In a recently published report by the rather important sounding Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), of the London School of Economics, it is glumly asserted that it will take more than 150 years before women’s pay catches up with men’s. This report also concludes that the ‘gender gap’ of those in managerial positions - of twice as many men as there are women - across all age groups from 25 to 55 is also set to remain unchanged.
However, like so many economic forecasters, the CEP, it appears, is viewing the future through the rear-view mirror rather than accessing the dynamics of the road ahead. And this road is already showing that it is set to be very different from the one society and the world of work has been travelling along.
Presently, 60 per cent of students in further education - and from whom the majority of tomorrow’s managers will emanate - are women. What is more, women students are also achieving higher decree passes than their male counterparts; this is due in no small part to the fact the women study harder than males. The attitude of many male students in further education, so it appears, is to consider their years at University as a yet a further part of their ‘play time’.
What makes for good managerial material? A person who is prepared, dedicated even to work at tasks and challenges set them until they have been accomplished, or someone who regards their job as something which is ‘fitted in’ between weekends? If it is the former then in a decade or so not only will male upper middle management HR be in short supply but what there is will be up against a greater number of women who, in the years since leaving university, are more than likely to have accomplished a higher degree of professionalism and competence than they have.
The CEP report cites that women’s pay and prospects are poorer than men’s because, and as its authors patronisingly put it: ‘women leave the workforce’ to have babies’. The CEP, however, neglects to take into account that over the past two decades the average age at which women bear their first child has continued to rise until today it is more than 30 years of age. Within the next decade the pay of women in upper middle management positions will be such that even more of them than at present will be able to afford to employ others to help care for their children while they maintain their position in ‘the workforce’. Also because of the increasing socio-economic independence among women even more of them will dispense with male partners altogether; as have 87,000 women in the London area alone during this past year. And as importantly, they will be doing so in a more ‘woman friendly’ workplace environment than there is at present.
The CEP also asserts that today’s male dominated senior management will remain unchanged into the future. While this indeed may be so, it will still be no less titular than it is at present. What the CEP and many others, appear not to realise is that while senior management may well take the accolades for any rise in their companies’ fortunes (and brickbats should they wane) it is the upper levels of middle management who actually run a company, organisation. It is this corporate level that decides what ‘directives from above’ are assiduously implemented and those that are afforded no more than lip service. It is this managerial level that ‘advises’ their seniors what their company can and cannot accomplish. It is a wise senior management which grasps that their company’s fortunes are more dependent on the actions and attitudes of its middle management than those of their own. With upper middle management set be under the sway of women it will mean that for all intents and purposes companies, organisations will, in the very near future be run by [these] women.
Women tend to work on a more collective, less individualistic basis than men. With women in effective charge of a company it will, in turn, mean than even the most maleocentric senior managements will have scant choice other than to abide by women’s way of doing things. Either senior management adjusts to working in a women’s world or their company is destined to wane away, or worse [for senior management especially] be taken over by a competitor that has adjusted to women’s way of ‘doing things’.
While this evolving changeover gathers speed, another will also be taking place all across the workplace. The percentage of women between 25 and 55 in paid employment has steadily climbed from 45 per cent in the 1960s to 73 per cent today. During the next decade this figure (excluding those who are at University) is expected to rise to more than 90 per cent. However, during the past two decades the percentage of men in this same age group and who are in work has been declining. In both North America and Europe as well as in Britain the percentage of these ‘prime age’ males who are no longer engaged in the workforce has risen from some 7 per cent in the 1980s to more than 14 per cent today. On present trends this figure, during the next decade, is set to rise to more than 17 per cent. If, however, the number of young working age males who (being illiterate and innumerate) are unemployable is added to this figure, then, in Britain ten years time the percentage of men ‘absent’ from the [male] workforce (but not at University) will be in excess of 25 per cent.
Thus in a decade’s time not only will there be more women in paid work than men but women will dominate the senior positions (and the higher salaries these command). In ten years time it will not simply be a case that women will be earning more than men but increasing numbers of men will not even have a job to go to let alone one commanding a higher salary than their female counterparts.
An outcome of [paid] employment is economic empowerment, independence. Unemployment, however, engenders dependence on, subservience to those who are [in paid work]. In 10 years time with more women than men in work there will also be more women than men who are a family’s principle ‘bread winner’ and thus ‘head of household’. For these women an ‘unwaged’ male is likely, in [strict] economic terms to be viewed as more of a liability than an asset. The adage: ‘When money stops coming through the door love flies out of the window’ may also take on greater relevance.
During the next decade women are also more than likely to be reassessing more frequently than at present as to what exactly do they require from a male partner. In terms of households and families, however, it is inevitable that women - being increasingly economically independent - will conclude that there is no requirement or benefit in having men in these particular parts of their lives.
Once women conclude they prefer men to absent from their domestic lives there’s the further inevitably that they will also prefer that they are also absent from other areas of their lives as well. Apart from exclusively feminine domains, women have had scant alternative to conduct their activities be they work or pleasure, in the presence of men. But the moment ‘male free’ alternatives present themselves, many women are likely to embrace them and if Japan is any guide, enthusiastically so as well.
Tired of being groped in rush hour commuter trains women’s groups in Japan successfully petitioned for women only carriages. Not long after this other women’s groups also tired at being ogled at and molested by men while they were swimming, exercising sought ‘women only swimming pools, gymnasiums. Once owners of other pools and gyms saw how commercially successful the first women only ones were they quickly followed suit. Then the idea spread.
Today, across many cities in Japan there are also not only women only spas, restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, chemists and many other [commercial] facilities of ‘ordinary life’ from which men are purposely excluded but in the eyes of their [mainly male] proprietors they are more profitable than their ‘unisex’ counterparts as well. Japanese women though are not alone in this changed lifestyle.
In France increasing numbers of women are taking the notion of women only lifestyle an inevitable stage further: women only housing cooperatives. Began in Montreuilsous-Bois, east of Paris, women, with their newly found economic independence and acquired banking skills have established the first 19 home complex but even before its completion other ‘women only’ housing developments were being founded in a number of other cities across France.
These are but a few of the increasing number of examples of how women - given the opportunity - are deciding that they’ve no need or wish to have men in ever more aspects of their lives. In a decade’s time how many other areas of ‘ordinary life’ will there be where, for women it is ‘perfectly normal’ for there is not be a single male present, except for, perhaps as servants, ‘performance artistes’?
How long will be before women, wishing for the best possible future for their off-spring and seeing the bleak future ahead for males, and being able to select the gender of their child, will opt for a girl in preference to a boy?
How soon will it be before it is not merely a case that women earn more than men but there will be not be any men around to even apply for jobs in the first place? How long will it be, for what men there are they will exist as nothing other than as sex objects, playthings of women’s wiles?
If you are a believer of CO2 driven global warming MammasMammon challenges you to prove it.
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