The End of Men: And the Rise of Women

Although I did not always agree with Hanna Rosin's arguments and conclusions, I did find this book compelling and thought-provoking. It relied a little too heavily on anecdotal evidence for my taste, but I recognize that it was not meant to be an academic work. More distressing is how overwhelmingly heterocentric the work is. I recommend it with reservations for readers interested in gender issues for the questions it raises. ( )

A somewhat less objectionable book than I expected. Hanna Rosin sees the Mannendamerung---Twilight of Men---in terms of a kind of genteel apocalypse. Men, she tells us, are becoming, well, not really necessary. The poor things are not so much the guilty sex demonized by the identity politicians and the feminists. They are the useless sex, leading their pointless little lives as losers in the ruthless post-modern realm. And yet, males though they are, they often can be lovable, somehow. Often , quite....human. And now and then quite bright. Her own son, for example, though male, is really very bright. And Rosin also likes her husband, who is not absolutely without his uses. Besides, though men are more or less over, relics of lost primitive ages, they are here to stay. They keep being born. Keep growing up. What will the poor things find to do with themselves?

Despite her amiable contempt, Rosin manages to maintain the decency of a sort of make-do humanism. She condescends to all of us in the useless sex, her own husband and son included, but hers is not the loathing, the calculated cruelty and misandry of standard identity politics and routine gender feminism. It is just complacent. Just blind. ( )

This is an interesting study in how jobs have moved from male dominated to female dominated. I wished she had looked to some historical instances of this similar switch. Interesting read.

LibraryThing Early Reviewers book. I think the other reviewers have provided sufficient synopses so I won't go into that. I wanted to like this book but there were things that bothered me. The author backed up her arguments with sweeping generalizations, anecdote, and statistics. Several of her generalizations were stated in repetition in different chapters. Hopefully this is just an editing issue. I was also a bit relieved to get to the end of the book and find references. Hopefully these will be referenced in as footnotes. The final chapter dealing with Korean women was also oddly out of place. If you're going to go global, discuss several countries. Finally, the title and cover: it's too sensationalized and attention-seeking and doesn't accurately reflect the content of the book. ( )

Can one review this book without making a political statement? The previous reviewer says that it is "a terrible book" and cites a whole raft of links to others who agree with her.

I don't agree with her: I don't think this is a terrible book. Indeed I think it is a moderately interesting presentation of some broad demographic trends that have been going on in the US for some time. Women are becoming better educated compared to men than they used to be, not just relatively but absolutely. Women are making up a larger percentage of the professions (at least up to a certain level), and women are moving into some job areas that used to be men's work. And, less positively, more and more women are opting for single motherhood -- as in most wealthy countries.

To extend these trends to "The End of Men", however, is carrying the arguement way too far. Statistical evidence shows that even if some women in some places are narrowing the pay gap, women as a whole are not. And women are taking in more of the burden of child rearing than they did in the past, when they worked less. Moreover, some of the relative economic shifts that Ms. Rosen notes probably have more to do with cyclical developments (a bad recession that slammed construction) than with any sort of gender regime shift.

Given the continued pay gap, and the continued lack of female representation at the top of most organizational pyramids, Ms. Rosin's title looks way overblown. Some of her critics may fear that her arguments give comfort to those who say, for example, that affirmative action for women is not needed.

It is always tempting to dismiss arguments entirely if parts of those arguments are suspect. It is particularly tempting when some of the political implications of the argument go in directions that are troubling to, for example, feminists. (As an old feminist who spent a career in Wall Street, I have trouble with the end of men view -- there, I knew I couldn't review this book without making a political statement).

But the book is still worth reading. Women are improving their relative position, gradually, and this is a trend with social implications that deserve consideration. By taking (at least in her title) an extreme view, Ms. Rosin has certainly cranked up discussion of the topic of how social and economic roles are changing. That's a contribution. ( )