearing the pants” in the relationship and is also the one with the better job and is earning more money, it’s not unusual for a guy to become resentful because he no longer feels like he’s the man in the relationship.
In an academic study using Danish data it was established that men who were out-earned by their partners were more likely to take medication for erectile dysfunction. Ultimately, men stop feeling like men and because women with money can go where they like and do what they please (economists call this the “independence effect”),¹² the relationship suffers.
Women Have Changed, But Have Men?
Like it or not women are now more confident, more independent and more self sufficient than ever before. Gone are the days when they needed men to take care of them. Today’s woman can not only take care of herself but also be President of a country, CEO of a Fortune 500 company or Chief of Surgery in a major hospital.
Yet, what about men? Have they become stronger or has the modern woman literally “emasculated” them? Are men now the “weaker sex” playing second fiddle to these strong, masculine women?
References:
¹ Baig, M. (2013, December, 19). Women in the Workforce: What Changes Have We Made? Huff Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mehroz-baig/women-in-the-workforce-wh_b_4462455.html
² (2009, December, 30). Across the rich world more women are working than ever before. Coping with this change will be one of the great challenges of the coming decades. The Economist. Retrieved from
http://www.economist.com/node/15174418
³ Martin, S. (2009, August, 22). Women and WWI – Women in the Workforce: Temporary Men. First World War.com. Retrieved from http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/womenww1_four.htm
⁴ Taylor, A. (2011, September, 11). World War II: Women at War. The Atlantic. Retrieved from
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/world-war-ii-women-at-war/100145/
⁵ Barber, N, Ph.D. (2009, August, 24). Why modern women behave more like men. Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/200908/why-modern-women-behave-more-men
⁶-⁸ Alter, L. (2009, October, 6). Bisphenol A Makes Girls Mean. Treehugger. Retrieved from
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/bisphenol-a-makes-girls-mean.html
⁷ Bisphenol A. Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A
⁹ (2009, October, 6). Plastic chemical linked aggression in toddler girls. USA Today. Retrieved from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-10-06-bpa-pregnancy_N.htm
¹⁰ Stevens, M. (2013, September, 13). Women ‘feel pressure to act like men at work’, survey finds. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Retrieved from http://www.cipd.co.uk/pm/peoplemanagement/b/weblog/archive/2013/09/13/women-feel-pressure-to-act-like-men-at-work-survey-finds.aspx
¹¹ (2012, March, 8). Women told to do more blokey activities in International Women’s Day message. News.com.AU. Retrieved from
http://www.news.com.au/finance/women-told-to-do-more-blokey-activities-in-international-womens-day-message/story-e6frfm1i-1226293817242
¹² Mundy, L. (2012, September, 7).Women are becoming the bread winners – and it will transform every aspect of our lives. Mail Online. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2200020/Women-bread-winners–transform-aspect-lives.html
Want to Know the SECRET to Success With Women?
Watch this hidden video where Dan exposes his BIGGEST secret to success with women, which allows you to easily get laid or get a girlfriend.
This video is only available here and you can watch it for free right now.
